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FROM THE BLACK DIARIES. Sir, Roger Casement leaving the Law Courts after his appeal had been dismissed in April, 1916.

CASEMENT 'BLACK DIARIES'

WERE THEY GENUINE OR A FORGERY?

Limited editions issued in Paris and New York a few weeks ago re-opens controversy.....

By H. D. ZIMAN

The text of the notorious diaries attributed to Sir Roger Casement, who was hanged for treason in 1916, is due to be published to-day in Paris in a limited edition in English under the title of "The Black Diaries" by Peter Singleton-Gates and Maurice Girodias.

The title alludes to the repeated admissions of the diarist's homosexual exploits. Inquiries on Friday from the office of the Olympia Press, which is publishing the book, suggest that it may not in fact be on sale till later this week.

Meanwhile review copies have been made available of a shorter

version, which is being released in New York at the end of April by the Grove Press.

Whereas the version for America includes only what purport to be Casement's diaries for 1903-4 and for 1910, the Par's edition, limited to 1,500 copies and sold at 5.000 francs (£3 12s) is said to contain also Casement's alleged diary for 1911 with passages more objectionable in their detail than the contents of the two earlier diaries. This limited edition has not been sent out for review. ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT

Home Office Possession

Ever since the time of Casement's trial it has been known that diaries. said to be in his writing, showed that he was a practising homosexual of singular promiscuity.

The original manuscript diaries, then (and presumably now) in pos session of the Home Office, were not produced in Court by the prose

cution, to whose case they were irrelevant.

They were, however, offered to the defence, in case they might guilty but support a plea of insane." No such plea was made. and the defence refused to use or even examine them.

The contents of the diaries are believed to have been taken into account by the Asquith Cabinet when a decision was reached against reprieving Casement.

Typescripts allegedly reproducing them were, moreover, shown at the time to a number of influential people, including foreign correspondents, to indicate that Casement was not the man of high character suggested by his humani tarian zeal in investigating atroci ties in Peru and the former Congo Free State.

FORGERIES CLAIM Passages "Interpolated"

Casement's admirers have often maintained that the diaries were forged, or. alternatively, that diswere intercreditable passages polated into genuine diaries. The

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