Campbell
" There is just one further episode in F.E.’s connection with the Casement saga. In 1925 the journalist Peter Singleton-Gates obtained copies of the diaries and attempted to publish them. According to Duggan F.E.[Birkenhead], who was then Secretary of State for India, intervened with the publishers ‘at the request of certain people here who didn’t wish the memory of Casement or anyone associated with 1916 reviled’, and succeeded in having the book stopped.44 He may well have intervened also with the Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, whose invoking of the Official Secrets Act was probably the decisive consideration. It does not really matter. It may be said that by this time the diaries had done their damage, that F.E. had now no interest in their publication, that his attitude in 1925 proves nothing about his attitude nine years earlier. It is nevertheless one more example of him acting perfectly honourably and responsibly, to set against the mountain of entirely unfounded allegations on the other side." Campbell on FE Smith
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Peter Singleton Gates
" The circumstances of his trial, however, were such that the refusal of a reprieve seemed unlikely. First of all, a rather odd conjuncture had made his old political opponent, F.E. Smith, Attorney General of England and Prosecutor for the Crown at the trial; this might well cast a doubt as to the justice being rendered — and the circumstance is all the more shocking since F.E. Smith, only two years before, had been on the point of committing the very act of treason for which he was now prosecuting his enemy."

Page 19 Singleton Gates
" Edward Carson and his allies, F.E. Smith and Captain Craig, appealed to the long-cultivated pro-English sentiments of the Ulster province against the advent of Home Rule in Ireland. Using Ulster irredentism as a springboard to personal power, they went so far as to threaten opposition to British law by force of arms, and thus, paradoxically, prove their loyalty to the British Empire (or rather, to the British Conservative party), by armed rebellion and a call to German military assistance."

The reader must decide who to believe.

https://archive.org/details/blackdiariesacco0000sing/page/19/mode/1up?q=Smith

Peter Singleton Gates Page 30 (from Paris...)

"Whether the Black Diaries are entirely genuine or not is not the true problem; whether they have been tampered with is, in fact, a minor issue. What really deserves consideration is the use which has been made of the Diaries, not their nature.
The condemnation and ostracism suffered by Casement should now, in all justice, be turned against those who have actually invented the Black Diaries, and played with such skill on a self- conscious society, enervated by war and blinded by years of imperialist propaganda.
The same methods which the Conservatives had used to discredit and destroy Parnell not so many years earlier were once again put into play. An irrelevant moral issue, cleverly manipulated behind the scenes, was invoked to supplement the obvious weakness of the political charges made against Casement.
Casement had been found guilty of technical treason against a country which he no longer considered as his own; at least his action had caused no loss in human lives. On the contrary, it was already a well-established fact at the time of his trial that he had done his utmost to prevent bloodshed. Elementary justice demanded that his life should be spared: it was not spared, and he was finally sentenced to death, not by a court of justice, but by an intensely prejudiced public opinion." (Gates 30, 1959)