Many a little beggar child in Dublin knew the smile in those kind eyes, and they used to greet him with smiles in return and always get their copper or two. We used to tease him, and say he walked through the streets of Dublin "buying smiles at a penny each." I do not think any Irish man, woman, or child ever appealed to him for sympathy and help that he did not give.
On a motor tour through Donegal with some friends he met an old woman whose son and his wife had died and left to her care a family of small children. They looked poor and hungry, and the old woman found it hard to make her little farm support them all. "Wouldn't they be better for some milk?" asked Roger, seeing them make a scanty meal, with water to drink. "Indeed they would if I could be getting it for them," said the grandmother. Roger made no answer, but at the next market town he bought a cow and had it sent out to the old lady.
It was in Ireland he always felt at home; he hated big cities, noise, music-halls, and restaurants. He wrote from London on one visit, "I feel more and more of a foreigner here"; but in the Irish country, with the simple country folk, he was always content. One of the happiest experiences of his life in later years was a short visit he paid to Tory Island in 1912, when he organised a Ceilidh, to which everyone on the island was invited. He sat in the crowded schoolroom, watching the boys and girls dancing their reels and jigs, and listening to the Gaelic songs till far on into the night, when the Ceilidh broke up. He loved the Tory people and used to plan many times to go back and visit them. Tory has a sort of fascination about it, it looks so remote and unreal, "like an opal jewel in a pale blue sea," he described it once in a letter.
During all the time of his varied experiences abroad in Africa and South America, his mind turned always with longing and affection to Ireland. He looked upon himself as an Irishman before all things. He eagerly watched for the rare arrival of mails bringing word of Ireland and her doings. "Send me news of Ireland," he wrote from South America, "and also what the papers say about the Congo, but chiefly Ireland; Ireland first, last, and for ever."
Although not a rich man (he had no private means) he contributed generously to all Irish schemes for furthering the National life. He helped several of the Gaelic Colleges, gave prizes in schools for the study of Irish, and did his best to help along many of those newspapers and periodicals which were founded by young and hopeful Irishmen to expound their views and which alas! so often came to an untimely end.
With his singularly generous nature money mattered nothing at all to him save for the use he could make of it to help the work he had at heart. He spent little upon himself, in fact he denied himself all luxuries, and even comforts, that he might have to give to Irish causes or to the Irish poor. Those who said of him that he sold himself for money knew nothing of the man they were slandering. He was wholly indifferent to money for its own sake. His scrupulous integrity as to public funds was illustrated by the following:—When he was called to give evidence before a certain commission, as he was waiting his turn with others who had to travel to London for the same purpose, one of the secretaries remarked to a witness, "Do you see that man?" (pointing to Roger Casement), "Well, all the rest have charged first-class railway fares, but he has put down third."
He wrote much on the Irish question. Letters from his pen appeared in many Irish newspapers, and not a few English ones, and his essays, which will, it is hoped, be published later, show not only a deep insight but much literary skill. His speech from the dock was described by a leading English literary man as an effort "worthy of the finest examples of antiquity."
At the age of 52 he came to a violent end.... So have many others who died for Ireland; he stands among his peers, the Irish martyrs. He would not have chosen to die otherwise, the love of his life was Kathleen ni Houlihan; when he thought he heard her voice calling from her four green fields he had no choice but to obey, though he knew it led to death; but death which comes in such a form to the body leaves the spirit but freer to carry on its purpose.
The men of 1916 are not dead in any real sense, for
"They shall be remembered for ever,
They shall be alive for ever,
They shall be speaking for ever,
The people shall hear them for ever."