Many of the organizations thus united for a practical purpose found a clearing-house in the American Truth Society, of which Jeremiah O'Leary was the head. Although the Centennial Celebration itself was rudely interrupted by the advent of war, the German-Irish acquaintanceship was nourished by the German propagandists in America. They observed with pleasure the circulation by the Clan-na-Gael of cards informing the Irish in America that troops from Erin were being assigned to the most dangerous posts and the bloodiest attacks and subjected to the most severe enemy fire in France, and that the hated British were dragging Irish boys from their homes to fill up the ranks. Between September, 1914, and April, 1915, funds amounting to $80,000 for the purchase of arms and the printing of seditious papers and leaflets were forwarded from America to Dublin banks, and then mysteriously were withdrawn. An inflammatory publication known as _Bull_, published by O'Leary, and not barred from the mails until September, 1917, went broadcast over the United States, inciting bitterness against England, and found a greedy circle of readers in the German-American population. John Devoy, a Sinn Feiner of standing in America, fanned the flame with a newspaper known as the _Gaelic American_, published in New York, and it is this American-printed sheet which furnished the Irish revolutionists with material for a part of the plot which they were preparing for fruition in the year 1916.
[Illustration: _Copyright, International Film Service_
In 1916 Sir Roger Casement, an Irish knight, made his way into Germany. He was permitted to visit the prison camp at Limburg where some 3,000 Irish prisoners of war were quartered, and he moved about among them attempting to obtain enlistments in an army which was to effect a coup in Dublin to overthrow the British government in the Castle and to proclaim an Irish Republic. He circulated numerous copies of the _Gaelic American_ to arouse the men. He was variously received. Some of the prisoners held their release worth treason--but only fifty-odd. The greater majority rejected Sir Roger's offer, and some even chose to curse and spit at the suggestion that they break their oaths of allegiance to Great Britain. He succeeded, however, in enlisting German financial assistance, and in early April, 1916, a cargo of captured Russian arms and ammunition was forwarded to Kiel and loaded into the German auxiliary steamship _Aud_.