"The sinking of the German ship loaded with arms and ammunition ... was the direct result of information treacherously given to the British Government by a member of the Washington Administration ... Wilson's officials obtained the information by an act of lawlessness, a violation of international law and of American law, committed with the deliberate purpose of helping England, and it was promptly put at the disposal of the British Government...."
This charge was denied at once from Washington. The specific "violation of international law and of American law" to which Devoy referred was generally supposed to be the seizure of the von Igel papers, for the accusation is the same as that which von Igel made when his office was raided. How Devoy knew that the von Igel papers contained information of the proposed expedition from Kiel to Ireland is a question which Devoy has no doubt had to answer to the Government of the United States since then. He and O'Leary, with Dennis Spellisy, who had collected large sums of money for the Sinn Fein cause, were loud in their protests against the execution of the ringleaders of the revolt on May 3rd, which put a sharp end to the endeavors of the revolutionists. That O'Leary was known to the German system of secret agents in America needs no further substantiation. To credit him with generalship, however, would be doing him too great honor and the Irish-American population injustice; O'Leary was bitterly pro-German, but so were hundreds of more prominent and influential Irish-Americans: one could find the names of several New York Justices upon the roster of the Friends of Peace. Sir Roger Casement petitioned for a Philadelphia lawyer at his trial for treason, and Sir Roger's sister attempted unsuccessfully to reach President Wilson, through his secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, in an effort to bring about intercession in the doomed knight's favor. (Mr. Tumulty was approached more than once by persons whom he had reason to suspect of alloyed motives who desired to "set forth a case to the President.") The link between the old country and the new is close, the future of Ireland is one of more than usual interest and concern to the United States, and the fact that the great majority of Irish-Americans have subordinated their insular convictions to the greater conviction of loyalty to their adopted land is at once a fine augury of ultimate solution of the Irish question, and a dignified rebuke to the efforts which Germany has made through America to exploit Ireland.