Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/632

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586
CARTWRIGHT—CASEMENT

of 1914, of a county option of exclusion for six years. That was " sentence of death with a stay of execution." If that was the Prime Minister's last word, his place was in Belfast; and he and several of his fellow Unionist members from north-east Ireland made a dramatic exit from the House on March 19 to go to Ulster. When he returned for the debates on the Curragh incident he told the House that there was only one policy pos- sible, " Leave Ulster out until you have won her consent to come in." He became a member of the abortive Buckingham Palace Conference convened by the King in the hope of compromise; and when that broke down in the end of July it looked as if he and his Ulster friends would have to make good in action their policy of force.

The World War supervened, and switched off his activity into another direction. Though he resented, as a breach of the political truce between parties, Mr. Asquith's determination to pass the Home Rule bill into law while suspending its operation and promising some form of special treatment for Ulster, he went to Belfast in order to stimulate Ulstermen and especially Ulster volunteers to join the British army, and had a considerable success. He was eager for a thorough prosecution of the war, and accordingly joined Mr. Asquith's Coalition Ministry of June 1915 as Attorney-General, resigning however in Oct. because he thought that the policy of the Cabinet, after the defection of Greece, involved the desertion of Serbia, a small country in whose fate he took a profound interest. He was strongly in favour of the Compulsory Service bill in 1916, and regretted that Mr. Red- mond should insist on excepting Ireland from its provisions. He looked favourably upok Mr. Lloyd George's efforts that summer to arrange an agreed settlement of the Irish question, and when that statesman formed a new government in Dec. for the more efficient conduct of the war, joined his Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. The great anxiety of the Board of Admiralty at this period was how to counter the German submarine attack which was steadily increasing in intensity. He placed his reliance mainly on an Anti-Submarine Department which had been established in Whitehall, consisting of the most experienced men serving at sea, and on the Board of Inventions, under Lord Fisher, with whom were associated some of the greatest men of science in the country. His shipbuilding programme was largely one for making good losses in the mercantile marine. The losses however continued to increase, and led to a reorganization of the Admiralty, with a view to strengthening the navy war staff as well as to put the supply on a sounder basis by revising the office of Admiralty Controller. Outside his departmental duties Sir E. Carson warmly promoted the Irish Convention which the Government assembled this year. In July he quitted the Ad- miralty to become a member of the War Cabinet without port- folio, a position which he resigned at the beginning of 1918. But, in or out of the office, his activity was directed wholeheartedly to the vigorous prosecution of hostilities.

After the war was over, Ulster and Ireland regained the first place in his thoughts. At the general election of 1918 he left . Dublin University, in order to represent one of the divisions of Ulster's capital, Belfast. On the anniversary in July 1919 of the battle of the Boyne, he restated, speaking near Belfast, Ulster's position and claims, demanded the repeal of the Home Rule Act, threatened to call out the volunteers if any attempt were made to change Ulster's status, declared Dominion Home Rule to be merely a blind for an Irish Republic, and criticized Sir Horace Plunkett as one who was distrusted by both sides. When, however, Mr. Lloyd George proposed in the winter his bill for the reform of the government of Ireland, establishing parliaments and executives both in Dublin and in Belfast, and a Federal Council for all Ireland, he moderated his attitude. Though he would have preferred that Ulster should remain in the United Kingdom, yet, as this bill gave her a parliament of her own, he would not oppose it. When the bill left the Commons in Nov. 1920, he said that, though Ulster did not ask for a parliament, she would do her best to make the arrangement a success. He exerted himself to that end in Ireland, with the result that the Unionists succeeded even beyond their hopes in the elections in May 1921 for the first Ulster Parliament, and so started with an overwhelming majority. But he declined to sit in the new parliament himself; and he also resisted the suggestions that he, as the most outstanding fighter in the Unionist party, should be put forward to succeed Mr. Bonar Law as leader in the British House of Commons. He had done his best to save Protes- tant Ulster from domination by the Roman Catholic majority of the south and west. He was 67 and had felt the strain of the last 10 years; so he quitted active politics, and accepted a lord- ship of Appeal and a life peerage as Baron Carson of Duncairn.

He was twice married in 1879 to Sarah A. F. Kirwan, who died in 1913, leaving two sons and a daughter; and in 1914 to Ruby Frewen, by whom he had one son. (G. E. B.)


CARTWRIGHT, SIR RICHARD JOHN (1835-1912), Canadian statesman (see 5.435), died at Kingston, Ont., Sept. 23 1912.

CARUSO, ENRICO (1873-1921), operatic tenor, was born in Naples, Feb. 25 1873. He was early apprenticed to a mechanical engineer. He began to sing in the choirs at Naples when he was n, and later studied for three years under Guglielmo Vergine. He made his debut in 1894 in L' Arnica Francesco at the Teatro Nuovo, Naples. He first won marked success as Marcello in La Boheme, at Milan, in 1898; and at La Scala theatre in that city, he sang for the next four years. From 1899 to 1903 he was at St. Petersburg in the winter, and in the summer at Buenos Aires. But meanwhile he appeared also in many cities, including Moscow, Warsaw, Rome, Paris and London (Covent Garden 1902), everywhere being warmly greeted. In America he first ap- peared in 1903 at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, where for 18 years he was the leading tenor. He made an extensive concert tour through the United States in 1917. He had a very extensive Italian and French repertory, but never essayed Wagnerian roles. He won special success in A'ida, Carmen, Huguenots, L'Elisir d'Amore, Pagliacci, Rigoletto and Samson. He died Aug. 2 1921 at Naples.


CARY, ANNIE LOUISE (1842-1921), American singer (see 5.438), died April 3 1921 at Norwalk, Conn.


CASEMENT, ROGER DAVID (1864-1916), British consular official and Irish traitor, was born near Dublin Sept. i 1864. His family were Protestants who migrated to Ulster from the Isle of Man early in the i8th century, and he was brought up in the Protestant faith. Early in his career he was in the service of the Niger Coast Protectorate, afterwards entering the British consular service, and being appointed to Lorenzo Marques (1895), Loanda (1898) and to the Congo Free State (1898). After seven years on the Congo he was transferred to South America, going to Santos (1906), to Para (1907) and to Rio de Janeiro as consul- general (1908). In 1910, charges of cruelty having been brought against the agents of the Anglo-Peruvian Amazon Co., operating in the region of the Putumayo, a tributary of the Upper Amazon, Casement was commissioned by the British Govern- ment to inquire into these charges on the spot. The result of his investigations was published as a Blue Book in 1912, and pub- lic opinion was deeply shocked by the' evidence it contained of the appalling atrocities committed on the natives employed in collecting rubber (see PUTUMAYO). For this service he -was knighted. His mind, however, seems to have become affected as the result of his experiences in the tropics, and on his return to Ireland from South America he developed a fanatical hatred of England, throwing himself with ardour into the movement for Irish independence.

As early as Jan. 1913 Irish Freedom, a Sinn Fein monthly review, had foretold the coming war with Germany and proclaimed this as " Ireland's opportunity," and to the July number of this review Casement, under the pseudonym of San Van Vocht, contributed an article on "Germany, Ireland, and the next War," in which he elaborated this theme. From the first he took an active part in the Volunteer movement in the south, and when, in the spring of 1914, the bulk of the Volunteers ranged themselves under Mr. Redmond's leadership (National Volunteers) he attached himself to the Sinn Fein section, which refused all compromise (Irish Volunteers). He had in the previous year made efforts, in concert with Mrs. J. R. Green and Capt. White,