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Roger Casement on UVF
Letters of Roger Casement
Letter from Roger Casement to Eoin MacNeill [FN1]
9 June 1912
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I love the Antrim Presbyterians … they are good, kind, warm-hearted souls, and now to see them exploited by that damned Church of Ireland, and that Orange Ascendancy gang who hate Presbyterians only less than papists, and to see them delirious before a Smith and a Carson (a cross between a badly reared bloodhound and an underfed hyena sniffing for Irish blood in the track) and whooping Rule Britannia through the streets is a wound to my soul. Now those dogs are sniffing out trouble in England too, well I wish them well of that, for trouble in England is good news for Ireland.
The only really healthy thing is their damned Volunteer Force. That is fine; it is the act of men; and I like it, and love the thought of those English ministers squirming before it. Even so, it would be better if we could confront them similarly as men. It would be far better than to go on lying and pretending – if only we could be left free to fight out our battle here ourselves.
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Letter from Eoin MacNeill to Roger Casement
15 June 1912
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O, would it not be simply heavenly, if the Government undertook to suppress our Volunteers and Carson's together. Is there any way of getting them to do it? … We have them in a cleft stick. The question of arms need not discourage us. We have to get the young men to understand that now every one of them can get military training and can join in a permanent national militai to be ready for arming at any time and to be ready to come out on command.
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Letter from Roger Casement to Eoin MacNeill
1 July 1912
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I pray for the Germans. Their coming would teach the English a real Protestant lesson. We have reached the point I think where revolution must replace resolutions. If the people of Ireland want freedom as much as the people of Ulster do not want it, they will have to fight for it.
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