The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (52 page)

“We have companies, sections, platoons with their officers, weapons depots, messengers, codes, slogans,” he affirmed, gesturing euphorically. “I doubt there’s an army in Europe more efficient and motivated than ours, Sir Roger. I’m not exaggerating in the least.”

According to Monteith, preparations had reached their high point. German weapons were all that was missing for the insurrection to break out.

Monteith began working immediately, instructing and organizing the fifty recruits at Zossen. He went frequently to the Limburg camp to try to overcome resistance to the Brigade among the other prisoners. He persuaded a few, but the immense majority continued to show him complete hostility. Nothing could demoralize him. His letters to Roger, who had returned to Munich, swelled with enthusiasm and gave him encouraging news about the tiny brigade.

The next time they saw each other in Berlin, a few weeks later, they had supper alone in a small restaurant in Charlottenburg filled with Romanian refugees. Captain Monteith, arming himself with valor and choosing his words very carefully in order not to offend him, said suddenly:

“Sir Roger, don’t think of me as meddling or insolent. But you cannot go on in this condition. You’re too important to Ireland, to our struggle. For the sake of the ideals you have done so much for, I beg you to consult a physician. You have a nervous ailment. It’s not uncommon. Responsibility and worries take their toll. It was inevitable that this would happen. You need help.”

Roger stammered a few evasive words and changed the subject. But the captain’s recommendation alarmed him. Was his mental state so evident that this officer, always so respectful and discreet, had found the courage to tell him something like this? He heeded what he said. After some inquiries, he decided to visit Dr. Oppenheim, who lived outside the city among the trees and streams of Grunewald. He was an elderly man who inspired confidence, for he seemed experienced and reliable. They had two long sessions in which Roger told him about his condition, his problems, insomnia, and fears. He had to submit to mnemotechnical tests and very detailed questions. Finally, Dr. Oppenheim assured him he needed to go to a sanatorium and receive treatment. If he didn’t, his mental state would continue the process of destabilization that had already begun. The doctor called Munich himself and arranged an appointment for him with a colleague and disciple, Dr. Rudolf von Hoesslin.

Roger did not become a patient in Dr. von Hoesslin’s clinic but saw him several times a week for several months. The treatment was helpful.

“I’m not surprised, with the things you have seen in the Congo and the Amazon and what you are doing now, that you suffer from these problems,” the psychiatrist said. “What’s noteworthy is that you’re not a raving madman and haven’t committed suicide.”

He was still a young man, passionate about music, a vegetarian, and a pacifist. He was opposed to this war and all wars and dreamed that one day universal brotherhood—“a Kantian peace,” he called it—would be established all over the world, borders would disappear, and men would acknowledge one another as brothers. Roger would leave his sessions with Dr. von Hoesslin calmed and encouraged. But he wasn’t sure he was getting better. He’d always had this sense of well-being when he chanced to meet a healthy, good, idealistic person.

He made several trips to Zossen, where, as was to be expected, Robert Monteith had won over all the recruits in the Brigade. Thanks to his intense efforts, there were ten more volunteers. The marches and training were going wonderfully. But Brigade members continued to be treated like prisoners by German soldiers and officers, and at times mistreated. Captain Monteith took steps at the admiralty so that the volunteers would have a margin of freedom, as Roger had been promised, be allowed to go into town and have a beer in a tavern from time to time. Weren’t they allies? Why were they still treated as enemies? So far these efforts had not produced the slightest result.

Roger lodged a protest. He had a violent scene with General Schneider, commander of the garrison in Zossen, who told him he could not give more freedom to men who lacked discipline, had a propensity for fighting, and even committed robberies in the camp. According to Monteith, the accusations were false. The only incidents were the result of German sentries insulting Brigade members.

Roger’s final months in Germany were filled with constant arguments and moments of great tension with the authorities. The sense of having been deceived only grew until he left Berlin. The Reich had no interest in the liberation of Ireland. It never took seriously the idea of a joint action with the Irish revolutionaries. The chancellery and the admiralty had made use of his naïveté and good faith, making him believe things they had no intention of doing. The project of the Irish Brigade fighting with the Turkish army against the British in Egypt, studied in every detail, was frustrated when it seemed about to be realized, with absolutely no explanation. Zimmermann, von Wedel, Nadolny, and all the officials who took part in the planning suddenly became shifty and evasive. They refused to receive him on trivial pretexts. When he did succeed in speaking to them, they were always extremely busy, could grant him only a few minutes; the matter of Egypt was not their responsibility. Roger became resigned: his dream of the Brigade as a small symbolic force in the Irish struggle against colonialism had gone up in smoke.

Then, with the same ardor he had brought to his admiration of Germany, he began to feel toward that country a dislike that was turning into hatred similar to, or perhaps greater than, the hatred Britain inspired in him. He said as much in a letter to the lawyer John Quinn, after telling him about the mistreatment he was receiving from the authorities. “And so it is, my friend, that I have come to hate the Germans so much that, rather than die here, I prefer a British gallows.”

His state of irritation and physical indisposition obliged him to return to Munich. Dr. von Hoesslin insisted he become a patient in a rest home in Bavaria, using a categorical argument: “You’re on the brink of a crisis from which you will never recover unless you rest and forget about everything else. The alternative is that you will lose your reason or suffer a psychic break that will incapacitate you for the rest of your days.”

Roger obeyed. For some days his life entered a period of so much peace he felt disembodied. Pills made him sleep ten and twelve hours a day. Then he would take long walks, on the cold mornings of a winter that refused to leave, through a nearby wood of maple and ash trees. He was denied tobacco and alcohol and ate frugal vegetarian meals. He had no desire to read or write. He would spend hours with his mind blank, feeling like a ghost.

Robert Monteith violently pulled him out of this lethargy one sunny morning early in March 1916. Because of the importance of the matter, the captain had obtained leave from the German government to come to see him. Still under the influence of what had happened, he spoke in a rush:

“An escort came to take me out of the camp at Zossen and to Berlin, to the admiralty. A large group of officers, including two generals, was waiting for me. This is what they told me: ‘The Irish Provisional Committee has decided the uprising will take place on April 23.’ In other words, in a month and a half.”

Roger leaped out of bed. His fatigue seemed to disappear all at once and his heart turned into a furiously beating drum. He couldn’t speak.

“They’re asking for rifles, riflemen, artillerymen, machine guns, ammunition,” Monteith continued, agitated by emotion. “They want the ship escorted by a submarine. The weapons ought to reach Fenit on Tralee Bay, in County Kerry, on Easter Sunday at about midnight.”

“Then they aren’t going to wait for German armed action,” Roger said at last. He thought of a catastrophe, of rivers of blood dyeing the water of the Liffey.

“The message also has instructions for you, Sir Roger,” Monteith added. “You should remain in Germany as ambassador of the new Republic of Ireland.”

Roger let himself fall back on the bed, crushed. His comrades hadn’t told him of their plans before informing the German government. And they had ordered him to stay here while they had themselves killed in one of those acts of defiance that Patrick Pearse and Joseph Plunkett liked so much. Did they mistrust him? There was no other explanation. Since they were aware of his opposition to a unilateral uprising, they thought he would be a hindrance in Ireland and preferred him to remain here with his arms folded, holding the bizarre position of ambassador of a republic this rebellion and this bloodbath would make more remote and improbable.

Monteith waited, in silence.

“We’re going to Berlin immediately, Captain,” said Roger, sitting up again. “I’ll dress, pack my bag, and we’ll leave on the first train.”

They did. Roger managed to write a few hurried lines of thanks to Dr. Rudolf von Hoesslin. His mind churned endlessly on the long trip, with small intervals for exchanging ideas with Monteith. When he reached Berlin, his line of conduct was clear. His personal problems had moved into the background. The priority now was to pour his energy and intelligence into obtaining what his comrades had requested: rifles, ammunition, and German officers who could organize military actions efficiently. Second, he would leave for Ireland with the cargo of weapons. There he would try to persuade his friends to wait; with a little more time the European war might create situations more favorable to the insurrection. Third, he had to keep the fifty-three members of the Irish Brigade from leaving for Ireland. The British government would unceremoniously execute them as traitors if they were captured by the Royal Navy. Monteith had complete freedom to decide what he wanted to do. Knowing him, it was certain he would go to die with his comrades for the cause to which he had consecrated his life.

In Berlin they stayed in the Eden Hotel. The next morning they began negotiations with the authorities. The meetings took place in the shabby, ugly building of the Admiralty. Captain Nadolny received them at the door and led them to a room where there were always people from the chancellery and military men. New faces were mixed with those of old acquaintances. From the start they were told categorically that the German government refused to send officers to advise the revolutionaries.

On the other hand, they agreed to the weapons and ammunition. For hours and days they did calculations and studies of the most reliable way for them to reach the designated place on the date indicated. Finally, they decided the shipment would go in the
Aud
, a British ship that had been seized, reconditioned, and painted, and would fly a Norwegian flag. Neither Roger nor Monteith nor any Brigade member would travel on the
Aud
. This issue caused arguments, but the German government did not give in: the presence of Irishmen on board would compromise the subterfuge of passing the ship off as Norwegian, and if the deception was discovered, the Reich would be in a delicate situation in terms of international opinion. Then Roger and Monteith insisted on traveling to Ireland at the same time as the weapons. There were hours of proposals and counterproposals, when Roger tried to convince them that if he went there he could persuade his friends to wait until the war was more favorable to the German side, because under those circumstances the Rising could be combined with a parallel action by the German navy and infantry. Finally the admiralty agreed that Casement and Monteith would travel to Ireland in a submarine and take along a Brigade member to represent his comrades.

Roger’s refusal to let the Irish Brigade travel to join the insurrection instigated serious clashes with the Germans. But he did not want Brigade members summarily executed without even having the opportunity to die fighting. That wasn’t a responsibility he would take on.

On April 7, the high command informed Roger that the submarine they would travel on was ready. Captain Monteith chose Sergeant Bailey to represent the Brigade. They gave him false papers bearing the name Julian Beverly. The high command confirmed to Roger that even though the revolutionaries had asked for fifty thousand rifles, only twenty thousand, with ten machine guns and five million rounds of ammunition, would arrive north of Inishtooskert Island in Tralee Bay on the day indicated, after ten at night: a pilot with a rowboat or launch, identified by two green lights, should wait for the ship.

Between April 7 and the day of departure, Roger did not close his eyes. He wrote a short will asking that if he died, all his correspondence and papers be given to Edmund D. Morel, “an exceptionally just and noble person,” so that with the documents he might compose a “memoir to save my reputation after my passing.”

Even though Monteith, like Roger, intuited that the uprising would be crushed by the British army, he burned with impatience to leave. They had a private conversation for a couple of hours on the day Captain Boehm gave them the poison they had asked him for in the event of their capture. The officer told them it was Amazonian curare. The effect would be instantaneous. “Curare is an old friend of mine,” Roger said, smiling. “In Putumayo, in fact, I saw Indians who paralyzed birds in flight with darts dipped in this poison.” Roger and Monteith went for a beer in a nearby
Kneipe
.

“I imagine it hurts you as much as it does me to leave without saying goodbye or giving explanations to Brigade members,” said Roger.

“I’ll always have it on my conscience,” Monteith agreed. “But it’s the correct decision. The insurrection is too important for us to run the risk of its being infiltrated.”

“Do you think I have any chance of stopping it?”

The officer shook his head.

“I don’t think so, Sir Roger. But you’re very respected there and perhaps your words will have an effect. In any case, you have to understand what is happening in Ireland. We’ve been preparing for this for years. What do I mean, years? Centuries, I should say. How much longer will we go on being a captive nation? And in the twentieth century. Besides, there’s no doubt that thanks to the war, this is the moment when England is weaker than Ireland.”