to put the Irish Brigade at the Germans' disposal in Turkey, Devoy advised Casement to return to the US, advice which was ignored. In 1915, Joseph Plunkett visited Devoy in the United States and Casement and diplomats in Germany, setting up a deal with the Germans that Ireland would remain independent if Germany helped the coming Easter Rising by supplying guns and expertise and an attack on Britain simultaneous with the Rising. These guns were supplied, in the ; Devoy was blamed by the leaders of the Rising for failing to follow instructions that the guns should arrive on Easter Sunday, set for the start of the Rising. The IRB men sent to meet the Libau drove off a pier in the dark and were drowned, and the ship was scuttled by its captain and the guns sent to the bottom of the sea. Casement was captured as a result of the same mistiming. In 1916, Devoy played an important role in the formation of the Clan-dominated Friends of Irish Freedom at the third Irish Race Convention, a propaganda organisation whose membership totalled at one point 275,000. The Friends supported Woodrow Wilson for the presidency in 1916 because of his policy of American neutrality in the world war. Fearful of accusations of disloyalty for their co-operation with Germans and opposition to the United States' entering the war on the side of Great Britain, the Friends lowered their profile after April 1917, when America entered the war. With the end of the war, Devoy played a key role in the Friends' advocacy for self-determination for Ireland, in line with Wilson's "Fourteen Points", as distinct from recognition by the United States of the sovereignty of the newly declared Irish Republic. Wilson did not guarantee recognition of the Republic, as declared in 1916 and reaffirmed in the popular election in 1918. American-Irish republicans challenged the Friends' refusal to campaign for American recognition of the Irish Republic. Devoy and the Friends' Daniel F. Cohalan became the key players in a transatlantic dispute with de facto Irish president Éamon de Valera, who toured the United States in 1919 and 1920 in hopes of gaining US recognition of the Republic and American funds. Devoy was scathingly critical of De Valera's visit, saying of him, "This half-breed Jew has done me more harm in the last two years than the English have been able to do during