Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

130 THE EASTER RISING AND AFTERMATH
should be sent to Ireland with efficient military support and with
an ample supply of arms and ammunition to equip the Irish
Volunteers, these circumstances arising in the event of a German
naval victory. Should this not prove the case, Casement advocated
the deployment of the brigade as a volunteer corps attached to the
Turkish army, in an effort to assist the Egyptian people to drive
Britain out of Egypt. 31 Casement believed that were Turkey to
break through to the Suez Canal it could herald the British
Empire’s downfall, for ‘with the Canal gone, Egypt goes—+with
both gone I look for…an outbreak in India as must tax “the
Empire” to its limit, +with Germany at the port of Calais…I do not
think John [Bull] can spare many men, ships or guns for India’.
Casement predicted that, to hold India, England would have to
appeal to Japan, which would spell her ultimate eviction from Asia.
‘Once India falls the whole house collapses—for it is chiefly on
India+her plunder their Colonial scheme of robbery depends’, he
concluded. 32 John Devoy, however, firmly opposed this scheme,
believing that fighting for the Turks would be ‘a fatal cry’ in
Ireland. 33
In the end, the only thing that Casement could console himself
with, ‘for all my sacrifice (+folly)’ was the ‘Treaty’ of 20
November 1914. This, he believed, had justified his efforts, and he
considered it a recognition of ‘Ireland a Nation to the world’, its
value being to the cause of Irish liberty in the future. 34 The
declaration read:
The German Government…takes this opportunity to give a
categorical assurance that the German Government desires
only the welfare of the Irish people, their country, and their
institutions.
The Imperial Government formally declares that under no
circumstances would Germany invade Ireland with a view to
its conquest or the overthrow of any native institutions in that
country
Should the fortune of this great war…ever bring in its
course German troops to the shores of Ireland, they would
land there, not as an army of invaders to pillage and destroy,
but as the forces of a Government that is inspired by goodwill
towards a country and a people for whom Germany
desires only NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND NATIONAL
FREEDOM. 35
As Dr Solf, the Minister for German Colonies, had told Casement,
the declaration was an entirely new departure in German foreign