| 
				Comments 
				by 
				
				Aleister 
				 
				Crowley: | 
				     A person 
				in my position is liable to see Sherlock Homes in the most 
				beefwitted policeman. I did not feel that I was advancing in the 
				confidence of the Germans. I got no secrets worth reporting to 
				London, and I was not at all sure whether the cut of my clothes 
				had not outweighed the eloquence of my conversation. I thought I 
				would do something more public. I wrote a long parody on the 
				Declaration of Independence and applied it to Ireland. 
				     I invited 
				a young lady violinist who has some Irish blood in her, behind 
				the more evident stigmata of the ornithorhyncus and the wombat. 
				Adding to our number about four other debauched persons on the 
				verge of delirium tremens, we went out in a motor boat before 
				dawn on the third of July to the rejected statue of Commerce for 
				the Suez Canal, which Americans fondly suppose to be Liberty 
				Enlightening The World. 
				     There 
				I read my Declaration of Independence. I threw an old envelope 
				into the bay, pretending that it was my British passport. We 
				hoisted the Irish flag. The violinist played the "Wearing of the 
				Green". The crews of the interned German ships cheered us all 
				the way up the Hudson, probably because they estimated the 
				degree of our intoxication with scientific precision. Finally, 
				we went to Jack's for breakfast, and home to sleep it off. The
				New York Times gave us three columns and Viereck was 
				distinctly friendly. 
				     — 
				The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.  
				New York, NY.  Hill and Wang, 1969.  Pages 571-572. |  |