TRAITOR CASEMENT.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7717, 9 May 1916, Page 1

TRAITOR CASEMENT.

KAISER’S “IRISH GUARD.” The following lively form of the story of Casement’s “Irish Guard” was in the London “Spectator” on December 25th, signed “Z.”:— I went recently to visit some of the first lot of our prisoners of war who were exchanged, and who are in the Brompton Consumptive Hospital. An Irish Guardsman told me most of the following story. Some details which I have pieced in I got another day from another man, a Munster Fusilier, who is in another ward. He corroborated the former’s story, but did not take the indulgent view he did. “I hope I live to see them well punished,” lie said, when I made some excuses for the poor devils. Here is the story—as far as my memory serves me, I give the actual words and expressions used by the two men:—‘ ‘ AA’hen we were first taken prisoners we were very well fed—that was at X—nothing was too good for Irishmen; but when we got to Y—we were starved. I don’t suppose we got a tenth of what we had been having to eat. Indeed, ’twas only by the dint of leaning against one another that we could stand at all. “Ye’ll have heard of that fella Casement? AA’ell, when they had us well starved Casemint came to the camp, and we was all marched into a hall, and there he talked to us—promised us every sort of fine thing if we would become the Kaiser’s Irish Guard. Oh, even if Germany were beaten—of course she wouldn’t be, but if She was —we’d all be given free passages to Ameriky, and £lO apiece in our pockets. Oh, we listened to him very quiet, but when he’d finished, if he hadn’t had German soldiers round him, not two bits of him would have been left together, weak as we were, to get out of the camp. However, afther a bit he got three fellas to come. He had them dressed up in lovely green uniforms all over shamrocks, and he gave them a grand blow out with beer and cigars and all sorts, and we was marched down — starving—and set to watch them eating.” “:AA r as that all he got?” said I. “Oh, ’twas not; he got about 30 or 40, I suppose.” “Oh, my,” said I, “that was had.” “Oh, but wait till j'ou hear what happened in the latther end. He took the lads away, and when he had them sworn in, gave them a couple of days on leave in Berlin. AA r ell, nOSv, if me lads was German when they were sober, when they were drunk they were British” (“British” was the word he used, which much surprised me), “and nothing would do them but to march down the streets of Berlin singing 'Rule Britannia’ and ‘God 'Save the King.’ Oh, they’re doing hard punishment, I’m told, in a German prison—hut ’twas worth it.”