The Papers of Reginald McKenna

Includes: memorandum by Herbert Asquith [Prime Minister, later 1st Lord Oxford and Asquith] on his decision to reconstruct the Government as a coalition; note by Field Marshal 1st Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, on funding the war, with drafts of a note by McKenna on limiting the number of recruits due to the financial situation; comments by [?] 1st Lord Curzon on evidence from Walter Runciman, President of the Board of Trade, and McKenna in support of voluntary recruitment, rather than compulsory service; extracts from McKenna's budget speech, debates on the Budget Resolutions in 1915, with a memorandum by McKenna on war taxation; account of a speech by Admiral of the Fleet 1st Lord Fisher in the House of Lords [? in defence of his resignation as 1st Sea Lord]; memoranda by Asquith on his visit to Ireland following the Dublin rising, on the aftermath of the rising, the state of the various independent volunteer forces in Ireland and the transitional period before the Home Rule Act could come into force; memorandum by McKenna on the size of Britain's financial liabilities in the United States; report by Vice-Admiral Sir John Jellicoe on the loss of HMS Hampshire and the death of Lord Kitchener and his party; memoranda on Roger Casement, including the American view, the case against him by Sir [Charles] Edward Troup [Permanent Under-Secretary of State in the Home Office] and Sir Ernley Blackwell [Legal Assistant to Troup], a letter from Michael Doyle, one of Casement's American defence team, on reprieving Casement's death sentence, extracts from Casement's papers, in which he compared himself to Wolfe Tone and requests for mercy from the Colombian Government and the United States; memorandum on the chances of being able to dictate peace terms.