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The letter is from the Dominican priest Fr. Thomas Crotty (d. 1930, born James but took the name Thomas after he joined the order) to Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916). The letter was written during Casement's eighteen month stay in Germany, where he was attempting to gain German support for an Irish rebellion against British rule. The letter refers to Casement's attempts to create an Irish Brigade of Irish-born British army soldiers who were then held as prisoners of war in German camps. It was the camp at Linberg, in the Lahn valley, that was designated for the project. Fr. Crotty was one of the priests who administered to the men in the camp at Limberg. The project was, however, largely unsuccessful and only fifty-six men signed up. Crotty mentions in the letter that Robert Monteith, the officer in charge of the Irish Brigade, 'hasn't much hope of succeeding' in Limberg but would do what he could to convince people of his views. Casement was later arrested in County Kerry having returned to Ireland in a submarine to try and prevent the Easter Rising from taking place as he felt German support was insufficient. He was hanged in London in August 1916.
The data in these XML files was generated based on a data dump from the Magellan database (https://github.com/Maynooth-Center-for-Digital-Humanities/Magellan). Each database record has been converted to a JSON file (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/json). The element section of the JSON file contains the TEI-encoded contents of the letters. The TEI XML has been cleaned and made well-formed using a Python script (https://github.com/letters1916static/letters-data/tree/main/src).