present book insists that the diaries were wholly authentic.

The texts now published are of interest only if they correspond with original manuscripts the (which the Home Office has consistently refused to make available) and if these original manuscripts are genuinely and wholly in Casement's handwriting. In that case there can be no doubt whatever of his homosexual practices.

For interspersed among Casement'sif they are Casement's— brief notes on his social life, reading, gambling and expenditure in Europe, and equally sandwiched among his data on his official investigations interviews in and Africa and South America, are perhaps a hundred or more brief references to men and youths whom he had accosted or sought to accost for improper purposes. NAMES GIVEN London Entry

Usually the Christian name and sometimes the surname of the person with whom he has had relations is given; also what he paid his confederate--sometimes a few cigarettes-and almost invariably some brief, unsavoury details.

I can best quote a diary-entry for July 14, 1910. when Casement was in London. This is revealing, but not gross:

From 11.30 at F.O. looking over papers till 5. Home to Lizzie and Louie and after dinner to Brompton Road and Albert (10s) X in Park. Then M. Arch and fine type in Park but fled and home at 12.50. 15 years Albert. Albert 10s. Morel Testimonial. Letter of Committee splendid.

He was at the time preparing for his inquiry into the conduct of a large rubber concern in the Putumayo region of Peru. E. D. Morel had been one of his fellow-agitators against the maltreatment of natives.

Lizzie was one of Casement's cousins. Why he paid Albert 10s and why the "fine type " at Marble Arch fled needs no explanation. SOCIAL INFERIORS Irish Hotel Visits

Generally speaking, Casement seems to have made advances (usually successfully) to social inferiors many of them abroad natives, but also white men and

་

half-castes, among them policemen and sailors.

In May and June, 1910, he visited hotels in Ireland with an old acquaintance (whose name is given) apparently of his own class, since he gave him a tie-pin instead of money. It is impossible to reproduce here the details of his encounters with this willing accomplice.

The

diaries (assuming, once more, that they are genuine) provide evidence that even towards his own vice Casement had a curiously divided attitude. Where his own indulgences are concerned he is complacent and, indeed, boastful.

But when he learns of the suicide of Sir Hector Macdonald, a distinguished soldier about to be court-martialled on a charge of homosexual misbehaviour. Casement comments:

The most distressing case this, surely, of its kind, and one that may awaken the national mind to saner methods of curing a terrible disease than by criminal legislation.

And in Peru. when he is eyewitness of the sexual misbehaviour of some young boys, which other servants are treating as a joke, he exclaims: "A fine beastly morality for a Christian Co.!"

Anti-British View

Only about five per cent. of the diary entries printed in the American edition reflect Casement's unhappy preoccupation; less than 100 pages of the 536 in this edition are filled by alleged diary-entries at all.

Through over four-fifths of the book its authors are setting out. from a markedly anti-British point of view the story of Casement's life. Irish Nationalism and 1916 rebellion, commenting on the Casement trial or discussing the assumed history of the diaries.

the

As is implied by the sub-title of the book" an account of Roger Casement's life and times, with a collection of his diaries and public writings "-it is largely a political work in Casement's defence.

Facing the diary-entries on alternate pages, Casement's lengthy reports to the Foreign Office of his investigations in the Congo and Putumayo are reprinted from the Command Papers where they are to be found.

mattachine REVIEW

NO FULL PROOF Convincing Case

Do Mr. Singleton-Gates and Mr. Girodias prove that the diaries are genuine. They are unable, without the original manuscripts. to offer complete proof, but what they give is prima facie convincing.

It seems hard to believe that the British Government (or some of its officials) could in 1916 have gone to the immense trouble of forging such documents, merely to blacken. Casement's character.

Mr. Singleton-Gates, the principal author of the book, claims to have been given one of the typescript copies of the diary-material in May, 1922, when he was a crime reporter, by "a person of some authority in London" and to have

been deterred from publishing it in 1925 by a threat from the then Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, of imprisonment for breach of the Official Secrets Act.

A week after seeing the Home Secretary, so he states in his foreword, he was shown the original manuscript diaries by Sir Wyndham Childs, then the head of Scotland Yard, and took the opportunity to compare them both with known specimens of Casement's handwrit ing and with erotic passages in his typescript. (Others, including Michael Collins, the Sinn Fein leader, and Sir John Harris, Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, appear to have agreed that the erotic diaryentries were in Casement's hand).

Readers interested in the Casement Diaries will be glad to khow that a probing article on the subject of their authenticity is coming in the August 1959 issue of SEXOLOGY magazine, 154 W. 14th St., New York 11. Assistant Publisher Isadore Rubin has written a report on his own investigation to determine if the secret "Black Diaries" of the famous Irish patriot and diplomat were the genuine record of a homosexual-or one of the great forgeries in modern history. Don't miss Mr. Rubin's article, "Homosexual Frameup."

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