TRAITOR CASEMENT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 108, 8 May 1916, Page 6

TRAITOR CASEMENT.

KALMYK’* 1 ‘IKISH GUARD.” The following lively form of the story of Casement's “Irish Guard” was in the London Spectator ci December 25, signed “Z.”: —

I went recently to visit some of the first let of our prisoners of war who were exchanged, and who are in the Brompton Consumptive Hospital. An Irish Guardsman told me most c_ 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,” he said, when I made come excuses for the poor devils. Hero is the story —as far as my memory serves me. I give the actual words and expressions used by the two men: “When we were first taken prisoners we wer e 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 Casemint? Well, 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 th e Ktiser’s Irish Guard. Oh, even if Germany was 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, wc 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 got out of the camp.

However, afther a bit lie got three fellahs to come. He had them dressed up in lovely green uniforms all over snamrocks, and he gave them a grand blow out with beer and cigars, and all sorts, and we were marched down — starving—and set to watch them eating.

“Was that all he got?” said I. “Oh’ ’twas not; h e got about .30 or 10, I suppose.” Oh, my,” said I, that was bad.”

“Oh, but wait till you hear what happened in the latther end. He took the lads away, and when ho had them sworn in, he gave them a couple of days on leave in Berlin. Well, now, 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 mo), “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—but ’twas worth it.”