After this he was sent to South America, and in 1909 he was appointed Consul-General at Rio de Janeiro. So trusted was he that when the British Government wished to investigate the labour atrocities on the Indians in the rubber forests of Peru, they chose Sir Roger Casement; and when his report was printed in 1912 it caused the profoundest stir, not merely in England, but throughout the civilized world. This was surely a man of character and above the ordinary temptations of bribery, or else he would not in 1905 have received the C.M.G. and in 1911 knighthood--moreover, he was a man who may be said to have had ample opportunity of getting outside the narrow groove of Irish politics and seeing something of the Empire. Yet while Irish politics had been moving with tremendous rapidity during his absence--the fateful years between 1895-1905--Sir Roger Casement seems never to have got beyond the Ulster of 1798--which I need hardly remind anyone conversant with history was as rebellious to England as was Wexford under Cromwell. This _idee fixe_ began to appear at once upon his return to Ireland in the year 1913, when he found politics in a chaos of ferment, and seeing Sir Edward Carson preparing to appeal to arms and his supporters to Germany, he too "began to indulge in treason in the same spirit as Carson and the Curragh crew," as he himself described his attitude of that time. Possibly Germany was equally willing to sell her old rifles to both parties, but the war precipitated matters. Autumn 1914 found Sir Roger (who, as we have already seen, had founded a body of volunteers in Ireland) in Berlin, where he was not only received at the German Foreign Office, but, in answer to an inquiry regarding the Kaiser's attitude to Ireland, was assured by the Foreign Department and the Imperial Chancellor that "Germany would never invade Ireland with the object of conquering it," and that, "supposing the fortune of war should ever bring German troops to Ireland's coasts, they would land as the forces of a Government inspired by goodwill towards a land and a people for whom Germany only wishes national welfare and national freedom." That he was not acting in any way as the representative of the nation whose ambassador he was supposed to be was amply proved by his repudiation after this adventure by the Irish leaders at home and such bodies as the Council of the United Irish League in America.