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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Redmond's Last Years, by Stephen Gwynn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: John Redmond's Last Years
+
+Author: Stephen Gwynn
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2004 [EBook #14374]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS
+
+
+BY
+
+STEPHEN GWYNN
+
+
+LONDON
+
+EDWARD ARNOLD
+
+1919
+
+[All rights reserved]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In writing this book, I have had access to my late leader's papers for
+the period beginning with the war. These were placed at my disposal by
+his son, Major William Archer Redmond, D.S.O., M.P. I had also the
+consent of Mrs. Redmond to my undertaking the task. But for the book and
+for the opinions expressed in it I am solely responsible. No condition
+having been imposed upon me, it seemed best, for many reasons, that it
+should be written, as it has been written, without consultation.
+
+A writer in whom such a trust has been placed may well be at a loss how
+to express his gratitude, but can never convey the measure of his
+anxiety. From those who cherish Redmond's memory, and especially from
+those who were nearest to him in comradeship and affection, I must only
+crave the indulgence which should be accorded to sincere effort.
+Differences of interpretation there will be in any review of past
+events, and others can claim with justice that on many points they were
+better situated for full understanding than was I. Yet for the period
+which is specially studied, if there is failure in comprehension it
+cannot be excused by lack of opportunity to be thoroughly informed.
+
+To readers at large I would say this--that if any sentence in these
+pages be uncandid or ungenerous, it is most unworthy to be found in the
+record of such a man.
+
+S.G.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+I. INTRODUCTORY                                 1
+
+II. REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN                        23
+
+III. THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912                62
+
+IV. THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES                 90
+
+V. WAR IN EUROPE                              126
+
+VI. THE RAISING OF THE IRISH BRIGADES         152
+
+VII. THE REBELLION AND ITS SEQUEL             218
+
+VIII. THE CONVENTION AND THE END              259
+
+INDEX                                         343
+
+PORTRAIT OF JOHN REDMOND      _Frontispiece_
+
+
+
+
+JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+I
+
+
+The time has not yet come to write the biography of John Redmond. Not
+until the history of the pledge-bound Irish Parliamentary party can be
+treated freely, fully and impartially as a chapter closed and ended will
+it be possible to record in detail the life of a man who was associated
+with it almost from its beginning and who from the opening of this
+century guided it with almost growing authority to the statutory
+accomplishment of its desperate task; who knew, in it and for it, all
+vicissitudes of fortune and who gave to it without stint or reservation
+his whole life's energy from earliest manhood to the grave.
+
+But when the war came, unforeseen, shifting all political balances,
+transmuting the greatest political issues, especially those of which the
+Irish question is a type, it imposed upon men and upon nations, but
+above all on the leaders of nations, swift and momentous decisions.
+Because that critical hour presented to Redmond's vision a great
+opportunity which he must either seize single-handed or let it for ever
+pass by; because he rose to the height of the occasion with the courage
+which counts upon and commands success; because he sought by his own
+motion to swing the whole mass and weight of a nation's feeling into a
+new direction--for all these reasons his last years were different in
+kind from any that had gone before; and as such they admit of and demand
+separate study. Intelligent comprehension of what he aimed at, what he
+achieved, and what forces defeated him in these last years of his life
+is urgently needed, not for the sake of his memory, but for Ireland's
+sake; because until his policy is understood there is little chance that
+Irishmen should attain what he aspired to win for Ireland--the strength
+and dignity of a free and united nation.
+
+It is of Redmond's policy for Ireland in relation to the war, and to the
+events which in Ireland arose out of the war, that this book is mainly
+designed to treat. Yet to make that policy intelligible some history is
+needed of the startling series of political developments which the war
+interrupted but did not terminate--and which, though still recent, are
+blurred in public memory by all that has intervened. Further back still,
+a brief review of his early career must be given, not only to set the
+man's figure in relation to his environment, but to show that this final
+phase was in reality no new departure, no break with his past, but a
+true though a divergent evolution from all that had gone before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ireland, although so small in extent and population, is none the less a
+country of many and locally varying racial strains; and John Redmond
+sprang from one of the most typical. He was a Wexfordman; that is to
+say, he came from the part of Ireland where if you cross the Channel
+there is least difference between the land you leave and the land you
+sail to; where the sea-divided peoples have been always to some extent
+assimilated. Here in the twelfth century the first Norman-Welsh invaders
+came across. The leader of their first party, Raymond Le Gros, landed at
+a point between Wexford and Waterford; the town of Wexford was his
+first capture; and where he began his conquest he settled. From this
+stock the Redmond name and line descend.
+
+Thus John Redmond came from an invading strain in which Norman and Celt
+were already blended; and he grew up in a country thickly settled with
+men whose ancestors came along with his from across the water. Till a
+century ago the barony of Forth retained a dialect of its own which was
+in effect such English as men spoke before Chaucer began to write; and
+even to-day in any Wexford fair or market you will see among the strong,
+well-nourished, prosperous farmers many faces and figures which an
+artist might easily assimilate to an athletic example of the traditional
+John Bull. Redmond himself, hawk-faced and thick-bodied, might have been
+taken for no bad reincarnation of Raymond Le Gros. To this extent he was
+less of a Celt than many of his countrymen; but he was assuredly none
+the less Irish because he was a Wexfordman. The county of his birth was
+the county which had made the greatest resistance to English power in
+Ireland since Sarsfield and his "Wild Geese" crossed to Flanders. Born
+in 1857, he grew up in a country-side full of memories of events then
+only some sixty years old; he knew and spoke with many men who had been
+out with pike or fowling-piece in 1798. Rebel was to him from boyhood up
+a name of honour; and this was not only a phase of boyish enthusiasm. In
+his mature manhood, speaking as leader of the Irish party, he told the
+House of Commons plainly that in his deliberate judgment Ireland's
+situation justified an appeal to arms, and that if rebellion offered a
+reasonable prospect of gaining freedom for a united Ireland he would
+counsel rebellion on the instant.
+
+But if he was always and admittedly a potential rebel, no man was ever
+less a revolutionary. As much a constitutionalist as Hampden or
+Washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. The tradition
+of parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations.
+Two years after his birth his great-uncle, John Edward Redmond, from
+whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as Liberal member
+for the borough of Wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place,
+commemorating good service rendered. Much of the rich flat land which
+lies along the railway from Wexford to Rosslare Harbour was reclaimed by
+this Redmond's enterprise from tidal slob. On his death in 1872 the seat
+passed to his nephew William Archer Redmond, whose two sons were John
+and William Redmond, with whom this book deals. Thus the present Major
+William Archer Redmond, M.P., represents four continuous generations of
+the same family sent to Westminster among the representatives of
+Nationalist Ireland.
+
+Not often is a family type so strongly marked as among the men of this
+stock. But the portraits show that while the late Major "Willie" Redmond
+closely resembled his father, in John Redmond and John Redmond's son
+there were reproduced the more dominant and massive features of the
+first of the parliamentary line.
+
+To sum up then, John Redmond and his brother came of a long strain of
+Catholic gentry who were linked by continuous historic association of
+over seven centuries to a certain district in South Leinster, and who
+retained leadership among their own people. The tradition of military
+service was strong, too, in this family. Their father's cousin, son to
+the original John Edward Redmond, was a professional soldier; and their
+mother was the daughter of General Hoey. They were brought up in an
+old-fashioned country house, Ballytrent, on the Wexford coast, and the
+habits of outdoor country life and sport which furnished the chief
+pleasure of their lives were formed in boyhood. Their upbringing
+differed from that of boys in thousands of similar country houses
+throughout Ireland only in one circumstance; they were Catholics, and
+even so lately as in their boyhood Catholic land-owners were
+comparatively few.
+
+John Redmond was four years older than his younger brother, born in
+1861. He got his schooling under the Jesuits at Clongowes in early days,
+before the system of Government endowment by examination results had
+given incentive to cramming. According to his own account he did little
+work and nobody pressed him to exertion. But the Jesuits are skilful
+teachers, and they left a mark on his mind. It is scarcely chance that
+the two speakers of all I have heard who had the best delivery were
+pupils of theirs--Redmond and Sir William Butler. They taught him to
+write, they taught him to speak and to declaim, they encouraged his
+natural love of literature. His taste was formed in those days and it
+was curiously old-fashioned. His diction in a prepared oration might
+have come from the days of Grattan: and he maintained the old-fashioned
+habit of quotation. No poetry written later than Byron, Moore and
+Shelley made much appeal to him, save the Irish political ballads. But
+scarcely any English speaker quoted Shakespeare in public so often or so
+aptly as this Irishman.
+
+From Clongowes he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he matriculated
+in October 1874 at the age of seventeen. His academic studies seem to
+have been half-hearted. At the end of a year his name was taken off the
+College books by his father, but was replaced. At the close of his
+second year of study, in July 1876, it was removed again and for good.
+
+But apart from what he learnt at school, his real education was an
+apprenticeship; he was trained in the House of Commons for the work of
+Parliament. He was a boy of fifteen, of an age to be keenly interested,
+when the representation of Wexford passed from his great-uncle to his
+father. Probably the reason why he was removed from Trinity College was
+the desire of Mr. William Redmond to have his son with him in London.
+Certainly John Redmond was there during the session of 1876, for on the
+introduction of Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill he recalled a
+finely apposite Shakespearean quotation which he had heard Butt use in a
+Home Rule debate of that year. In May 1880 his father procured him a
+clerkship in the House. The post to which he was assigned was that of
+attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his
+nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members'
+Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and
+intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the
+Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and
+listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical
+strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point
+of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr,
+Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority--and watched too the
+inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new
+parliamentary force which had come into being.
+
+Redmond himself described thus (in a lecture delivered at New York in
+1896) the policy which came to be known as "The New Departure":
+
+     "Mr. Parnell found that the British Parliament insisted upon
+     turning a deaf ear to Ireland's claim for justice. He resolved to
+     adopt the simple yet masterly device of preventing Parliament doing
+     any work at all until it consented to hear."
+
+In the task of systematic and continuous obstruction Parnell at once
+found a ready helper, Mr. Joseph Biggar. But Parnell, Biggar and those
+who from 1876 to 1880 acted generally or frequently with them were only
+members of the body led by Butt; though they were, indeed, ultimately in
+more or less open revolt against Butt's leadership. When Butt died, and
+was at least nominally replaced by Mr. Shaw, the growth of Parnell's
+ascendancy became more marked. In the general election of 1880 sixty
+Home Rulers were returned to Parliament; and at a meeting attended by
+over forty, twenty-three declared for Parnell as their leader. A
+question almost of ceremonial observance immediately defined the issue.
+Liberals were in power, and Government was more friendly to Ireland's
+claims than was the Opposition. Mr. Shaw and his adherents were for
+marking support of the Government by sitting on the Government side of
+the Chamber. Parnell insisted that the Irish party should be independent
+of all English attachments and permanently in opposition till Ireland
+received its rights. With that view he and his friends took up their
+station on the Speaker's left below the gangway, where they held it
+continuously for thirty-nine years.
+
+Mr. William Redmond was no supporter of the new policy. As the little
+group which Parnell headed grew more and more insistent in their
+obstruction, the member for Wexford spoke less and less. His
+interventions were rare and dignified. In the debate on the Address in
+the new Parliament of 1880 he acted as a lieutenant to Mr. Shaw. Yet he
+was on very friendly terms with Parnell--almost a neighbour of his, for
+the Parnell property, lying about the Vale of Ovoca, touched the border
+of Wexford.
+
+Mr. William Redmond's career in that Parliament was soon ended. In
+November 1880 he died, and, normally, his son, whose qualifications and
+ambitions were known, would have succeeded him. But collision between
+Government and the Parnellite party was already beginning. Mr. T.M.
+Healy, then Parnell's secretary, had been arrested for a speech in
+denunciation of some eviction proceedings. This was the first arrest of
+a prominent man under Mr. Forster's rule as Chief Secretary, and
+Parnell, with whom in those days the decision rested, decided that Mr.
+Healy should immediately be put forward for the vacant seat. In later
+days he was to remind Mr. Healy how he had done this, "rebuking and
+restraining the prior right of my friend, Jack Redmond." Redmond had not
+long to wait, however. Another vacancy occurred in another Wexford seat,
+the ancient borough of New Ross, and he was returned without opposition
+at a crucial moment in the parliamentary struggle.
+
+That struggle was not only parliamentary. From the famine year of 1879
+onwards a fierce agitation had begun, whose purpose was to secure the
+land of Ireland to the people who worked it. Davitt was to the land what
+Parnell was to the parliamentary campaign: but it was Parnell's genius
+which fused the two movements.
+
+To meet the growing power of the Land League, Mr. Forster demanded a
+Coercion Bill, and after long struggles in the Cabinet he prevailed.
+Against this Bill it was obvious that all means of parliamentary
+resistance would be used to the uttermost.
+
+They were still of a primitive simplicity. In the days before Parnell
+the House of Commons had carried on its business under a system of rules
+which worked perfectly well because there was a general disposition in
+the assembly to get business done. A beginning of the new order was made
+when a group of ex-military men attempted to defeat the measure for
+abolishing purchase of commissions in the Army by a series of dilatory
+motions. This, however, was an isolated occurrence. Any English member
+who set himself to thwart the desire of the House for a conclusion by
+using means which the general body considered unfair would have been
+reduced to quiescence by a demonstration that he was considered a
+nuisance. His voice would have been drowned in a buzz of conversation or
+by less civil interruptions. This implied, however, a willingness to be
+influenced by social considerations, and, more than that, a loyalty to
+the traditions and purposes of the House. Parnell felt no such
+willingness and acknowledged no such loyalty.
+
+"His object," said Redmond in the address already quoted, "was to injure
+it so long as it refused to listen to the just claims of his country."
+The House, realizing Parnell's intention, visited upon him and his
+associates all the penalties by which it was wont to enforce its wishes:
+but the penalties had no sting. All the displays of anger, disapproval,
+contempt, all the vocabulary of denunciation in debate and in the Press,
+all the studied forms of insult, all the marks of social displeasure,
+only served to convince the Irishmen that they were producing their
+effect. Still, the House continued to act on the assumption that it
+could vindicate its traditions in the old traditional way: it was
+determined to change none of the rules which had stood for so many
+generations: it would maintain its liberties and put down in its own way
+those who had the impertinence to abuse them. The breaking-point came
+exactly at the moment when Redmond was elected.
+
+On Monday, Jan. 24th, 1881, Mr. Forster introduced his Coercion Bill. It
+was open, of course, to any member to speak once, and once only, on the
+main motion. But every member had an indefinite right to move the
+adjournment of the debate, and on each such motion every member could
+speak again. The debate was carried all through that week. It was
+resumed on Monday, 31st. The declaration of Redmond's election was fixed
+for Tuesday, February 1st, in New Ross--there being no contest. A
+telegram summoned him to come instantly after the declaration to London.
+He took the train at noon, travelled to Dublin and crossed the Channel.
+At Holyhead about midnight another telegram told him that the debate was
+still proceeding. He reached Euston on the Wednesday morning, drove
+straight to the House, and there, standing at the bar, saw what he thus
+described:
+
+     "It was thus, travel-stained and weary, that I first presented
+     myself as a member of the British Parliament. The House was still
+     sitting, it had been sitting without a break for over forty hours,
+     and I shall never forget the appearance the Chamber presented. The
+     floor was littered with paper. A few dishevelled and weary Irishmen
+     were on one side of the House, about a hundred infuriated
+     Englishmen upon the other; some of them still in evening dress, and
+     wearing what were once white shirts of the night before last. Mr.
+     Parnell was upon his legs, with pale cheeks and drawn face, his
+     hands clenched behind his back, facing without flinching a
+     continuous roar of interruption. It was now about eight o'clock.
+     Half of Mr. Parnell's followers were out of the Chamber snatching a
+     few moments' sleep in chairs in the Library or Smoke Room. Those
+     who remained had each a specified period of time allotted him to
+     speak, and they were wearily waiting their turn. As they caught
+     sight of me standing at the bar of the House of Commons there was a
+     cheer of welcome. I was unable to come to their aid, however, as
+     under the rules of the House I could not take my seat until the
+     commencement of a new sitting. My very presence, however, brought,
+     I think, a sense of encouragement and approaching relief to them;
+     and I stood there at the bar with my travelling coat still upon me,
+     gazing alternately with indignation and admiration at the amazing
+     scene presented to my gaze.
+
+     "This, then, was the great Parliament of England! Of intelligent
+     debate there was none. It was one unbroken scene of turbulence and
+     disorder. The few Irishmen remained quiet, too much amused,
+     perhaps, or too much exhausted to retaliate. It was the
+     English--the members of the first assembly of gentlemen in Europe,
+     as they love to style it--who howled and roared, and almost foamed
+     at the mouth with rage at the calm and pale-featured young man who
+     stood patiently facing them and endeavouring to make himself
+     heard."
+
+An hour later the closure was applied, for the first time in
+Parliament's history. The records of Hansard spoil a story which Redmond
+was fond of telling--that he took his oath and his seat, made his maiden
+speech and was suspended all in the same evening. In point of fact he
+took his seat that Wednesday afternoon, when the House sat for a few
+hours only and adjourned again. Next day news came in that Davitt had
+been arrested in Ireland. Mr. Dillon, in the process of endeavouring to
+extract an explanation from the Government, was named and suspended.
+When the Prime Minister after this rose to speak, Mr. Parnell moved:
+"That Mr. Gladstone be not heard."
+
+The Speaker, ruling that Mr. Gladstone was in possession of the House,
+refused to put the motion. Mr. Parnell, insisting that his motion should
+be put, came into collision with the authority of the Chair and was
+formally "named." Mr. Gladstone then moved his suspension and a division
+was called--whereupon, under the rules which then existed, all members
+were bound to leave the Chamber. On this occasion the Irish members
+remained seated, as a protest, and after the division the Speaker
+solemnly reported this breach of order to the House. For their refusal
+to obey the Irish members present were suspended from the service of the
+House, and as a body they refused to leave unless removed by physical
+force. Accordingly, man by man was ordered to leave and each in turn
+rose up with a brief phrase of refusal, after which the Sergeant-at-Arms
+with an officer approached and laid a hand on the recusant's shoulder.
+Redmond, when his turn came, said:
+
+"As I regard the whole of these proceedings as unmitigated despotism, I
+beg respectfully to decline to withdraw."
+
+That was his maiden speech. Having delivered it, "Mr. Redmond," says
+Hansard, "was by desire of Mr. Speaker removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms
+from the House." It was a strange beginning for one of the greatest
+parliamentarians of our epoch--and one of the greatest conservatives.
+The whole bent of his mind was towards moderation in all things.
+Temperamentally, he hated all forms of extravagant eccentricity; he
+loved the old if only because it was old; he had the keenest sense not
+only of decorum but of the essential dignity which is the best guardian
+of order. Yet here he was committed to a policy which aimed deliberately
+at outraging all the established decencies--at disregarding
+ostentatiously all the usages by which an assembly of gentlemen had
+regulated their proceedings.
+
+What is more, it was an assembly which Redmond found temperamentally
+congenial to him--an assembly which, apart from its relation to Ireland,
+he thoroughly admired and liked. In 1896, when Irish members were
+fiercely in opposition to the Government, he concluded his description
+of Parliament with these words:
+
+     "In the main, the House of Commons is, I believe, dominated by a
+     rough-and-ready sense of manliness and fair-play. Of course, I am
+     not speaking of it as a governing body. In that character it has
+     been towards Ireland always ignorant and nearly always unfair. I am
+     treating it simply as an assembly of men, and I say of it, it is a
+     body where sooner or later every man finds his proper level, where
+     mediocrity and insincerity will never permanently succeed, and
+     where ability and honesty of purpose will never permanently fail."
+
+That was no mean tribute, coming from one who held himself aloof from
+all the personal advantages belonging to the society whose rules he did
+not recognize. The opinion to which the Irish members of Parnell's
+following were amenable was not made at Westminster; it did not exist
+there--except, and that in its most rigid form, amongst themselves.
+
+It is worth while to recall for English readers--and perhaps not for
+them only--what membership of Parnell's party involved. In the first
+place, there was a self-denying ordinance by which the man elected to it
+bound himself to accept no post of any kind under Government. All the
+chances which election to Parliament opens to most men--and especially
+to men of the legal profession--were at once set aside. Absolute
+discipline and unity of action, except in matters specially left open to
+individual judgment, were enforced on all. These were the essentials.
+But in the period of acute war between the Irish and all other parties
+which was opening when Redmond entered there was a self-imposed rule
+that as the English public and English members disapproved and disliked
+the Irishmen an answering attitude should be adopted: that even private
+hospitality should be avoided and that the belligerents should behave as
+if they were quite literally in an enemy's country.
+
+Later, when Mr. Gladstone had adopted the Irish cause and alliance with
+the Liberal party had begun, the rigour of this attitude was modified.
+Many Irish members joined the Liberal clubs and went freely to houses
+where they were sure of sympathy. Yet neither of the Redmonds followed
+far in this direction, and the habit of social isolation which they
+formed in their early days lasted with them to the end. If John Redmond
+ever went to any house in London which was not an Irish home it was by
+the rarest exception.
+
+For society, Parnell's party depended on themselves and their countrymen
+and sympathizers. But they were in no way to be pitied; they were the
+best of company for one another. It was a movement of the young, it had
+all the strength and audacity of youth, it was a great adventure. A few
+men from an older generation came with them, Mr. Biggar, Justin McCarthy
+and others. But their leader, though older than most of his followers,
+was a young man by parliamentary standards. In 1880 Parnell was only
+thirty-three; and within four years more he was as great a power in the
+House as Mr. Gladstone. Some few years back I heard Willie Redmond say
+in the Members' smoking-room, "Isn't it strange to think that Parnell
+would be sixty now if he had lived. I can't imagine him as an old man."
+Yet the accent of maturity was on Parnell's leadership; the men whom he
+led were essentially young. In 1881, when Redmond entered Parliament,
+Mr. Dillon was thirty, Mr. T.P. O'Connor and Mr. Sexton veterans of
+thirty-three, Mr. Healy twenty-six. Mr. William O'Brien (who did not
+come in until 1883) was of the same year as Mr. Dillon. Redmond was
+younger than any of them, being elected at the age of twenty-four. Yet
+nobody then thought it surprising that he should be sent in 1882 to
+represent the party on a mission to Australia and the United States at a
+most difficult time. The Phoenix Park murders had created widespread
+indiscriminating anger against all Irish Nationalists throughout the
+Empire, and Redmond found it difficult to secure even a hall to speak
+in. For support there was sent to him his brother, then a youth of
+twenty-one, and feeling ran so strong against the two that the Prime
+Minister of New South Wales (Sir Henry Parkes) proposed their expulsion
+from the colony. Nevertheless, Redmond made good. "The Irish working-men
+stood by me," he said, "and in fact saved the situation." Fifteen
+thousand pounds were collected before they left the island continent.
+
+It indicates well the changed conditions to remember that when in 1906
+Mr. Hazleton and the late T.M. Kettle were selected to go on a far less
+arduous and difficult mission to America, there was much talk about the
+astonishing youth of our representatives. Yet both were then older than
+John Redmond was in 1882--to say nothing of his brother, who must have
+been the most exuberantly youthful spokesman that a serious cause ever
+found.
+
+The Redmonds' stay in Australia, which lasted over a year, determined
+one important matter for both young men; they found their wives in the
+colony whose Prime Minister proposed to expel them. John Redmond married
+Miss Joanna Dalton and his brother her near kinswoman, Miss Eleanor
+Dalton. Willie Redmond was elected to Parliament in his absence for his
+father's old seat--Mr. Healy having vacated Wexford to fight and win a
+sensational election in county Monaghan.
+
+This early visit to the great transmarine dominions, and the ties which
+he formed there, left a marked impression on John Redmond's mind, which
+was reinforced by other visits in later years, and by all the growing
+associations that linked him to life and politics in the dominions.
+Redmond knew vastly more, and in truth cared vastly more, about the
+British Empire than most Imperialists. His affection was not based on
+any inherited prejudice, nor inspired by a mere geographical idea. He
+was attracted to that which he had seen and handled, in whose making he
+had watched so many of his fellow-countrymen fruitfully and honourably
+busy. He felt acutely that the Empire belonged to Irish Nationalists at
+least as much as to English Tories. America also was familiar to him,
+and he had every cause to be grateful to the United States; but his
+interest in the dominions was of a different kind. He felt himself a
+partner in their glories, and by this feeling he was linked in sympathy
+to a great many elements in British life that were otherwise uncongenial
+to him--and was, on the other hand, divided in sympathy from some who in
+Irish politics were his staunch supporters. He could never understand
+the psychology of the Little Englander. "If I were an Englishman," he
+once said to me, "I should be the greatest Imperialist living." From
+first to last his attitude was that which is indicated by a passage of
+his speech on Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill:
+
+     "As a Nationalist, I may say I do not regard as entirely palatable
+     the idea that for ever and a day Ireland's voice should be excluded
+     from the councils of an Empire which the genius and valour of her
+     sons have done so much to build up and of which she is to remain a
+     part."[1]
+
+
+
+II
+
+To follow in detail Redmond's career under Parnell's leadership would be
+beyond the scope of this book. Less conspicuous in Parliament than such
+lieutenants of "the Chief" as Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy, John
+Redmond acted as one of the party whips and was in much demand outside
+Parliament as a platform speaker. In August 1886 he was once more sent
+overseas to attend the Convention of the Irish Race at Chicago. He had
+to tell his hearers of victory and of repulse.
+
+     "When you last assembled in Convention, two years ago, the Irish
+     party in Parliament did not number more than forty; to-day we hold
+     five-sixths of the Irish seats, and speak in the name of
+     five-sixths of the Irish people in Ireland. Two years ago we had
+     arrayed against us all English political parties and every English
+     statesman; to-day we have on our side one of the great English
+     political parties, which, though its past traditions in Ireland
+     have been evil, still represents the party of progress in England,
+     and the greatest statesman of the day, who has staked his all upon
+     winning for Ireland her national rights. Two years ago England had
+     in truth, in Mitchel's phrase, the ear of the world. To-day, at
+     last, that ear, so long poisoned with calumnies of our people, is
+     now open to the voice of Ireland. Two years ago the public opinion
+     of the world--aye, and even of this free land of America--was
+     doubtful as to the justice of our movement; to-day the opinion of
+     the civilized world, and of America in particular, is clearly and
+     distinctly on our side."
+
+On the other hand, in England the forces of reaction had succeeded. The
+Home Rule Bill had been defeated and the Liberal party broken up. A
+Government was in power whose programme was one of coercion. But
+Ireland, Redmond said, was ready for the fight and confident that with
+the weapons at command the enemy could be defeated.
+
+Who were the enemy, and what the weapon? His speech made this plain.
+
+     "Once more Irish landlords have behaved themselves with
+     unaccountable folly and stupidity. They have once more stood
+     between Ireland and her freedom, and have refused even an
+     extravagant price for the land because the offer was coupled with
+     the concession of an Irish Parliament. So be it. I believe the last
+     offer has been made to Irish landlordism. The ultimate settlement
+     of this question must now be reserved for the Parliament of
+     Ireland, and meantime the people must take care to protect
+     themselves and their children. In many parts of Ireland, I assert,
+     rent is to-day an impossibility, and in every part of Ireland the
+     rents demanded are exorbitant, and will not, and cannot, be paid."
+
+He was wrong. The settlement of this vast question was to be
+accomplished through the Imperial Parliament, not the Irish. Yet it was
+accomplished in essence by an agreement between Irishmen for which
+Redmond himself was largely responsible.
+
+That settlement, however, merely ratified in 1903 the final stage in the
+conversion of both countries to Parnell's policy of State-aided land
+purchase. Tentative beginnings were made with it under the Government
+which was in power from 1886 to 1892; but the main characteristic of
+this period was a fierce revival of the land war. It was virulent in
+Wexford, and in 1888 Redmond shared the experience which few Irish
+members escaped or desired to escape; he was sentenced to imprisonment
+on a charge of intimidation for a speech condemning some evictions. He
+and his brother met in Wexford jail, and both used to describe with glee
+their mutual salutation: "Good heavens, what a ruffian you look!"
+Cropped hair and convict clothes were part of Mr. Balfour's resolute
+government.
+
+Yet in those days Ireland was winning, and winning fast. Mr. Gladstone's
+personal ascendancy, never stronger than in the wonderful effort of his
+old age, asserted itself more and more. Public sympathy in Great Britain
+was turning against the wholesale evictions, the knocking down of
+peasants' houses by police and military with battering-rams. The Tory
+party sought for a new political weapon, and one day _The Times_ came
+out with the facsimile of what purported to be a letter in Parnell's
+hand. This document implied at least condonation of the Phoenix Park
+murders.
+
+Other letters equally incriminating were published. Parnell denied the
+authorship, his denial was not accepted; fierce controversy ended in the
+establishment of one of the strangest Commissions of Enquiry ever set
+up--a semi-judicial tribunal of judges. Its proceedings created the
+acutest public interest, drawn out over long months, up to the day when
+Sir Charles Russell had before him in the witness-box the original
+vendor of the letters--one Pigott. Pigott's collapse, confession of
+forgery, flight and suicide, followed with appalling swiftness: and the
+result was to generate through England a very strong sympathy for the
+man against whom, and against whose followers, such desperate calumnies
+had been uttered and exploited. Parnell's prestige was no longer
+confined to his own countrymen: and the sense of all Home Rulers was
+that they fought a winning battle, under two allied leaders of
+extraordinary personal gifts.
+
+Then, as soon as it was clear that the attack of the Pigott letters had
+recoiled on those who launched it, came the indication of a fresh
+menace. Proceedings for divorce were taken with Parnell as the
+co-respondent: the case was undefended. Mr. Gladstone and probably most
+Englishmen expected that Parnell would retire, at all events
+temporarily, from public life, as, in Lord Morley's words, "any English
+politician of his rank" would have been obliged to do. Parnell refused
+to retire; and Gladstone made it publicly known that if Parnell
+continued to lead the Irish party, his own leadership of the Liberal
+party, "based, as it had been, mainly on the prosecution of the Irish
+cause," would be rendered "almost a nullity." The choice--for it was a
+choice--was left to the Irish. To retain Parnell as leader in
+Gladstone's judgment made Gladstone's task impossible, and therefore
+indicated Gladstone's withdrawal from public life. To part with Parnell
+meant parting with the ablest leader that Nationalist Ireland had ever
+found.
+
+A more heartrending alternative has never been imposed on any body of
+politicians, and John Redmond, unlike his younger brother, was not of
+those to whom decision came by an instinctive act of allegiance. His
+nature forced him to see both sides, but when he decided it was with his
+whole nature. The issue was debated by the Irish party in Committee Room
+15 of the House of Commons, with the Press in attendance. In this
+encounter Redmond for the first time stepped to the front. He had
+hitherto been outside the first flight of Irish parliamentarians. Now,
+he was the first to state the case for maintaining Parnell's leadership,
+and throughout the discussions he led on that side. When Parnell's death
+came a few months after the "split" declared itself, there was no
+hesitation as to which of the Parnellites should assume the leadership
+of their party. Redmond resigned his seat in North Wexford and contested
+Cork city, where Parnell had long been member. He was badly beaten, and
+for some three months the new leader of the Parnellites was without a
+seat in the House--though not during a session. Another death made a new
+opening, and in December 1891 his fight at Waterford against no less a
+man than Michael Davitt turned for a moment the electoral tide which was
+setting heavily against the smaller group. It was a notable win, and the
+hero of that triumph retained his hold on the loyalty of those with whom
+he won it when the rest of Ireland had turned away from him. The tie
+lasted to his death--and after it, for Waterford then chose as its
+representative the dead leader's son, and renewed that choice in the
+general election of 1918, when other allegiances to the old party were
+like leaves on the wind.
+
+Other ties were formed in these years, which lasted through Redmond's
+life. I have deliberately abstained from entering into either the merits
+or the details of the "split." But certain of its aspects must be
+recognized. In the division into Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites,
+Parnellites were a small but fierce minority. It needed resolution for a
+man to be a Parnellite, all the more because the whole force of the
+Catholic Church was thrown against them, and in some instances
+disgraceful methods were used. One of Redmond's best friends was the
+owner of a local newspaper; it was declared to be a mortal sin to buy,
+sell, or read his journal. The business was reduced to the verge of ruin
+but the man went on, till a new bishop came and gradually things mended.
+He, like Redmond, was a staunch practising Catholic, and later on was
+the friend and trusted associate of many priests; but he stood for an
+element in Ireland which refused to allow the least usurpation by
+ecclesiastical authority in the sphere of citizenship.
+
+Willie Redmond won East Clare, as his brother won Waterford city, after
+a turbulent election with the priests against him. He gave in that
+contest, as always, at least as good as he got; but his collision with
+individuals never affected his devotion or his brother's to their
+Church.
+
+But in social life the estrangements of these days were far-reaching,
+and, at least negatively, so far as Redmond was concerned, they were
+lasting. His existence had been saddened and altered shortly before the
+break up by the death of his first wife, which left him a young widower
+with three children. After the "split" the whole circle of friends among
+whom he had lived in Dublin and in London was shattered and divided; and
+in later life none, I think, of those broken intimacies was renewed.
+
+In Redmond's nature there was a total lack of rancour. Clear-sighted as
+he was, he realized how desperately difficult a choice was imposed on
+Nationalists by Parnell's situation, and he knew how honestly men had
+differed. He could command completely his intellectual judgment of their
+action, and there were many whom in later stages of the movement he
+trusted none the less for their divergence from him at this crisis. But
+he was more than commonly a creature of instinct; and the associations
+of his intimate life were all decided in these years. His affection was
+given to those who were comrades in this pass of danger. The only two
+exceptions to be made are, first and chiefly, Mr. Devlin, who was too
+young to be actively concerned with politics at the time of Parnell's
+overthrow; and, to speak truth, it is not possible to be so closely
+associated as Redmond was with this lieutenant of his, or to be so long
+and loyally served by him, and not to undergo his personal attraction.
+The other exception is Mr. J.J. Mooney, who entered Parliament and
+politics later than the "split," but whose personal allegiance to Mr.
+Redmond was always declared. He acted for long as Redmond's secretary
+and always as his counsellor--for in all the detail of parliamentary
+business, especially on the side of private bill legislation, the House
+had few more capable members. He was perhaps more completely than Mr.
+Devlin one of the little group of intimates with whom Redmond loved to
+surround himself in the country. All the rest were old champions of the
+fight over Parnell's body; but by far the closest friend of all was his
+brother Willie. Their marriages to kinswomen had redoubled the tie of
+blood.
+
+It should be noted here that Redmond married for the second time in
+1899, after ten years of widowerhood. His wife was, by his wish and her
+own, never at all in the public eye. All that should be said here is
+that his friends found friendship with him easier and not more difficult
+than before this marriage, and were grateful for the devoted care which
+was bestowed upon their leader. She accompanied him on all his political
+journeyings, whatever their duration, and gave him in the fullest
+measure the companionship which he desired.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: This speech is included in "Home Rule: Speeches of John
+Redmond, M.P.," a volume edited in 1910 by Mr. Barry O'Brien. It
+contains also the American addresses quoted in this chapter, and a
+speech to the Dublin Convention in 1907, quoted in the next.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN
+
+I
+
+
+The Parliament of 1892-5 was barren of results for Ireland, being
+consumed by factious strife, at Westminster between the Houses and in
+Ireland between the parties. With Gladstone's retirement it seemed as if
+Home Rule were dead. But thinking men realized that the Irish question
+was still there to be dealt with, and approach to solution began along
+new lines. When Lord Salisbury returned to power in 1895, Land Purchase
+was cautiously extended with much success: the Congested Districts
+Board, originally established by Mr. Arthur Balfour, was showing good
+results, and his brother Mr. Gerald Balfour, now Chief Secretary, felt
+his way towards a policy which came to be described as "killing Home
+Rule with kindness." A section of Irish Nationalist opinion was scared
+by the menace contained in this epigram; and consequently, when in 1895
+Mr. Horace Plunkett (as he then was) put forward proposals for a
+conference of Irishmen to consider possible means for developing Irish
+agriculture and Irish industries under the existing system, voices were
+raised against what was denounced as a new attempt to divert Nationalist
+Ireland from its main purpose of achieving self-government. Mr.
+Plunkett's original proposal was that a body of four Anti-Parnellites,
+two Parnellites and two Unionists should meet and deliberate in Ireland,
+during the recess. In the upshot the Nationalist majority refused to
+take any part; but Redmond, with one of his supporters, Mr. William
+Field, served on the "Recess Committee" and concurred in its Report, out
+of which came the creation of the Department of Agriculture and
+Technical Instruction.
+
+In 1896 the Commission on Financial Relations, which had been set up by
+the Liberal Ministry in 1894, reported, and its findings produced a
+state of feeling which for a moment promised co-operation between
+divided interests in Ireland. Unionist magnates joined with Nationalists
+in denouncing the system of taxation, which the Commission--by a
+majority of eleven to two--had described as oppressive and unjust to the
+weaker country.
+
+Redmond was one of the members of this Commission, which included also
+distinguished representatives of his Nationalist opponents--Mr. Blake
+and Mr. Sexton; and he no doubt cherished hopes arising from the
+resolute demands for redress uttered by Lord Castletown and other Irish
+Unionist Peers. Those hopes were soon dispelled; nothing but much
+controversy came of the demand for improved financial relations. Mr.
+Gerald Balfour's schemes were more tangible, and in 1897 Redmond
+announced that the Government's proposal to introduce a measure of Local
+Government for Ireland should have his support. The Bill, when it came,
+exceeded expectation in its scope, and Redmond gave it a cordial welcome
+in the name of the Parnellites. The larger group, however, then led by
+Mr. Dillon, declined to be responsible for accepting it.
+
+Later, in the working of this measure, Redmond pressed strongly that
+elections under it should not be conducted on party lines and that the
+landlord class should be brought into local administrative work. His
+advice unfortunately was not taken.
+
+Then followed the South African struggle, and in giving voice to a
+common sentiment against what Nationalist Ireland held to be an unjust
+war the two Irish parties found themselves united and telling together
+in the lobby. Formal union followed. By this time the cleavage between
+Parnellite and Anti-Parnellite was less acute than that between Mr.
+Healy's section and the followers of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien. The
+choice of Redmond as Chairman was due less to a sense of his general
+fitness than to despair of reaching a decision between the claims of the
+other three outstanding men.
+
+The sacrifice to be made was made at Mr. Dillon's expense, and he did
+not acquiesce willingly or cordially. The cordiality which ultimately
+marked his relations with Redmond was of later growth--fostered by the
+necessity which Mr. Dillon found imposed on him of defending loyally the
+party's leader against attacks from the men who had been most active in
+selecting him.
+
+A part of the compact under which Redmond was elected to the chair
+limited the power of the newly chosen. He was to be Chairman, not
+leader; that is to say, he was not to act except after consultation with
+the party as a whole: he was not to commit them upon policy. This meant
+in practice that he acted as head of a cabinet, which from 1906 onwards
+consisted of Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor--the last
+representing not only a great personal parliamentary experience and
+ability, but also the powerful and zealous organization of Irish in
+Great Britain. Redmond adhered scrupulously to the spirit of this
+compact. There was only one instance in which he took action without
+consultation. But that instance was the most important of all--his
+speech at the outbreak of the war.
+
+Another thing which governed his conduct in the chair of the party, as
+indeed it governed that of nearly all the rank and file, was his horror
+of the years which Ireland had gone through since Parnell's fall. He
+loathed faction and he had struggled through murky whirlpools of it; for
+the rest of his life he was determined, almost at any cost, to maintain
+the greatest possible degree of unity among Irish Nationalists. Yet in
+the end he unhesitatingly made a choice and took an action which risked
+dividing, and in the last event actually divided, Nationalist Ireland as
+it had never been divided before. There were things for which he would
+face even that supreme peril. Deep in his heart there was a vision which
+compelled him. It was the vision of Ireland united as a whole.
+
+All this, however, lay far in the future when he was elected to the
+chair; for the moment his task was to reunite Irish Nationalists, and it
+began prosperously. From the first his position was one of growing
+strength. Irishmen all the world over were heartsick of faction and
+rejoiced in even the name of unity. Redmond made it a reality. While
+leading the little Parnellite party, reduced at last to nine, his line
+of action was comparable to that pursued by Mr. William O'Brien from
+1910 onwards. It had, to put things mildly, not been calculated to
+assist the leader of the main Nationalist body. In 1904, Justin
+McCarthy, then retired from politics, wrote in his book on _British
+Political Parties_: "Parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service
+of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and
+was utterly unsparing in his denunciations of the men who maintained the
+other side of the controversy. From this it was not unnatural to expect
+difficulties occasioned both by the leader's temper and by the temper of
+those whom he led. But men who had been adverse assured me that they had
+changed their opinions and were glad to find they could work with
+Redmond in perfect harmony and that his manners and bearing showed no
+signs whatever of any bitter memories belonging to the days of internal
+dispute."
+
+In truth, the man's nature was kindly and tolerant; courtesy came more
+natural to him than invective. Above all, he was sensitive for the
+reputation of his country in the eyes of the world, and the spectacle of
+Irishmen heaping vilifications on each other always filled him with
+distaste. Whether the taunts passed between Nationalist and Unionist or
+Nationalist and Nationalist made little difference to his feeling. With
+him it was no empty phrase that he regarded all Irishmen in equal degree
+as his fellow-countrymen.
+
+In 1902 he was once more a party to a continued effort made by Irishmen
+outside of party lines to solve a part of the national difficulty. The
+policy of land purchase had proved its immense superiority over that of
+dual ownership and had even been introduced on a considerable scale. But
+its very success led to trouble, because on one side of a boundary fence
+there would be farmers who had purchased and whose annual instalments of
+purchase money were lower than the rents paid by their neighbours on the
+other side of the mearing. Renewed struggle against rent led to new
+eviction scenes on the grand scale; and by this time landlord opinion
+was half converted to the purchase policy, as a necessary solution. The
+persistency of one young Galway man, Captain John Shawe Taylor, brought
+about the famous Land Conference of 1902, in which Mr. O'Brien, Mr.
+Healy, Mr. Redmond and Mr. T.W. Russell on behalf of the tenants met
+Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson Poe and Colonel Nugent
+Everard representing (though not officially) the landlord interest: and
+the result of the agreement reached by this body was seen in Mr.
+Wyndham's Land Purchase Act of 1903. This great and drastic measure
+altered fundamentally the character of the Irish problem. Directly by
+its own effect, and indirectly by the example of new methods, it changed
+opinion alike in Ireland and Great Britain. In Ireland hitherto, as has
+been already seen, resistance to Home Rule had come primarily from the
+landlord class, by whom the Nationalist desire for self-government was
+construed as a cloak for the wish to revive or reverse the ancient
+confiscations. Now, the land question was by general consent settled, at
+least in principle; in proportion as landlords were bought out the
+leading economic argument against Home Rule disappeared. The opposition
+reduced itself strictly to political grounds; and it began to be plain
+that the true heart of resistance lay in Ulster.
+
+Also, lines of cleavage in the Unionist camp began to appear. Already,
+landlords in the South and West had found a common ground of action with
+representatives of the tenants. It was felt, alike in Ireland and
+England, that this precedent might be developed further.
+
+In England political opinion was much affected by the apparent success
+of an attempt to deal with the Irish problem piecemeal. The Congested
+Districts Board had done much to relieve those regions where famine was
+always a possibility; Local Government had given satisfactory results;
+and now Land Purchase was hailed as the beginning of a new era. The idea
+of seeing how much farther the principle of tentative approach could be
+carried took strong hold of many minds, and the word "devolution" came
+into fashion.
+
+When it became known that Sir Antony MacDonnell, then Under-Secretary at
+Dublin Castle, had, in consultation with Lord Dunraven, drafted a scheme
+for transferring parts of Irish administration to a purely Irish
+authority, a situation rapidly defined itself in which Ulster broke away
+from the more liberal elements in Irish Unionism. The Ulster group
+demanded and obtained the resignation of Mr. George Wyndham; they
+demanded also the dismissal of the Under-Secretary. But Sir Antony
+MacDonnell was not of a resigning temper; he had not acted without
+authority, and he was defended zealously by the Irish members. The
+section of Liberal opinion which adhered rather to Lord Rosebery than to
+Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman probably drew the conclusion that the Irish
+party were prepared at least to tolerate the policy of approaching Home
+Rule step by step; and beyond doubt they were impressed by the prestige
+of Sir Antony MacDonnell's record and personality. The son of a small
+Irish Catholic landlord, educated at the Galway College of the Queen's
+University, he had entered the Indian Civil Service and in it risen to
+the highest point of power. The recommendation that he should be brought
+home to assist in the Government of Ireland had come from Lord
+Lansdowne, then Governor-General of India, who knew that the famous
+administrator of the Punjab was a Catholic Irishman of Nationalist
+sympathies. He had been accepted by Mr. Wyndham, his official chief,
+"rather as a colleague than as a subordinate." Officially and publicly,
+the credit for the Land Act of 1903 went to the Chief Secretary, and Mr.
+Wyndham deserves much of it. But no one who knew the two men could have
+doubted that in the shaping of a measure involving so wide a range of
+detail, the leading part must have been taken by the Irish Civil Servant
+who in India had acquired most of his fame from a sweeping measure of
+land reform.
+
+Proposals to alter the method and conduct of Irish administration before
+touching the parliamentary power to legislate and to tax came with
+extraordinary weight in coming from such a man; and the history of the
+previous Home Rule Bills was not encouraging to anyone, especially to
+those who had been members of Mr. Gladstone's two last administrations.
+From the time of the Parnell divorce case onwards, the Irish question
+had brought to Liberals nothing but embarrassment and embitterment. The
+enthusiasm for Home Rule which grew steadily from 1886 up to the
+severance between Gladstone and Parnell had vanished in the squalid
+controversies of the "split." Moreover, now, by the action of Mr.
+Chamberlain, a new dividing line had been brought into British politics.
+The cry of Protection seemed in the opinion of all Liberals to menace
+ruin to British prosperity; the banner of Free Trade offered a splendid
+rallying-point for a party which had known fifteen years of dissension
+and division. Prudent men thought it would be unsafe, unwise and
+unpatriotic to compromise this great national interest by retaining the
+old watch-word on which Gladstone had twice fought and twice been
+beaten.
+
+It was clear, too, that a Home Rule Bill would provoke a direct conflict
+with the House of Lords and would raise that great struggle on not the
+most favourable issue. Statesmen like Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith
+probably believed that a partial measure, an instalment of
+self-government, to which some influential sections of the Tory party
+would not be unfriendly, might have strong hopes of passing into law.
+
+So it came to pass that in the election of 1906 the Liberal Party came
+into power with a majority of unexampled magnitude, but with a
+Government pledged, negatively, not to introduce a Home Rule Bill in
+that Parliament, but, positively, to attempt an Irish settlement by the
+policy of instalments.
+
+In all this lay the seeds of trouble for the Irish leader. Liberals have
+never understood that Ireland will not take from them what it would take
+from the Tories. It will accept, as a palliative, from the party opposed
+to Home Rule what it will not accept from those who have admitted the
+justice of the national demand.
+
+
+II
+
+"For myself," said Redmond in his speech to the Irish Convention in May
+1907, "I have always expressed in public and in private my opinion that
+no half-way house on this question is possible; but at the same time I
+am, or at any rate I try to be, a practical politician. In the lodgment
+this idea of instalments had got in the minds of English statesmen I
+recognized the fact--and after all in politics the first essential is to
+recognize facts--I recognized the fact that in this Parliament we were
+not going to get a pure Home Rule Bill offered, and I consented, and I
+was absolutely right in consenting, that whatever scheme short of that
+was put forward would be considered calmly on its merits."
+
+This meant that during the whole of the year 1906 and a part of 1907 the
+proposal of the new Irish Bill was under discussion with the Irish
+leaders. The course of these deliberations was undoubtedly a
+disappointment. Mr. Bryce was replaced by Mr. Birrell as Chief
+Secretary, but the scheme still fell short of what Redmond had hoped to
+attain. Unfortunately, and it was a characteristic error, his sanguine
+temperament had led him to encourage in Ireland hopes as high as his
+own. The production of the Irish Council Bill and its reception in
+Ireland was the first real shock to his power.
+
+Mr. Birrell in introducing the measure spoke with his eye on the Tories
+and the House of Lords. He represented it as only the most trifling
+concession; he emphasized not the powers which it conveyed but the
+limitations to them. Redmond in following him was in a difficult
+position. He stressed the point that to accept a scheme which by reason
+of its partial nature would break down in its working would be ruinous,
+because failure would be attributed to natural incapacity in the Irish
+people. Acceptance, therefore, he said, could not be unconditional and
+undoubtedly to his mind it was conditioned by his hope of securing
+certain important amendments, which he outlined. None the less, the tone
+of his speech was one of acceptance, and he concluded:
+
+     "I have never in all the long years that I have been in this House
+     spoken under such a heavy sense of responsibility as I am speaking
+     on this measure this afternoon. Ever since Mr. Gladstone's Bill of
+     1886 Ireland has been waiting for some scheme to settle the
+     problem--waiting sometimes in hope, sometimes almost in despair;
+     but the horrible thing is this, that all the time that Ireland has
+     been so waiting there has been a gaping wound in her side, and her
+     sons have had to stand by helpless while they saw her very
+     life-blood flowing out. Who can say that is an exaggeration? Twenty
+     years of resolute government by the party above the gangway have
+     diminished the population of Ireland by a million. No man in any
+     position of influence can take upon himself the awful
+     responsibility of despising and putting upon one side any device
+     that may arrest that hemorrhage, even although he believed, as I
+     do, that far different remedies must be applied before Ireland can
+     stand upon her feet in vigorous strength. We are determined, as far
+     as we are concerned, that these other remedies shall be applied;
+     but in the meantime we should shrink from the responsibility of
+     rejecting anything which, after that full consideration which the
+     Bill will receive, seems to our deliberate judgment calculated to
+     relieve the sufferings of Ireland and hasten the day of her full
+     national convalescence."
+
+There is no doubt that the element in him which urged him to welcome
+anything that could set Irishmen working together on Irish problems made
+it almost impossible for him to throw aside this chance. It was clear to
+me also that by long months of work in secret deliberation the proposals
+originally set out had been greatly altered, so much so that in
+surveying the Bill he was conscious mainly of the improvements in it;
+and that in this process his mind had lost perception of how the measure
+was likely to affect Irish opinion--especially in view of his own
+hopeful prognostications. At all events, the reception of Mr. Birrell's
+speech, even by Redmond's own colleagues, marked a sudden change in the
+atmosphere. Some desired to vote at once against the measure; many were
+with difficulty brought into the lobby to support even the formal stage
+of first reading. In Ireland there was fierce denunciation. A Convention
+was called for May 21st. The crowd was so great that many of us could
+not make our way into the Mansion House; and Redmond opened the
+proceedings by moving the rejection of the Bill. In the interval since
+the debate he had been confronted with a definite refusal to concede the
+amendments for which he asked.
+
+These were mainly two, of principle: for the objection taken to the
+finance of the Bill was a detail, though of the first importance. The
+Bill proposed to hand over the five great departments of Irish
+administration to the control of an Irish Council. The decisions of that
+Council were to be subject to the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant, as are
+the decisions of Parliament to the veto of the Crown. But the Bill
+proposed not merely to give to the Viceroy the power of vetoing proposed
+action but of instituting other action on his own initiative. Secondly,
+the Council was to exercise its control through Committees, each of
+which was to have a paid chairman, nominated by the Crown.
+
+"It would be far better," Redmond had said in the House of Commons, "to
+have one man selected as the chairmen of these committees are to be
+selected, to have charge, so far as the Council is concerned, of the
+working of the Department, and then all these chairmen acting together
+could form a sort of organic body which would give cohesion, would
+co-ordinate and give stability to the whole of the work. I am afraid
+that the Government seem to have shrunk from that for fear the argument
+would be used against them that they were really creating a Ministry."
+
+That was the real difficulty. A Council subject only to a veto on its
+acts, even though it could neither pass a by-law nor strike a rate,
+would undoubtedly be said by the Unionist opposition to be a rudimentary
+parliament. A group of chairmen possessing administrative powers like
+those of Ministers would be labelled a Ministry; and the Liberals who
+had pledged themselves not to give effect to their Home Rule principles
+were sensitive to charges of breach of faith.
+
+It is a curious fact in politics that the public promise conveyed in
+the adoption of certain principles is generally taken to be on the level
+of ordinary commercial obligation. Failure to keep it jeopardizes a
+man's reputation for political stability, just as failure to pay a
+tailor's bill imperils a man's financial character. But a promise to
+political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles
+stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make
+good; and on this point Mr. Asquith in particular has always shown an
+adamantine resolution.
+
+From 1907 onwards it was with Mr. Asquith that Redmond had chiefly to
+count. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who, personally, had given no such
+limiting pledges, and who during his two years of leadership commanded a
+respect, an affectionate allegiance, from his followers in the House
+without parallel at all events since Mr. Gladstone's day, was fast
+weakening in health. He lived long enough to give freedom to South
+Africa, the one outstanding achievement of that Parliament; and by the
+success of that great measure he did more to remove British distrust of
+Home Rule than even Gladstone ever accomplished. It was no fault of his
+if Liberalism failed to settle the Irish question at the moment when
+Liberal power reached its highest point.
+
+The failure of the Council Bill had one good result, and one only. It
+cleared the way for a definite propaganda on Home Rule. But before this
+could be undertaken it was necessary to pull Nationalist Ireland
+together, for it was once more rent with division and distrust. Mr.
+Healy, who in 1901 had been expelled from the Irish party and its
+organization on the motion of Mr. O'Brien and against Redmond's advice,
+and Mr. O'Brien, who had subsequently retired from the party against
+Redmond's wish, were both of them formidable antagonists; and each was
+vehement in attack on the main body of Nationalists and their leader. It
+was some time before Redmond braced himself to the struggle; but from
+the opening of the autumn recess in 1907 he undertook a campaign
+throughout Ireland which it would be difficult to overpraise. In a
+series of speeches at chosen centres, delivered before great audiences,
+he laid down once more the national demand as he conceived it; and in
+each speech he dealt with a different aspect of the case for Home Rule.
+
+A formal outcome of this campaign was the re-establishment of national
+unity. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy returned to the Irish party for a brief
+period. But the more important result was the re-establishment of
+Redmond's personal position. He had made an effort which would have been
+great for any man, but for him was a victory over his own temperament.
+That temperament had in it, negatively, a great lack of personal
+ambition and, positively, a strong love for a quiet life. He did his
+work in Parliament regularly and conscientiously, always there day in
+and day out; and it was work of a very exacting kind. This had become
+the routine of his existence and he did it without strain. But to go
+outside it was for him always an effort. He hated town life; but more
+than this, he hated ceremonies, presentations, receptions in hotels, and
+all the promiscuous contact of political gatherings. Nevertheless, when
+he came to such an occasion no living man acquitted himself better.
+Apart from his oratory, he had an admirable manner, a dignified yet
+friendly courtesy which gained attachment. In the course of the autumn
+and winter following the Irish Council Bill he must have met and been
+seen by a hundred times more of his adherents than in any similar period
+of his leadership. People all over Ireland heard him not only on the
+public platform but in small addresses to deputations, in impromptu
+speeches at semi-public dinners, and all of this strengthened him where
+an Irish leader most needs to be strengthened--in the hearts of the
+people. The hold which he gained then stood to him during the years
+which followed and up to the outbreak of the war. But it could have
+been still further strengthened, and if ambition had been a motive force
+in him, he would have strengthened it. More than that, if he had
+realized his full value to Ireland, he would have felt it his duty to do
+so. Modesty, combined with a certain degree of indolence, made him leave
+all that contact with the mass of his followers which is necessary to
+leadership to be effected through his chief colleagues, Mr. Dillon and
+Mr. Devlin--who, through no will of theirs, became rather joint leaders
+than lieutenants, so far as Ireland was concerned.
+
+Circumstances helped to emphasize this tendency. His work lay very
+greatly in London, Parliament occupied every year a longer and longer
+space. The task of platform advocacy all over England was urgent, and in
+England Redmond stood out alone. It was little to be wondered at that
+when each long deferred recess came he made it a vacation and not a
+change of work. The seclusion from direct intercourse with the mass of
+his followers which conditions imposed upon him was further accentuated
+by his personal tastes and his choice of a dwelling.
+
+In the early years of the nineteenth century the mountain range which
+runs along the east coast from outside Dublin through Wicklow into
+county Wexford was a country difficult of access and unsubdued. Here in
+1803 Emmet found a refuge, and after Emmet's death here Michael Dwyer
+still held out: Connemara itself was hardly wilder or less accessible,
+till the "military road" was run, little more than a hundred years ago,
+from Dublin over the western slopes of Featherbed, past Glencree, and
+through Callary Bog, skirting Glendalough and traversing the wild
+recesses of Glenmalure, so that it cuts across the headwaters of those
+beautiful streams which meet in the Vale of Ovoca. From Glenmalure the
+road climbs a steep ridge and then travels in wide downward curves
+across the seaward side of Lugnaquilla--fifth in height among Irish
+mountains. Here, at the head of a long valley which runs down to the
+Meeting of the Waters, was built one of the barracks which billeted the
+original garrison of the road. Later, these buildings had been used for
+constabulary; but with peaceful times this grew needless, for there was
+little disturbance among these Wicklow folk, tenants of little farms,
+each with a sheep-run on the vast hills. Nothing could be less like the
+flat sea-bordering lands of the Barony of Forth in which the Redmonds
+spent their boyhood than these wild, sweeping, torrent-seamed folds of
+hill and valley; but the place came to him as part of his inheritance
+from "the Chief." Parnell's home at Avondale was some ten miles from
+here, lying in woods beside the Ovoca River; but the Parnell property
+stretched up to the slopes of Lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack
+was used by him as a shooting lodge. Here, in the early days before his
+life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to
+his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two Redmonds and those
+others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in
+this strange, gaunt survival of military rule. After Parnell's death
+Redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it
+became increasingly and exclusively his home in Ireland. It was, indeed,
+Ireland itself for him. In it and through it he knew Ireland intimately,
+felt Ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a
+way of being. Ireland to him meant Aughavanagh.
+
+Partly, no doubt, the almost unbroken wildness of his surroundings
+appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly
+emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have
+recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be
+difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are
+featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born
+artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to
+beauty in all kinds--yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical,
+graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its
+beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea--yet with a
+difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and
+Aughavanagh was a place of rest. Ireland is a good country to rest in.
+But it would have been far better for Redmond and for Ireland if Ireland
+had been the place not of his rest, but of his work.
+
+His work was essentially that of an agent of Ireland carrying on
+Ireland's affairs in a strange capital. He spent more of his time in
+London than in Ireland, but he was never part of the life of London,
+never in any sense a Londoner. He was part of the life of the House of
+Commons, for that was his place of work; and when he left it he went to
+Aughavanagh as a man returns from the City to his home. This home of his
+was in no sense connected with his active occupations. He was no lover
+of gardening or of farming; he had none of the Irishman's taste for the
+overseeing of stock or land; he enjoyed shooting, but he was not a
+passionate sportsman. What was a passion with him--- for he sacrificed
+much to it--was rest in the place of his choice.
+
+It was not a lonely habitation. He was no recluse, and when there he was
+always surrounded by his friends. I do not know precisely how one could
+constitute a list of them--but half a dozen men at least came and went
+there as they chose. Mr. Mooney, Mr. Hayden, "Long John" O'Connor, Dr.
+Kenny--these, and above all, Paddy O'Brien, the party's chief acting
+whip--were constant there. Some came to shoot, and Willie Redmond used
+to come over from his house at Delgany, where the Glen of the Downs
+debouches seaward; walking generally, for he was the fastest and most
+untiring of mountaineers: very few cared to keep beside him on the
+hills. Others were content to share the daily bathes, morning and
+afternoon, in a long deep pool where the little stream tumbling down a
+series of cascades makes a place to dive and swim in. These were the
+friends of Redmond's own generation, and they were also his son's
+friends; but the two daughters had their allies, and one way or another
+the party was apt to be a big one--very simply provided for. When I went
+there first (in 1907) you climbed a narrow stone stair to the first
+floor; on the left was a dining-room, beyond that a billiard-room; on
+the right, Redmond's study, and beyond that his bedroom. Another flight
+took you to the upper regions, where were two dormitories--the girls to
+the right, the men to the left. Later, he made some alterations, and the
+upstair rooms were subdivided off; the garden was developed; it became
+more of a house and less of a barrack; but the character of the life did
+not change. It was most simple, most hospitable, most unconventional and
+most remote.
+
+Certainly a great part of Aughavanagh's charm for him lay in its
+remoteness. It was seven Irish miles up a hilly road from the nearest
+railway station, post office or telegraph station. Aughrim was three
+hours' train journey from Dublin, on a tiny branch line, and trains were
+few. Until motors brought him (to his intense resentment) within reach,
+he was as inaccessible as if he had lived in Clare or Mayo.
+
+So it came to pass that though he knew to the very core one typical
+district of Ireland, and was far more closely in touch with a few score
+of Irish peasants through their daily life than any of his leading
+associates, he was yet cut off by his own choice from much that is
+Ireland--and perhaps from much that was most important to him. Political
+opinion is created in the towns, and he knew the Irish townsfolk, so far
+as he could manage it, only through his correspondence, and through
+those business visits to Dublin which he made as few as possible.
+
+If his work had lain, where it should by rights have lain, in a
+ministerial office in Dublin, all would have been well. As it was, the
+deliberate and extreme seclusion of his life in Ireland weakened his
+influence. He was far too shrewd not to know this, and far too
+unambitious to care. Work he never shrank from. But the daily
+solicitations of people with personal grievances to lay before him,
+personal interests which they desired him to promote, made a form of
+trouble which in his periods of rest from work he refused to undergo.
+
+The same qualities in him were responsible for his persistent refusal to
+accept private hospitality where he went on public business. Whether in
+Ireland or in Great Britain, he must stay at a hotel, and many were the
+magnates of Liberalism whose ruffled feelings it was necessary to smooth
+down on this account. He detested being lionized and wanted always, when
+the public affair was over, to get away to his own quarters.
+
+The demands on him in England for platform work were portentous. Every
+constituency which wanted a meeting on the Home Rule question wanted
+Redmond and no other speaker. Of course he could not go to one-twentieth
+of the places where he was asked for; and his objection to going was not
+the effort involved but the impossibility either of indefinitely
+repeating himself or of finding something new to say each time. "If it
+was in America," he would say, "I would speak as often as you asked me"
+(it was my misfortune to have to do the asking), "because they never
+report a speech." The fact is worth noting, for in scores of instances
+what was adduced by opponents as quotation from his utterances in the
+United States represented simply some American journalist's impression,
+perhaps less of what Redmond said than of what, in the reporter's
+opinion, he should have said. Those who represented him as putting one
+face on the argument in America and another in Great Britain did not
+know the man. "I have made it a rule," he said to me more than once, "to
+say the extremest things I had to say in the House of Commons."
+
+However, all the machinery which was employed by the opponents of Home
+Rule to prejudice Ireland's case in the British constituencies proved
+very ineffectual. For one thing, the lesson of South Africa had gone
+home. For another, and perhaps a greater, no cause ever had a missionary
+better adapted to the temperament of the British democracy. The dignity
+and beauty of Redmond's eloquence, the weight which he could give to an
+argument, his extraordinary gift for simplifying an issue and grouping
+thoughts in large bold masses--all these things carried audiences with
+them.
+
+
+III
+
+Between 1908 and 1910 we were still, though with rapidly increasing
+success, trying to get a hearing for the Irish question--trying to push
+it once more to the front. The change of leadership from Sir Henry
+Campbell-Bannerman to Mr. Asquith had damped Liberal enthusiasm. We got
+solid work done for Ireland in the University Act of 1908, though
+Redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like
+that in which he had himself been an undergraduate. A highly contentious
+measure was also carried in the Land Act of 1909. But a new power was
+coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts. Mr.
+Lloyd George put a new fighting spirit into Liberalism: but the objects
+which he had at heart could only be achieved by a great expenditure of
+electoral power, and among those objects Irish self-government found
+only a secondary place. When Mr. Gladstone spoke of liberty he thought
+of what he had helped to bring to Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and
+Montenegro--what he had tried to bring to Ireland. When Mr. Lloyd George
+spoke of liberty, he thought of what he wanted to bring to England
+first, and to Ireland by the way; his conviction that Ireland needed
+self-government was not so deeply rooted as his conviction that the poor
+throughout the United Kingdom needed help.
+
+Old Age Pensions had been popular, but had not been a fighting issue.
+Mr. Lloyd George provided the fighting issue with a vengeance when he
+set himself to pay for them. Unfortunately, Nationalist Ireland had no
+enthusiasm for the Budget which English Radicalism made its flag. A
+country of peasant proprietors was easily scared by the very name of
+land taxes. But above all the Finance Bill dealt drastically, and many
+thought unfairly, with the powerful liquor trade, which in its branches
+of brewing and distilling included the main manufacturing interest of
+southern Ireland, and on its retail side was incredibly diffused through
+the whole shopkeeping community.
+
+The dissident Nationalists saw their chance. Mr. O'Brien emerged from
+one of his periodic retirements to lead a whirlwind campaign against the
+"robber Budget." Redmond and our party were obliged to oppose a measure
+which pressed so hard as this undoubtedly did on Ireland. Our opposition
+to the land taxes was withdrawn when valuable concessions had been made,
+but no such compromise was considered possible on the liquor taxes. On
+the other hand, it grew clear that the measure was likely to produce a
+conflict in which the power of the House of Lords might be challenged on
+the most favourable ground: and for that reason, when the third reading
+was reached, the Irish party abstained from voting against it. This
+course, while it facilitated close co-operation with Liberalism in the
+general election which followed, weakened us in Ireland; and eleven out
+of the eighty-three Nationalist members returned in January 1910 ranked
+themselves as outside the party; though Mr. O'Brien's actual following
+was limited to seven Cork members and Mr. Healy.
+
+
+IV
+
+The action of the Lords in rejecting the Budget of 1909 had an important
+personal result. It placed Mr. Asquith in a rôle which no one was ever
+better qualified to fill--that of a Liberal statesman defending
+principles of democratic control menaced after a long period of
+security. The Prime Minister, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now
+became the protagonist; and this was to Redmond's liking, for he felt
+that Mr. Asquith was more concerned with the problems which had occupied
+Gladstone's closing years and Mr. Lloyd George with those of a later
+day.
+
+Yet in the first grave encounter after the rejection of the Budget,
+Redmond and the leader of the Liberal party came to sharp differences.
+The general election had amply justified the advice which was urged by
+him on Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman when the House of Lords rejected the
+Education Bill in 1906--namely, that the Liberal party should take up at
+once the inevitable fight before their enormous strength had been
+frittered away in a series of disappointments. The majority of 1906 was
+too swollen to be healthy: owing to the ruling out of Home Rule, it
+included a number of men only partial adherents of the full Liberal
+programme; and a diminution of its proportions owing to the traditional
+swing of the pendulum was certain. But in January 1910 the losses were
+more than even sanguine Tory prophets predicted. Tories came back equal
+in strength to the Liberals: Labour was only forty, so that the Irish
+party held the balance in the House.
+
+The election had been fought expressly on the issue of Government's
+claim to enable a Liberal Government to deal with certain problems,
+among which the Irish question occupied the foremost place. It was easy
+now for the Tories to argue that the Government appealing to the country
+on that issue had lost two hundred seats. They said: "You have authority
+to pass your Budget--but for these vast unconstitutional changes you
+have no mandate." The temper of their party, which had more than doubled
+its numbers, was very high: in the Liberal ranks depression reigned and
+counsels were divided.
+
+At the beginning of the election Mr. Asquith had made a great speech in
+the Albert Hall in which he outlined the Liberal policy. In it he
+declared that the pledge against introducing a Home Rule Bill was
+withdrawn, and that the establishment of self-government for Ireland,
+subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, was among the
+Government's main purposes. But the House of Lords was in the way.
+
+"We shall not assume office and we shall not hold office unless we can
+secure the safeguards which experience shows us to be necessary for the
+legislative utility and honour of the party of progress."
+
+This was universally taken to mean that he would obtain a guarantee that
+the King would, if necessary, consent to the creation of sufficient new
+peers to override the hostile majority. But as the election progressed,
+uncertainties developed and an alternative policy of attempting to
+reform the Upper House was advocated in certain quarters. The question
+arose also as to whether the first business of the new House should be
+to pass the Budget which the Lords had thrown out or to proceed with the
+attack on the power of veto.
+
+Redmond's view on this was not in doubt. At a meeting in Dublin on
+February 10, 1910, he declared in the most emphatic manner that to deal
+with the Budget first would be a breach of Mr. Asquith's pledge to the
+country, since it would throw away the power of the House of Commons to
+stop supply. This speech attracted much attention, and the memory of it
+was present to many a fortnight later when Mr. Asquith was replying to
+Mr. Balfour at the opening of the debate on the Address. The Prime
+Minister dwelt strongly on the administrative necessity for regularizing
+the financial position disturbed by the Upper House's unconstitutional
+action. He indicated also the need for reform in the composition of that
+House. But, above all, he disclaimed as improper and impossible any
+attempt to secure in advance a pledge for the contingent exercise of the
+Royal prerogative.
+
+"I have received no such guarantee and I have asked for no such
+guarantee," he said.
+
+The change was marked indeed from the moment when he uttered in the
+Albert Hall his sentence against assuming office or holding office
+without the necessary safeguards--an assurance at which the whole vast
+assembly rose to their feet and cheered. Every word in his speech on the
+Address added to the depression of his followers and the elation of the
+Opposition. Redmond followed him at once. In such circumstances as then
+existed, it was exceedingly undesirable for the Irish leader to
+emphasize the fact that his vote could overthrow the Government: and the
+least unnecessary display of this power would naturally and properly
+have been resented by the Government's following. No one knew this
+better than Redmond, yet the position demanded bold action. His speech,
+courteous, as always, in tone, and studiously respectful in its
+reference to the position of the Crown, was an open menace to the
+Government. He quoted the Prime Minister's words at the Albert Hall, he
+appealed to the House at large for the construction which had been
+everywhere put on them; and it was apparent that he had the full
+sympathy not only of his own party and of Labour, but of most of Mr.
+Asquith's own following. He concluded in these words:
+
+     "If the Prime Minister is not in a position to say that he has such
+     guarantees as are necessary to enable him to pass a Veto Bill this
+     year, and if in spite of that he intends to remain in office and
+     proposes to pass the Budget into law and then to adjourn--I do not
+     care for how short or how long--the consideration of the Bill
+     dealing with the veto of the House of Lords, that is a policy which
+     Ireland cannot and will not support."
+
+The effect on the House was such that no one rose to continue the
+debate. Next day it was resumed, and not only Labour speakers, but one
+after another of the Liberals, including some of the Prime Minister's
+most docile, old-fashioned supporters rose and declared that Redmond and
+not the Leader of the House had expressed their views. So began a
+remarkable struggle in which the combined forces of the private
+members--Liberal, Labour and Irish--united by a common desire to destroy
+the domination of the Peers, contended against the Cabinet's policy of
+attempting not merely to limit the power of veto but to reconstitute the
+Upper House. In such a process men saw that the driving force of the
+majority would waste away and that the composite character of their
+alliance would lead to certain disruption.
+
+Before the debate on the Address concluded it was plain that Redmond had
+won. From that period onwards his popularity, and, through him, the
+popularity of the party which he led, was immensely increased in Great
+Britain. He was regarded as one of the men who had rendered best service
+to democracy against privilege. He himself believed that in this first
+contest Ireland had decided the victory--had decided the overthrow of
+the House which had so long opposed its liberties. Labour had then
+neither the essential leader nor the necessary parliamentary strength:
+Liberalism was confused and uncertain at the critical moment.
+
+Yet in the very process of achieving this success Redmond laid himself
+open to attack. The Budget was regarded with dislike by a very large
+section of Irishmen, and apart from considerations of political strategy
+the Irish members would certainly have voted against it. Now, the power
+was in their hands to defeat it finally. By so doing they would, of
+course, justify to some degree the unconstitutional action of the Lords;
+but this consideration did not weigh with Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy.
+They accused Redmond of selling the real interests of Ireland to keep a
+Government in office which could offer nothing in return but a gambling
+chance of limiting the veto of the Lords. Mr. O'Brien was firmly
+confident that no such measure would ever pass. He denounced the
+bargain, not merely because it was a bargain in which Redmond accepted
+what was in his view a ruinous injustice to Ireland, but because it was
+a bargain in which the Irish had been outwitted. This line of argument
+was to be dinned into the ears of Ireland during all the remaining years
+of Redmond's life. The only conclusive answer to it was to gain Home
+Rule. If, in the long run, it came to appear that the attackers had been
+right in their contention, and that Ireland had never received the
+expected return, the fault for that result lay with Ireland itself no
+less than with England; it most assuredly did not lie with John Redmond.
+A great weight of responsibility rests on those who from the first hour
+of Ireland's opportunity ingeminated distrust to an over-suspicious
+people.
+
+For the moment, however, the attack made no headway. Irishmen have a
+shrewd political sense, and they felt that in the struggle to pin
+Liberal Ministers to the true fighting objective Redmond had won. They
+were also delighted to see the Irish party openly exert its power--not
+quite realizing that such exhibitions were against the interest of the
+democratic alliance, which had to undergo a grave test. The Government's
+vacillation had rendered another general election necessary if the Veto
+question were to be fought out.
+
+On April 29th the House adjourned for the Whitsuntide recess, after
+which the crisis was to come with the decision of the House of Lords
+whether to accept or reject the Veto Resolution, which had then passed
+the Commons. On May 7th, after a short and sudden illness, King Edward
+died. Both the great English parties were unwilling to renew the most
+acute political struggle of modern times at the opening of a new reign,
+and means of accommodation was sought through a Conference which sat
+first on June 16th and held twenty-one meetings. No representative of
+Ireland was on this body. On November 10th it reported that no result
+had come of its efforts, and a new general election was fixed for
+December 1st.
+
+When the Conference finally broke down Redmond was on his way back from
+America, whither he had gone accompanied by Mr. Devlin. Mr. T.P.
+O'Connor at the same time undertook a tour in Canada. The success of
+these missions showed that the interest and the confidence of the Irish
+race were higher than at any previous period: the ambassadors brought
+back a contribution of one hundred thousand dollars to the election
+funds, and the ship on which they came was saluted by bonfires all along
+the coast of Cork. Ireland, too, was subscribing as Ireland had not
+subscribed since Parnell's zenith: and this was an Ireland in which the
+land-hunger had been largely appeased. The theory that Ireland's demand
+for self-government was merely generated by Ireland's poverty began to
+look ridiculous.
+
+It was the cue of the Tory Press at this moment to excite prejudice
+against the Liberals by representing them as the bondslaves of the
+"dollar dictator"--ordered about by an Irish autocrat with swollen
+money-bags from New York. This line of argument did us little harm in
+Great Britain; in Ireland it improved Redmond's position, for it was a
+useful answer to Mr. O'Brien's representation of him as the abject tool
+of Liberal politicians. The election, on the whole, strengthened our
+party. Mr. Healy was thrown out; and Mr. O'Brien, though he retained the
+seven seats held by his adherents in Cork, failed in two out of three
+personal candidatures.
+
+In Great Britain the second election of the year 1910 had the surprising
+result of reproducing almost exactly the same division of parties: and
+this added greatly to the strength of the Government. The Tory leaders
+now, instead of insisting on a maintenance of the old Constitution, went
+into alternative proposals--including the adoption of the Referendum.
+This was their constructive line; the destructive resolved itself
+largely into an endeavour to focus resistance on the question of
+Ireland--the purpose for which alone, they said, abolition of the veto
+was demanded. As has often happened, action taken by the Vatican gave
+the opponents of Home Rule a useful weapon. The _Ne Temere_ decree,
+promulgated in the year 1908, laid down that any marriage to which a
+Roman Catholic was a party, if not solemnized according to the rites of
+the Church of Rome, should be treated as invalid from a canonical point
+of view. Although legally binding, it should be regarded as no marriage
+in the eyes of an orthodox Roman Catholic until it was regularized in
+the manner provided by the Church, The case of an unhappy mixed marriage
+in Belfast was exploited with fury on a thousand platforms. Another
+decree, the _Motu Proprio_, was construed as seeking to establish
+immunity for the clergy from proceedings in civil courts. This, however,
+was of less platform value, because no instance could be found of a
+practical application; whereas the McCann case unquestionably gave Tory
+disputants a formidable instrument for evoking the ancient distrust of
+Roman Catholicism which is so deeply ingrained in the Protestant mind.
+
+In spite of all, the English democracy remained steady in its purpose.
+Party feeling, however, ran to heights not known in living memory. In
+July 1911 the Parliament Bill went to the Lords, where it was altered
+out of all recognition. On July 20th Mr. Asquith sent a letter to Mr.
+Balfour stating that the King had guaranteed that he would exercise his
+prerogative to secure that the Bill should be passed substantially as it
+left the Commons. On the 24th the extreme section of the Tory party,
+headed by Lord Hugh Cecil, refused to allow the Prime Minister a hearing
+in the House of Commons.
+
+From an Irish point of view the episode was noteworthy. At the outset of
+this critical session Redmond had cautioned his party to abstain from
+giving provocation and from allowing themselves to be provoked. The
+counsel was the harder to follow because some of the most vehement of
+the younger Tories sat below the gangway, almost in physical contact
+with Irish members, and hot words passed. Still, it was grounded into
+all that we should not allow the great issue then at trial to be
+represented as an Irish quarrel. Our cause was linked with the whole
+cause of democracy as against privilege: it was an issue for the whole
+United Kingdom; and that was never plainer than on this day of July.
+English, Scottish and Welsh members hurled interruptions and taunts at
+each other across the floor of the House, while Irish members sat
+watching. Something older and more far-reaching than the opposition to
+Ireland's demand now was felt itself assailed; and a force in which the
+Irish movement was only one stream of many swept against it. Anger in
+the Tory party was not directed against Ireland's representatives; and
+an odd chance made this plain. The fierce scene in the House reached its
+culmination when Ministers withdrew in a body from the Treasury Bench
+and the two sides of the House stood up, one cheering, the other
+hooting, in opposite ranks. For a moment it seemed as if the affair
+would come to blows, till Mr. Will Crooks, with a genial inspiration,
+uplifted his voice in song: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" The
+tension was relaxed and members moved out in groups--we Irishmen
+necessarily among the Tories. In the movement I saw Willie Redmond go up
+to one of the fiercest among the Ulstermen, whose face was dark with
+passion. Colloquy began: "Isn't it a hard thing that you wouldn't let us
+speak?" The Ulsterman turned: "Not let you speak? My dear fellow, we'd
+listen to you for as long as you liked--it's only these accursed English
+Liberals." And upon this mutual understanding the two Irishmen walked
+down the floor into the Lobby exchanging expressions of mutual goodwill
+and possibly of mutual comprehension.
+
+This little piece of by-play, so full of Irish nature, struck me at the
+time as something more than amusing--as having in it a ray of hopeful
+significance. But the most sanguine imagination would never have
+foreseen the series of events which brought it to pass, not merely that
+these two men should wear the same uniform, on a common service, but
+that the same Gazette should publish both their names as enrolled on the
+same day in the French Legion of Honour. On that day Mr. Charles Craig
+was a prisoner in Germany, wounded in a famous fight; and Willie Redmond
+was in a grave towards which Ulster comrades had been the first to carry
+him. There is an Irish saying, "Men may meet, but the mountains stand
+apart." In July 1911 such an association as the Gazette of July 1917
+illustrated would have seemed hardly more possible than the meeting of
+the everlasting hills.
+
+The dramatic crisis of the parliamentary struggle between the two Houses
+of Parliament did not, and could not, come in the House of Commons. Its
+place was in the final citadel of privilege, and privilege surrendered
+on August 10th, when the Bill passed the Lords after the most exciting
+and uncertain division that is ever likely to be known. But there were
+elements in the Tory party which did not accept defeat, though they had
+not yet clearly decided on what battleground to renew their efforts. For
+the moment, however, men were disposed to pause and take stock of the
+new situation.
+
+But at such a time events cannot stand still, and almost at the same
+moment as the Parliament Act was carried, the Government took a step
+which gravely affected the Irish party. Payment of members was
+established by a resolution of the House of Commons.
+
+Irish Nationalist members had always been paid from the party fund, that
+is to say, by their supporters. Payment was conditional, not of right,
+and it was not made except when the member was in attendance: it
+amounted only to twenty pounds a month. The new payment came from the
+British Treasury; it was made irrespective of the desire of
+constituents, or of any other consideration; and it amounted to a sum
+which in a country of small incomes sounded very imposing.
+Unquestionably the receipt of it weakened the position of the party in
+the eyes of Ireland, and gave a new sting to the charge of a bargain.
+
+All this was clearly discerned in advance, by no one more than by
+Redmond; and an amendment was moved to strike Irish members out of the
+application of the resolution. But the situation was hopelessly
+involved, the Irish party having repeatedly voted for payment of members
+as part of the Radical programme which they supported as affecting any
+normally governed country; and Government refused to make the exception.
+
+As a result, Redmond's following lost much of the prestige which had
+resulted from scrupulous observance of the understanding that no
+Nationalist member should take office under Government. To join the
+Irish party had been, in effect, for most men, to make a vow of
+poverty. Now, on the contrary, it involved acceptance of what was in
+Ireland's eyes a well-paid and unlaborious office. The Irish are no less
+prone than any other nation to take a cynical view of these matters.
+
+Yet assuredly no man ever gave more service for less pay than the
+Nationalist leader, and it was the harder because he was a man who liked
+comfort and had no ambition. If at the time of the great "split" he had
+stood down from politics, success would have been assured to him at the
+Bar in Ireland, or, more surely still, and far more profitably, at
+Westminster itself. There never was anyone so well-fitted for the work
+of a parliamentary barrister who has to deal with great interests before
+a tribunal largely composed of laymen. No one had the House of Commons
+tone more perfectly than Redmond, and no one that I ever heard equalled
+his gift for making a complicated issue appear simple. When he was
+thrown out of Parliament at the Cork election, he thought of retirement,
+mainly for one reason: it would be better for his children. Yet, first
+by personal loyalty to Parnell, later by his loyalty to Ireland, he was
+held firm to his task--always a poor man, always knowing that it lay in
+his power, without the least sacrifice of principle, to become rich by a
+way of work less laborious and infinitely less harassing than that which
+he pursued.
+
+The effect upon the Irish situation produced by the payment of members
+was slow to develop, and obscure. But an obvious and grave complication
+was introduced into both British and Irish politics at the moment when
+the democratic alliance had achieved its first great objective.
+Parliament had been in session almost continuously since the beginning
+of 1909, with the added strain of two general elections thrown in. There
+was a widespread desire to clear the autumn of 1911, so that members
+might have some breathing space, and, not less important, devote
+themselves to propagandist work in their constituencies for the new
+struggle of carrying measures under the hardly won Parliament Act. Each
+of these measures must involve a fight prolonged over three years.
+
+But this desire ran against the purposes of Mr. Asquith's chief
+lieutenant, whose power and popularity were now at their height. Mr.
+Lloyd George in the course of the session had introduced his Insurance
+Bill, and it was welcomed with astonishing effusion from both sides of
+the House. As discussion proceeded, however, the complexity and
+difficulty of its proposals, and the number of oppositions which they
+provoked, became so apparent that it was not in human nature for
+politicians at such a crisis to forgo the opportunity. Most of the
+Liberal party would have preferred to drop the Bill temporarily and
+refer it to a Committee of Enquiry. Mr. Lloyd George was convinced that
+this would be fatal to his measure, concerning which he was possessed by
+a missionary zeal. Probably when his career comes under the study of
+impartial history it will be perceived that never at any moment was he
+so passionately and so honestly in earnest as upon this quest. But it is
+certain that by pursuit of it he created enormous difficulties in the
+way of those reforms which the democratic alliance at large most desired
+to achieve. He carried his point; an autumn session followed, in which
+the mind of the electorate was diverted from the Irish question and all
+other questions except that of Insurance, and Parliament itself was
+jaded to the brink of exhaustion.
+
+The matter was difficult for us in Ireland because, owing to the
+different system of Public Health Administration, many of the most
+important provisions could not apply, and because the Bill as a whole
+was framed to meet the needs of a highly industrialized and crowded
+community. Broadly speaking, it was less desired in Ireland than in
+Great Britain; and even for Great Britain Mr. Lloyd George was
+legislating in advance of public opinion rather than in response to it.
+Mr. O'Brien and his following vehemently opposed the application of the
+Bill to Ireland; and the Irish Catholic Bishops, by a special
+resolution, expressed their view to the same effect. The Bill, however,
+had a powerful advocate in Mr. Devlin, and the Irish party decided to
+support its extension to Ireland, subject to certain modifications which
+they obtained.
+
+Apart from the new unsettlement of public opinion which it created both
+in Great Britain and in Ireland, the Insurance Act added to our
+difficulties on the Home Rule question. It was clear already that the
+question of finance lay like a rock ahead. Up to 1908 the proceeds of
+Irish revenue had always given a margin over the cost of all Irish
+services, though that margin had dwindled almost to vanishing-point. Old
+Age Pensions completely turned the beam and left us in the position of
+costing more than we contributed. Now the outlay on Insurance added half
+a million a year to the balance against us.
+
+Still, difficulties and perplexities were not limited to one side. The
+Tory party were much divided since the crisis on the Parliament Act. A
+section, and the most active section, had been violently opposed to the
+surrender on the critical division, and these men were profoundly
+discontented with Mr. Balfour's leadership; so Mr. Balfour, yielding to
+intimations, suddenly resigned. Somewhat unexpectedly, Mr. Bonar Law was
+chosen to succeed him, Mr. Long and Mr. Chamberlain waiving their
+respective claims.
+
+This choice was of sinister augury. Mr. Law did not know Ireland. But,
+Canadian-born, he came from a country in which the Irish factions and
+theological enmities had always had their counterpart; his father, a
+Presbyterian Minister, came of Ulster stock. All the blood in him
+instinctively responded to the tap of the Orange drum. As far back as
+January 27, 1911, he had urged armed resistance to Home Rule.
+
+This was a line which Mr. Balfour did not see his way to take, and
+probably here rather than elsewhere lay the reason for the choice of Mr.
+Bonar Law. The most active section of the Tory party--probably a
+minority, for in such cases minorities decide--regarded the passing of
+the Parliament Act as an outrage on the Constitution, which should be
+resisted by any means, constitutional or unconstitutional. But no
+possibility existed of mobilizing a force in Great Britain to fight for
+the veto of the House of Lords, nor again did the resistance to a new
+Franchise Act, or even to Welsh Disestablishment, promise to be
+desperate. In one part only of these islands was there material for a
+form of struggle in which the ballot-box and the division lobby might be
+supplemented, if not replaced, by quite other methods of political war.
+The Tory party saw in Ulster their best fighting chance. There was no
+use in telling them that they jeopardized the British Constitution; from
+their point of view the British Constitution--as they had known it--was
+already gone; it was destroyed in principle and must be either restored
+or refashioned according to their mind.
+
+This temper, with the attitude towards parliamentary tradition which it
+produced, rendered the political history of the next two and a half
+years unlike any other in the history of these countries. The main
+purpose of this book is to record and illustrate Redmond's action during
+the period which began with the opening of the Great War. But since that
+action was conditioned by the circumstances preceding the war--since in
+two notable ways it aimed at a solution of the fierce political struggle
+which the war interrupted--the political history connected with the
+passage of the Home Rule Bill through Parliament must be outlined in
+detail, with avoidance, so far as may be, of a controversial tone.
+
+
+V
+
+It is however necessary, before closing this preliminary review, to take
+some account of Redmond's relation to his party, and, in general, of the
+working of the parliamentary machine. Difficulties were imposed on him
+and on the party from 1910 onwards by our very success.
+
+Electoral chances had placed us apparently in the position of maximum
+power. From January 1910 onwards we had a Government committed to Home
+Rule, yet so far dependent on us that we could put it out at any moment.
+Yet this was by no means an ideal state of affairs. The Government's
+weakness was our weakness, and they were liable to the reproach that
+they never proposed a Home Rule measure except when they could not
+dispense with the Irish vote. Still, from this embarrassing position we
+achieved an extraordinary result. Right across our path was the obstacle
+of the House of Lords. It was not an impassable barrier for measures in
+which the British working classes were keenly interested--for it let the
+Trades Disputes Bill go through; but it was wholly regardless of Irish
+and of Welsh popular opinion. Under Redmond's leadership we smashed the
+House of Lords. The English middle class instinct for compromise was
+asserting itself, when he took hold and gave direction to the great mass
+of popular indignation which the hereditary chamber had roused against
+itself.
+
+Yet guiding action in an alliance of which he was not the head was
+delicate work. A clumsy speaker in debate might do infinite mischief.
+When a party is in opposition, all its members can talk, and are
+encouraged to talk, to the utmost; little harm can be done to one's own
+side by what is said in criticism of measures proposed. Support and
+exposition is a much more ticklish business. Add to this the fact that
+under the fully developed system of parliamentary obstruction--that is,
+of using discussion to prevent legislation from being put through--the
+best service that a member can render to Government is to say nothing,
+but vote.
+
+The tactics of limiting discussion to chosen speakers in important
+debates and of discouraging sharply any intervention which might help to
+delay a division were pushed further in the Irish party than elsewhere.
+We were there under different conditions from the rest; our objective
+was as clearly defined as in a military operation: and we all understood
+the position. We recognized also that negotiation must be a matter for
+Redmond and his inner cabinet of three, and that many things could not
+be usefully discussed in a body of seventy men. But the net result was
+that the bulk of the party lost interest in their work, and, which was
+worse, that Ireland lost interest in the bulk of the party. It followed,
+not unnaturally, that the constituencies held one voting machine to be
+as good as another, and they did not generally send any men who could
+have been of service in debate. They did not any longer see their
+members heading a fiery campaign against rents, or flamboyant in attack
+on the Government; they heard very little of them at all. They knew
+little and cared less about the work of education in British
+constituencies, which had to be carried on through the mouths of Irish
+members.
+
+Redmond has often been blamed, but quite unjustly, for failure to
+attract men of talent into his ranks. Parnell had that power. He had,
+and used, the right of suggesting names. But under the constitution of
+the United Irish League (originally the work of Mr. William O'Brien when
+reunion was accomplished in 1900) the machinery of local conventions was
+set up and no interference with their choice was permitted to the
+central directorate--which could only insist that a man properly
+selected must take the party pledge. Whether this machinery was
+inevitable or no, cannot be argued here; but Redmond himself complained
+repeatedly in public that it worked badly. Candidates were often chosen
+purely for local and even personal considerations, and seldom with any
+real thought of finding the man best fitted to do Ireland's work at
+Westminster.
+
+This evil, for it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in
+a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others.
+There being no Unionist candidature possible in the majority of
+constituencies, any contest was deprecated--and from some points of view
+rightly--as leading to possible faction between Nationalists. The choice
+of a member really fell into too few hands; the electorate as a whole
+was not sufficiently interested. Nevertheless, several able men came
+into our ranks, and under the conditions it was not possible to utilize
+their talents fully, as they would have been utilized had we been in
+opposition, not in support of the Government. More could have been done,
+however, to give them their opportunity, and the responsibility for not
+varying the list of speakers rests on Redmond. It was his policy to
+avoid personal intervention, and to leave such choices to be settled by
+proposals from the party itself. This was a real limitation to his
+excellence as leader--for leader he was.
+
+There was, however, an even more important limitation arising out of his
+personal temperament. As chairman, I never expect to see his equal. He
+had the most perfect public manners of any man I have known, whether in
+dealing with some vast assembly or small confidential gathering. The
+latter type of meeting is the more difficult to handle, and nothing
+could exceed his gift for presiding over and guiding debate. He could
+set out a political situation to his party with extraordinary force and
+lucidity. He could also, when he chose, so present an issue as to
+suggest almost irresistibly the conclusion which he desired--and this
+was how he led. Where he came short in the quality of leadership was in
+the personal contact.
+
+His relations with all his followers in the party were courteous and
+cordial; yet without the least appearance of aloofness he was always
+aloof. He did not invite discussion. It needed some courage to go to him
+with a question in policy, and if you went, the answer would be simply a
+"Yes" or "No." He lacked what Lord Morley attributed to Gladstone, "the
+priceless gift of throwing his mind into common stock." No one thought
+more constantly, or further ahead; but he could not, rather than would
+not, impart his mind by bringing it into contact with others. Men like
+being taken into their leader's confidence, and he knew this and, I have
+reason to believe, knew the disability which his temperament laid upon
+him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from
+pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not
+going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more
+enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one
+who liked discussion for discussion's sake.
+
+Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. I
+cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently
+aware of the qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his
+team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and
+a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the
+separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He
+welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both
+as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally
+speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented
+mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the
+new Young Ireland.
+
+But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook--and they
+were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party--Redmond's essential
+limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities
+which produce idolatry and blind allegiance. What his followers gave him
+was admiration, liking and profound respect. No less than this was
+strictly due to his high standard of honour, his scorn of all personal
+pettiness, his control of temper. In twelve years I heard many
+complaints of the manner in which things were managed in the party: I
+scarcely ever remember to have heard anyone complain of him. He was
+always spoken of as "The Chairman"; no one attributed to him sole
+responsibility; and he was the last on whom any man desired to lay a
+fault.
+
+Yet when it came, as it often did, to a question of weighing advices one
+against the other, there was no mistake how men's opinions inclined. He
+had taught his party by experience to have almost implicit confidence in
+his judgment; and by this earned confidence he led and he ruled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912
+
+
+The year 1912, in which the straight fight on Home Rule was to begin,
+opened stormily. Mr. Churchill was announced to speak under the auspices
+of the Ulster Liberal Association in the Ulster Hall at Belfast. It was
+the hall in which his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had used the
+famous phrase "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." Belfast was
+determined that the son should not unsay what the father had said in
+this consecrated building; it would be, as an Ulster member put it in
+the House of Commons, "a profanation." On this first round, Ulster won;
+Mr. Churchill spoke at Belfast, but not in the Ulster Hall. There were
+angry demonstrations against him; his person had to be strongly
+protected and he went away from the meeting by back streets. It was
+noticeable that no such precautions were needed for Redmond, who
+attended the meeting and walked quite unmolested through the crowd. The
+British electorate, as a whole, was somewhat scandalized by the
+exhibition of so violent a temper; but the education of the British
+electorate was only beginning.
+
+Congestion of business from the previous session deferred the
+introduction of the Home Rule Bill till April. Great demonstrations for
+and against it were held in advance. In Dublin on March 31st was such a
+gathering as scarcely any man remembered. O'Connell Street is rather a
+boulevard than a thoroughfare; it is as wide as Whitehall and its length
+is about the same. On that day, from the Parnell monument at the north
+end to the O'Connell monument at the south, you could have walked on the
+shoulders of the people. Four separate platforms were erected, and
+Redmond spoke from that nearest to the statue of his old chief. He dwelt
+on the universality of the demonstration; nine out of eleven
+corporations were represented officially by their civic officers;
+professional men, business men, were all fully to the fore. But one
+section of his countrymen were conspicuously absent. To Ulster he had
+this to say:
+
+"We have not one word of reproach or one word of bitter feeling. We have
+one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the
+arrival of the day of reconciliation."
+
+A feature of that gathering, little noted at the time, assumes strange
+significance in retrospect. At one platform Patrick Pearse, then
+headmaster of St. Enda's school, spoke in Irish. What he said may be
+thus roughly rendered:
+
+"There are as many men here as would destroy the British Empire if they
+were united and did their utmost. We have no wish to destroy the
+British, we only want our freedom. We differ among ourselves on small
+points, but we agree that we want freedom, in some shape or other. There
+are two sections of us--one that would be content to remain under the
+British Government in our own land, another that never paid, and never
+will pay, homage to the King of England. I am of the latter, and
+everyone knows it. But I should think myself a traitor to my country if
+I did not answer the summons to this gathering, for it is clear to me
+that the Bill which we support to-day will be for the good of Ireland
+and that we shall be stronger with it than without it. I am not
+accepting the Bill in advance. We may have to refuse it. We are here
+only to say that the voice of Ireland must be listened to henceforward.
+Let us unite and win a good Act from the British; I think it can be
+done. But if we are tricked this time, there is a party in Ireland, and
+I am one of them, that will advise the Gael to have no counsel or
+dealings with the Gall [the foreigner] for ever again, but to answer
+them henceforward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. Let the
+Gall understand that if we are cheated once more there will be red war
+in Ireland."
+
+The platform where Pearse spoke was set up within a stone's throw of the
+General Post Office in which, four years later, he was to give effect to
+the words he spoke then and to earn his own death in undoing the work of
+Redmond's lifetime. At that moment no one heeded his utterance, nor the
+speech, also in Irish, of Professor John MacNeill from another platform,
+which went, as its speaker was destined to go, half the way with Pearse.
+
+But Redmond never attempted to conceal the existence of this element in
+Ireland. Speaking on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill on April
+11th, he dealt at the very opening with the charge that the Irish people
+wanted separation and that the Irish leaders were separatists in
+disguise:
+
+"I will be perfectly frank on this matter. There always has been, and
+there is to-day, a certain section of Irishmen who would like to see
+separation from this country. They are a small, a very small section.
+They were once a very large section. They are a very small section, but
+the men who hold, these views at this moment only desire separation as
+an alternative to the present system, and if you change the present
+system and give into the hands of Irishmen the management of purely
+Irish affairs, even that small feeling in favour of separation will
+disappear; and if it survives at all, I would like to know how under
+those circumstances it could be stronger or more powerful for mischief
+than at the present moment."
+
+Sincerer words were never spoken, nor, I think, a better justified
+forecast. Where Redmond and all of us were wrong was that we
+underestimated the possibility of accomplishing what Pearse ultimately
+accomplished, even when assisted by the widespread disillusionment and
+sense of betrayal which was the atmosphere of 1916.
+
+But no one in Ireland in 1912 thought of a separatist rebellion. What
+was on all tongues was the possibility of physical resistance to Home
+Rule. The debate on the first reading went by with little reference to
+this contingency, but Mr. Bonar Law closed his speech on that note. He
+had attended the great counter-demonstration in Belfast which followed
+ours in Dublin and had seen in it "the expression of the soul of a
+people."
+
+"These people look upon their being subject to an executive Government
+taken out of the Parliament in Dublin with as much horror, I believe
+with more horror, than the people of Poland ever regarded their being
+put under subjection by Russia; they say they will not submit except by
+force to such government. These people in Ulster are under no illusion.
+They know they cannot fight the British Army. But these men are ready,
+in what they believe to be the cause of justice and liberty, to lay down
+their lives."
+
+Bloodshed, if bloodshed there was to be, was anticipated in Ulster only,
+and the resistance indicated at this point was purely passive. But even
+after the Bill had been introduced, Tories entertained the hope that a
+Nationalist Convention might save them trouble and reject what the
+Government offered. Even Mr. O'Brien, however, had given the Bill a
+lukewarm approval, and at this moment Redmond's prestige stood very
+high. When the Convention assembled, he utilized that advantage to the
+full. These assemblies presented a problem which might intimidate the
+most capable chairman. Theoretically deliberative, they had at least a
+representative character; all branches of the United Irish League, all
+branches of the Hibernians and Foresters, all county and district
+councils sent up their chosen men, to whom were added such clergy as
+chose to attend. The result was a mass of over two thousand persons
+packed into a single room; they deliberated in the physical conditions
+of a crowd; hearing was difficult, disorder only too easily brought
+about. I have seen one of these Conventions sharply divided in opinion,
+and counting of votes would have been impossible. On this day, however,
+there was only one opinion: the business was to manifest support and to
+strengthen the leader's hand, Redmond at the outset laid down the
+proposition that it was their "duty" as Nationalists to accept what he
+described as a far better Bill than Gladstone ever offered. He further
+indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting,
+proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the Irish party.
+This was promptly carried by acclamation. All decisions were unanimous
+that day.
+
+But before this or any other resolution was put to the Convention,
+Redmond asked the multitude there to give, what they gave most
+willingly, a welcome to Mr. Gladstone's grandson, who as a young member
+of Parliament had just voted for the Bill. The greeting which he
+received showed that Ireland had not forgotten what Gladstone's last
+years had been.
+
+In the first of his speeches upon the Bill, Sir Edward Grey, a survivor
+from Gladstone's Ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the
+struggle from 1886 to 1893:
+
+"Two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still. One is Mr.
+Gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in
+Ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to
+acknowledge and reconcile that spirit. The other is the Irish response
+to Mr. Gladstone. It was not the assent of mere tacticians who had
+gained an advocate and a point. It was genuine, warm and living feeling,
+a response of gratitude and sympathy the same in kind and as living as
+his own."
+
+If Redmond's task from 1912 onwards was not lightened by the existence
+of any such genuine, warm and living feeling for any of Mr. Asquith's
+Ministry, perhaps Ireland is not to blame. There was no intense grip of
+any fact in the Government's attitude, and on one cardinal point they
+were unstable as water. Sir Edward Carson, in opposing the introduction
+of the Bill, had used the words: "What argument is there that you can
+raise for giving Home Rule to Ireland that you do not equally raise for
+giving Home Rule to that Protestant minority in the north-east
+province?" Redmond, following him, made one of his few false moves in
+debate. "Is that the proposal? Is that the demand?" he asked. Sir Edward
+Carson shot the question at him: "Will you agree to it?" Seldom does the
+House see a practised speaker so much embarrassed; Redmond in confusion
+passed to another topic. He was soon to be confronted with that same
+line of reasoning, pushed not dialectically by an opponent, but as a
+step in parliamentary negotiation from the Treasury Bench. Mr.
+Churchill, who introduced the Second Reading, made it apparent that the
+demonstration in Belfast had not been wasted on him.
+
+"Whatever Ulster's rights may be," he said, "they cannot stand in the
+way of the whole of the rest of Ireland. Half a province cannot impose a
+permanent veto on the nation. The utmost they can claim is for
+themselves. I ask, do they claim separate treatment for themselves? Do
+the counties of Down and Antrim and Londonderry, for instance, ask to be
+excepted from the scope of this Bill? Do they ask for a parliament of
+their own, or do they wish to remain here? We ought to know."
+
+This was to proceed at once into the region of a bargain. Mr. Gladstone,
+with his grip on the existence of a national spirit in Ireland, would
+have known that concession on such point was a very different matter
+from some alteration in the financial terms or in the composition of the
+Parliament. It admitted, in fact, the contention that Ireland was not a
+nation but a geographical expression.
+
+As soon as the Bill went into Committee, the result was seen. The first
+serious amendment proposed to exclude the four counties, Antrim, Down,
+Armagh, and Derry, and it was moved from the Liberal benches. Three
+Liberal speakers supported it in the early stages of a debate which
+lasted to the third day--and on the division the majority, which had
+been 100 for the Second Reading, fell to 69. Mr. Churchill did not
+vote--nor, although this was not then so apparently significant, did Mr.
+Lloyd George.
+
+Thus from the very first the point of danger revealed itself. By the
+mere threat of a resistance which could only be overcome through the use
+of troops, Ulster had made the first dint for the insertion of a wedge
+into the composite Home Rule alliance, and into the Cabinet itself. All
+this had been gained without any tactical sacrifice, without even
+anything like a full disclosure of the force which lay behind this line
+of attack.
+
+Nor was the full extent of weakness revealed. In such a case, much
+depended on the personality of the man who moved the amendment, and Mr.
+Agar-Robartes was one of the most whimsically incongruous figures in the
+Government ranks. Twentieth-century Liberalism wears a somewhat drab and
+serious aspect, but this ultra-fashionable example of gilded youth would
+have been in his place among the votaries of Charles James Fox. The
+climax of his incongruity was a vehement and rather antiquated
+Protestantism; he was, for instance, among the few who opposed the
+alteration of the Coronation oath to a formula less offensive to
+Catholics. Nobody doubted that his Cornish constituents would endorse
+whatever he did, for the House held few more popular human beings, but
+no one took him very seriously as a politician. This particular view of
+his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable associate,
+Mr. Neil Primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against
+Ulster's claims as Agar-Robartes did for them.--_Sunt lacrimae rerum_.
+I remember vividly in August 1914 the sudden apparition of this pair,
+side by side as always, in their familiar place below the gangway, but
+in quite unfamiliar guise, for khaki was still new to the benches. The
+two brilliant lads--for they were little more--have gone now, swept into
+the abyss of war's wreckage; the controversy which divided them remains,
+virulent as ever.
+
+Agar-Robartes stuck to his guns and voted against the Bill henceforward;
+the other Liberals who supported him were ultimately brought into the
+Government lobby. What had really mattered was Mr. Churchill's speech on
+the Second Reading. Captain Pirrie, one of Redmond's few closely
+attached friends outside the Irish party, bound, I think, far more in
+affection to the Irish leader than to his own chiefs, complained angrily
+of the Government's evasive reticence. This brought up the Prime
+Minister, whose speech was brief and direct:
+
+"This amendment proceeds on an assumption which I believe is radically
+false, namely, that you can split Ireland into parts. You can no more
+split Ireland into parts than you can split England or Scotland into
+parts."
+
+When Sir Edward Carson had spoken, the Ulster leader's speech enabled
+Redmond to point out that Ulstermen refused to accept this proposal as a
+means by which Ulster might be reconciled to Home Rule, but were ready
+to vote for it simply as a wrecking amendment. General opinion on both
+sides of the House agreed that the amendment made the Bill impossible;
+and the majority held that therefore Ulster must give way. Ulster, on
+the other hand, held that therefore there must be no Home Rule Bill. But
+there was a Liberal element evidently not convinced that Home Rule might
+not be possible with Ulster excluded. Mr. Birrell admitted that the plan
+of segregating a portion had been considered, but had been rejected, on
+the merits, as unworkable. Still he professed himself open to
+conviction. The argument which Mr. Bonar Law decided to use was a
+threat. Government are saying to the people of Ulster, he said,
+"Convince us that you are in earnest, show us that you will fight, and
+we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else." Captain
+Craig, following, said that the Prime Minister anticipated that Ulster's
+objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface. "If
+the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his Majesty's
+dominions to civil war, we accept the challenge."
+
+This temper soon had ugly expression. On June 29th an excursion party of
+the Ancient Order of Hibernians (the Roman Catholic counterpart to the
+Orange Order) met with another excursion party of Protestants, mainly
+Sunday-school children, at a place called Castledawson. Taunts were
+exchanged and one of the Hibernians tried to snatch a flag from the
+other procession; so a disturbance began in which some of the children
+were hurt and many frightened. This discreditable incident was magnified
+with all the rancour of partisanship--as in the state of feeling must
+have been expected. But the reprisals were startling. All Catholics were
+driven out of the Belfast shipyards; many were injured, and over two
+thousand men were still deprived of work on July 12th, when the Unionist
+party held a great meeting at Blenheim. Mr. Bonar Law, facing for the
+first time a vast typical gathering of his supporters, said that, on a
+previous occasion, when speaking as little more than a private member of
+Parliament, he had counselled action outside constitutional limits. Now,
+he emphasized it that he took the same attitude as leader of the
+Unionist party.
+
+"We shall use any means--whatever means seem to us to be most likely to
+be effective--any means to deprive them" (the Government) "of the power
+they have usurped and to compel them to face the people whom they have
+deceived. The Home Rule Bill in spite of us may go through the House of
+Commons. There are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. I can
+imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall
+not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by
+the overwhelming majority of the British people."
+
+Sir Edward Carson said on behalf of Ulster: "It will be our duty shortly
+to take such steps--and, indeed, they are already being taken--as will
+perfect our arrangements for making Home Rule absolutely impossible. We
+will shortly challenge the Government to interfere with us if they dare.
+We will do this regardless of consequences, of all personal loss and
+inconvenience. They may tell us, if they like, that this is treason."
+
+Well might Mr. Bonar Law say in returning thanks that this day "would be
+a turning-point in their political history."
+
+Moderate opinion was by no means glad to have reached this
+turning-point, and _The Times_ rebuked Mr. Law for his violence. But,
+tactically, the Unionists were right: they had a Government indisposed
+to action and they made the most of their opportunity. Mr. Churchill
+again took up the conduct of the controversy, and in the recess
+proceeded to outline a policy which he described as federal devolution.
+The Prime Minister had said you could no more split Ireland into parts
+than England or Scotland. But Mr. Churchill argued that, in the interest
+of efficiency, England must be divided into provincial units with
+separate assemblies; that Lancashire, for instance, had on many matters
+a very different outlook from that of Yorkshire. He did not draw the
+conclusion; but it was not difficult to infer that Mr. Churchill was at
+least as ready to give separate rights to Ulster as to any group of
+English counties, and was equally ready to pitch overboard the Prime
+Minister's argument for refusing partition in Ireland.
+
+In the meantime Ulster's preparations continued. It was indicated that
+they would bear a religious character, and the Protestant Churches were
+deeply involved. The proposal of a Covenant was made public in August,
+though the actual signing of it was deferred to "Ulster Day," September
+28th. Sir Edward Carson was provided with a guard carrying swords and
+wooden rifles, and in one instance dummy cannon made a feature of the
+pageant. These things excited a good deal of derision, and the language
+of the Covenant was held to be only "hypothetical treason." The main
+words were:
+
+"We stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our
+cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and in
+using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present
+conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland."
+
+The Covenant in that committed the signatories to no breach of the law;
+it was only a pledge to refuse to recognize the authority of a
+Parliament not yet in being. All Ulster's proceedings might so far be
+dismissed, as the Attorney-General, Mr. Rufus Isaacs, dismissed them, as
+being "a demonstration admirably stage-managed, and led by one of great
+histrionic gifts." The threats of the use of force, said the
+Attorney-General, would not turn them aside by a hair's-breadth. Mr.
+Asquith, equally vigorous in his speech, was less decisive in his
+conclusions. Speaking at Ladybank on October 5th, he denounced "the
+reckless rodomontade of Blenheim, which furnishes forth the complete
+grammar of anarchy." But he was careful to point out that there was no
+demand for separate treatment for Ulster, and that Irish Unionists were
+simply refusing to consent to Home Rule under any conditions. He
+refrained from saying how a demand for separate treatment of Ulster
+would be dealt with if it were made.
+
+When Parliament resumed its sittings, in a temper much heated by all the
+challenge and controversy of the recess, Mr. Lloyd George pushed this
+line of argument a shade further. He argued that Sir Edward Carson
+himself persisted in treating Ireland as a unit.
+
+"Until Ulster departs from that position there is no case. Ulster has a
+right to claim a hearing for separate treatment; she has no right to
+say, 'Because we do not want Home Rule ourselves the majority of
+Irishmen are not to have Home Rule.'"
+
+Yet upon the balance of events, Unionists were probably disappointed. A
+very strong British feeling against Sir Edward Carson and his Belfast
+following had been generated by the expulsion of Catholics from the
+shipyards and in general by the advocacy of civil war. In October 1912
+several notable men who had previously counted as Unionists--Sir Arthur
+Conan Doyle, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir J. West-Ridgway--all declared
+for Home Rule. Exasperation against the incidence of the new Insurance
+Act lost the Government votes at every by-election; but the Irish cause
+on the whole gained ground, and the chief cause of that advance was the
+respect universally felt for Redmond's personality and leadership. On
+November 22nd he attended a huge meeting of the National Liberal
+Federation at Nottingham along with the Prime Minister and received a
+wonderful welcome. The step was novel. Never since Parnell's work began
+had the leader of the Irish people stood on the same platform in Great
+Britain with the leader of any English party. It was, however, the
+return of a compliment, for Mr. Asquith had come to Dublin in the summer
+and there spoken along with the Irish leader. Moreover, a recent
+incident had shown how necessary it was to maintain the closest
+co-operation; a snap division on November 11th had inflicted defeat on
+the Government and occasioned loss of perhaps a fortnight's
+parliamentary time.
+
+But in the very act of thus strengthening his hold on the British
+electorate, Redmond gave ground to those in Ireland who desired to
+represent him as a mere tool of the Liberal party, a pawn in Mr.
+Asquith's game. Foreseeing this evil did not help to combat it, and on
+the whole it was Redmond's inclination to take a sanguine view of his
+country's good sense and generosity.
+
+The Committee stage of discussion lasted beyond the end of the year. On
+the finance arrangements Redmond had to face fierce opposition from Mr.
+O'Brien's party, which was endorsed by the Irish Council of County
+Councils. Here difficulties were inevitable, and attack was easy either
+for the Unionists, who pressed the argument that Ireland was to be
+started on its career of self-government with a subsidy of some two
+millions per annum from Great Britain, or for the O'Brienites, who urged
+that the country was already overtaxed in proportion to its resources,
+that it needed large expenditure for development, and that the possible
+budget indicated by the Bill left no serious possibility for reducing
+taxes or for undertaking even necessary expenditure. Redmond, on the
+other hand, was bound to conciliate the vested interests of civil
+servants, officials in all degrees, and the immense police force.
+Retrenchment on the vast area of unproductive expenditure which Castle
+government had created could only be hoped for at a very distant date.
+He could not therefore promise substantial economy; nor could he argue
+for a further increase of subsidy without playing into the Tories'
+hands. On all this detail of the measure, the attack in debate was bound
+to be very powerful.
+
+So far as Great Britain was concerned, the reply of Home Rulers was
+tolerably effective. In 1886 it had been feasible to propose Home Rule
+with an Imperial contribution of two and a half millions. By 1893 the
+possible margin had dropped heavily, and Mr. Gladstone had foretold that
+within fifteen years Ireland would absorb more money for purely Irish
+services than Irish taxation produced. This prophecy had been fulfilled
+to the letter, and everyone saw that to continue the Union meant
+increasing this charge automatically. It was better to cut the loss and
+at least say that it should not exceed a fixed figure.
+
+But in Ireland men dwelt always on the Report of the Financial Relations
+Commission, which had represented the balance as heavily against England
+and the account for overtaxation of the poorer country as reaching three
+hundred millions. No man quoted this document oftener than Redmond, and
+none was a firmer believer in its justification. But he realized, as his
+countrymen did not, that such a claim could never hope for cash
+settlement, that its value was as an argument for the concession of
+freedom upon generous terms. How could he urge that the terms proposed
+were ungenerous, when Great Britain offered to pay the cost of all Irish
+services--amounting to a million and a half more than Irish revenue--and
+to provide over and above this a yearly grant of half a million,
+dropping gradually, it is true, but still remaining at a subsidy of two
+hundred thousand a year so long as the finance arrangements of the Bill
+lasted?
+
+Nevertheless, these arrangements were bad ones, and this was where the
+Bill was most vulnerable on its merits; for self-government without the
+control of taxation and expenditure is at best an unhopeful experiment.
+
+But in the public mind at large only one difficulty bulked big, and that
+was Ulster. Men on both sides began to be uneasy about the consequences
+of what was happening, and this temper reflected itself in the House. On
+New Year's Day 1913, at the beginning of the Report stage, Sir Edward
+Carson moved the exclusion of the province of Ulster. His speech was in
+a new tone of studied conciliation. But, as the Prime Minister
+immediately made clear, there was no offer that if this concession were
+made opposition would cease. It was merely recommended as the sole
+alternative to civil war. Redmond, in following, let fall an _obiter
+dictum_ on the position of the Irish controversy:
+
+"No one who observes the current of popular opinion in this country can
+doubt for one instant that if this opposition from the north-east corner
+of Ulster did not exist, Home Rule would go through to-morrow as an
+agreed Bill."
+
+For this reason, he said, he would go almost any length within certain
+well-defined limits to meet that section of his fellow-countrymen. His
+conditions were, first, that the proposal must be a genuine one, not put
+forward as a piece of tactics to wreck the Bill, but frankly as part of
+a general settlement of the Home Rule question; secondly, that it must
+be of reasonable character; and thirdly, not inconsistent with the
+fundamental principle of national self-government. Ulster's present
+proposal, if accepted, carried with it no promise of a settlement; it
+was unreasonable as proposing to strike out of Ireland five counties
+with Nationalist majorities. But finally, on a broader ground, it
+destroyed the national right of Ireland.
+
+"Ireland for us is one entity. It is one land. Tyrone and Tyrconnell are
+as much a part of Ireland as Munster or Connaught. Some of the most
+glorious chapters connected with our national struggle have been
+associated with Ulster--aye, and with the Protestants of Ulster--and I
+declare here to-day, as a Catholic Irishman, notwithstanding all the
+bitterness of the past, that I am as proud of Derry as of Limerick. Our
+ideal in this movement is a self-governing Ireland in the future, when
+all her sons of all races and creeds within her shores will bring their
+tribute, great or small, to the great total of national enterprise,
+national statesmanship, and national happiness. Men may deride that
+ideal; they may say that it is a futile and unreliable ideal, but they
+cannot call it an ignoble one. It is an ideal that we, at any rate, will
+cling to, and because we cling to it, and because it is there, embedded
+in our hearts and natures, it is an absolute bar to such a proposal as
+this amendment makes, a proposal which would create for all times a
+sharp, eternal dividing line between Irish Catholics and Irish
+Protestants, and a measure which would for all time mean the partition
+and disintegration of our nation. To that we as Irish Nationalists can
+never submit."
+
+Later in the debate, Mr. Bonar Law admitted quite frankly the argument
+against treating all Ulster as Unionist, and he proceeded to suggest
+that any county in Ulster might be given power to decide whether or not
+it should come into the new Parliament. It was plain, however, and Mr.
+Churchill made it plainer, that the Unionist leader did not speak for
+Ulster; Ulster's intention was still to use its own opposition to Home
+Rule as a bar to self-government for the whole of Ireland.
+
+Equally was it plain that the plebiscite by counties would not be
+unacceptable to Mr. Churchill.
+
+The proposal for the exclusion of the entire province was defeated by a
+majority of 97 and the Third Reading was carried by 110. A few days
+later the city of Derry returned a Home Ruler, and the Ulster
+representation became seventeen for the Bill and sixteen against. This
+dramatic change produced a considerable effect on British opinion.
+Redmond, speaking at a luncheon given to the winner, Mr. Hogg, indicated
+the lines on which he was disposed to bargain. He would be willing to
+give Ulster more than its proportional share of representation in the
+Irish Parliament.
+
+The debate in the House of Lords was marked by certain speeches which
+showed that public opinion had moved considerably. Lord Dunraven
+declared for the Second Reading, though pressing all the line of
+objection to the Bill which had been taken by Mr. O'Brien and his party.
+He heaped scorn also as an Irishman upon "this absurd theory of two
+nations which is only invented to make discord where accord would
+naturally be." Lord MacDonnell, whose administrative experience could
+no more be questioned than his genius for administration, held that
+though amendment was needed the framework of the Bill was good, and that
+urgent necessity existed for the change to self-government. He alluded
+to the opinion expressed by Mr. Balfour in 1905, that the proper way of
+reforming Dublin Castle was by increasing the power of the Chief
+Secretary and his Under-Secretary, and thereby getting a stronger grip
+on the various departments of the "complicated system" prevailing. "I
+thought so too," said Lord MacDonnell, who in 1905 as Under-Secretary
+had tried his hand at this reform. "It was one of the illusions that I
+took with me to Ireland twenty years ago--but I am now a wiser man....
+My observation of the Boards had convinced me before I left Ireland that
+no scheme of administrative reform which depends on bureaucratic
+organization for its success, or which has not behind it a popular
+backing, has the least chance of success in an attempt to establish in
+Ireland a government that is satisfactory to the Imperial Parliament or
+acceptable to the Irish people."--This was a repudiation of the Irish
+Council Bill of 1907 by its main author.
+
+Lord Grey, a vivid and attractive personality, declared strongly for
+"such a measure of Home Rule as will give the Irish people power to
+manage their own domestic affairs." It was a conviction that had been
+forced upon him by his experience of Greater Britain. "Practically every
+American, every Canadian, every Australian is a Home Ruler." But the
+settlement must proceed upon federal lines; his ideal for Ireland was
+the provincial status of Ontario or Quebec, linked federally to a
+central parliament at Westminster.
+
+The most significant speech, however, came from the Archbishop of York.
+Disclaiming all party allegiance, Dr. Lang claimed to express "the
+opinions of a very large number of fair-minded citizens." He admitted
+that there was an Irish problem, which could not be solved by "a policy
+however generous of promoting the economic welfare of Ireland." "Some
+measure of Home Rule is necessary not only to meet the needs of Ireland
+but the needs of the Imperial Parliament." This Bill, however, in his
+opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. It would be a block
+rather than a relief to the congestion of business. But these objections
+were "abstract and academic" in face of the real governing fact.
+
+"The figure of Ulster, grim, determined, menacing, dominates the
+scene.... We may not like it. Frankly, I do not like it. It carries
+marks of religious and racial bitterness and suspicion. It uses language
+about dis-obedience to the law which must provoke disquiet and dislike
+in the minds of all who care for the good government of the country. I
+am not competent, because I have not shared in the experience of the
+history of the Ulster people, to decide whether or not their fears are
+groundless. All these things seem to me to be beside the point. If
+Ulster means to do what it says, then the results are certainly such as
+no citizen can contemplate without grave concern.... I admit, everyone
+must admit, that there are circumstances in which a Government is
+entitled and bound to run this kind of risk. At the present time I think
+we all feel that there is a call upon Governments to stiffen rather than
+to slacken their determination in the presence of threats of
+dis-obedience or disorder. I will go further and admit that there is one
+condition which would justify in my mind His Majesty's Government in
+running the risk of the forcible coercion of Ulster. That condition is
+that they should have received from the people of this country an
+authority, clear and explicit, to undertake that risk. It is perfectly
+true that the Prime Minister gave notice that if his party were returned
+to power they would be free to raise again the question of Home Rule,
+but there is a great difference between the abstract question of Home
+Rule and a concrete Home Rule Bill."
+
+That speech undoubtedly represented the temper prevailing in the class
+of balancing electors which is so largo in England. Some of us who read
+it at the time recognized how far the long struggle for autonomy had
+prevailed, but also how strong were the forces which no argument could
+reach. Men like Dr. Lang might be offended, even shocked by the action
+of those who claimed to be England's garrison in Ireland; but they would
+be very slow to use force against such a section, although quite ready
+to justify coercion of the Irish majority. Yet what impressed Redmond
+was the advance made, rather than the revelation of what resistance
+remained. Ho had been more than thirty years an advocate of Ireland's
+cause; and now by the spokesman of the impartial educated mind of
+England the justice of that cause was admitted. The argument that a
+general election was necessary, or would be efficacious in solving the
+problem, was one with which he felt well able to contend. In that speech
+the Archbishop of York admitted his impression that in by-elections
+there had been "much more of Food Taxes and the Insurance Act than of
+Home Rule."
+
+On the other hand, for Ulster such a speech had the plainest possible
+moral: Ulster's game was to become more grim, more determined, more
+menacing. The Home Rule controversy had now resolved itself into a
+question whether Ulster really meant business. Sir Edward Carson set
+himself to make that plain beyond yea or nay.
+
+In a speech delivered in Belfast, at the opening of a new drill hall, he
+asked and answered the question, "Why are we drilling?" He and his
+colleagues did not recognize the Parliament Act, he said; a law passed
+under it would be only an act of usurpation, a breach of right. "We seek
+nothing but the elementary right implanted in every man: the right, if
+you are attacked, to defend yourself."
+
+Ulster was going to stand by its Covenant.
+
+"When we talk of force, we use it, if we are driven to use it, to beat
+back those who will dare to barter away those elementary rights of
+citizenship which we have inherited.... Go on, be ready, you are our
+great army. Under what circumstances you have to come into action, you
+must leave with us. There are matters which give us grave consideration
+which we cannot and ought not to talk about in public. You must trust us
+that we will select the most opportune methods of, if necessary, taking
+on ourselves the whole government of the community in which we live. I
+know a great deal of that will involve statutory illegality, but it will
+also involve much righteousness."
+
+Some of the questions which needed grave consideration were suggested by
+happenings that followed hard on this speech. Much ridicule had been
+poured on the drillings with dummy muskets. Ulster evidently decided to
+push the matter a step further. A consignment of one thousand rifles
+with bayonets, in cases marked "electrical fittings," was seized at
+Belfast on June 3, 1913. Other incidents of the same nature followed. It
+was argued, by those who sought to represent the whole campaign as an
+elaborate piece of bluff, that the weapons were useless and that they
+were deliberately sent to be seized. A feature which scarcely bore out
+this view was that one consignment was addressed to the Lord-Lieutenant
+of an Ulster county who was also an officer in the Army. A justice of
+the peace, or an officer, to whom a consignment of arms had been sent
+for a Nationalist organization would have been ordered to clear himself
+in the fullest way of complicity, and even of sympathy, or he would have
+forfeited his commission. The noble-man involved, however, made no
+explanation, and was probably never officially asked to do so.
+
+It was commonly believed in the House of Commons that at some point, if
+not repeatedly, Government consulted the Irish leader or his principal
+advisers as to whether measures of repression should be undertaken
+against Ulster. No such consultation took place. But the opinion
+prevailing among the leading Nationalists was no doubt known or
+inferred. Mr. Dillon, speaking on June 16, 1914, when the danger-point
+had been clearly reached, justified the previous abstinence from
+coercion.
+
+"I have held the view from the beginning that it would not have been
+wise policy for a Government engaged in the great work of the political
+emancipation of a nation to embark on a career of coercion. I knew, and
+knew well, all the difficulties and all the reproaches that the
+Government would have to face if they abstained from coercion. It is a
+difficult and almost unprecedented course for a Government to take, and
+it is, as the Chief Secretary said, a courageous one. But with all its
+difficulties and dangers it is the right course. We who have been
+through the mill know what the effect of coercion is. We know that you
+do not put down Irishmen by coercion. You simply embitter them and
+stiffen their backs."
+
+It is therefore unquestionable that the decision to do nothing had
+Redmond's approval. Whatever may be thought of that policy, one factor
+was assuredly underestimated--the effect produced on the public mind by
+the spectacle of highly placed personages defying the law and defying it
+with impunity. It was possible to argue that a conviction for
+hypothetical treason would be difficult to secure and that failure in a
+prosecution would only encourage lawless conduct. But Privy Councillors
+who made preparations for prospective rebellion and remained Privy
+Councillors were a new phenomenon. The public thought, and it was
+apparent that the public would think, that Government was afraid to
+quarrel with what is called Society. Society shared that belief and
+began to extend its influence in a new direction. No Government can
+permit itself to be defied without general relaxation of discipline, and
+the effects extended themselves to the Army. At a meeting on July 12th
+in Ulster a telegram was read out from "Covenanters" in an Ulster
+regiment, urging "No surrender until ammunition is spent and the last
+drop of blood." In his speech on that occasion Sir Edward Carson
+declared that every day brought him at least half a dozen letters from
+British officers asking to be enrolled among the future defenders of
+Ulster. One officer, he said, having signed the Covenant, was ordered to
+send in his papers and resign his commission. The officer refused to do
+so, and after a short time was simply told to resume his duty.
+
+"We have assurance from the Prime Minister," said Sir Edward Carson,
+"that the forces of the Crown are not to be used against Ulster.
+Government know that they could not rely on the Army to shoot down the
+people of Ulster."
+
+Later events in Ireland furnished a grim commentary as to what the Army
+would be willing, and would not be willing, to do in the way of shooting
+down in Ireland; and such words as these of Sir Edward Carson were
+destined to be among the chief difficulties which Redmond had to
+encounter when he sought to lead Ireland into the war.
+
+At the meeting of that day, delegates were present from a British League
+to assist Ulster in her resistance. Behind this new quasi-military
+organization stood now the whole of one great party. Sir Edward Carson
+transmitted a message from Mr. Bonar Law in these words:
+
+"Whatever steps we may feel compelled to take, whether they be
+constitutional, or in the long run whether they be unconstitutional, we
+will have the whole of the Unionist party under his leadership behind
+us."
+
+Later in the autumn, on the first anniversary of Ulster Day, there was
+formally announced the formation of an Ulster Provisional Government,
+with a Military Committee attached to it. A guarantee fund to indemnify
+all who might be involved in damaging consequences was set on foot, and
+a million sterling was indicated as the necessary amount to be obtained.
+
+In the meantime signs of distress came from the Liberal camp. Mr.
+Churchill, in speeches to his constituents, renewed the suggestions for
+partition. More notable was a letter from Lord Loreburn, who had till
+recently been Lord Chancellor, and who was known as a steady and
+outspoken Home Ruler. He appealed in _The Times_ of September 11, 1913,
+for a conference between parties on the Irish difficulty. Irish
+Nationalist opinion grew profoundly uneasy, and Redmond at Limerick on
+October 12th set out his position with weighty emphasis. He referred to
+the fact that during the summer he himself, assisted by Mr. Devlin, had
+followed Sir Edward Carson and other Ulster speakers from place to place
+through Great Britain, and on the same ground had stated the case for
+Home Rule. He claimed, and with justice, a triumphant success for this
+counter-campaign.
+
+"The argumentative opposition to Home Rule is dead, and all the violent
+language, all the extravagant action, all the bombastic threats, are but
+indications that the battle is over."
+
+Still, he was too old a politician, he said, not to build a bridge of
+gold to convenience his opponents' retreat, provided that the fruits of
+victory were not flung away. Mr. Churchill had told the Ulstermen that
+there was no demand they could make which would not be matched, and more
+than matched, by their countrymen and the Liberal party. On this it was
+necessary to be explicit.
+
+"Irish Nationalists can never be assenting parties to the mutilation of
+the Irish nation; Ireland is a unit. It is true that within the bosom of
+a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government
+and of administration, but a unit Ireland is and Ireland must
+remain.... The two-nation theory is to us an abomination and a
+blasphemy."
+
+These were carefully chosen words, and they indicated a possible
+acceptance of the proposal that Ulster should have control of its own
+administration in regard to local affairs, but that Irish legislation
+should be left to a common parliament.
+
+This plan Sir Edward Grey described as his "personal contribution" to a
+discussion of possibilities which had been inaugurated by a notable
+speech from the Prime Minister. At Ladybank, on October 25th, Mr.
+Asquith invited "interchange of views and suggestions, free, frank, and
+without prejudice." Nothing, however, could be accepted which did not
+conform to three governing considerations. First, there must be
+established "a subordinate Irish legislature with an executive
+responsible to it"; secondly, "nothing must be done to erect a permanent
+and insuperable bar to Irish unity"; and thirdly, though the process of
+relieving congestion in the Imperial Parliament could not be fully
+accomplished by the present Bill, Ireland must not be made to wait till
+a complete scheme of decentralization could be carried out.
+
+The second of these conditions was plainly the most significant. It was
+taken to mean that "county option"--the right for each county to decide
+whether it would come under a Home Rule Government--would not create "a
+permanent and insuperable" obstacle, since each county could be given
+the opportunity to vote itself in at any time. Redmond's next important
+speech in England showed by its emphasis that he felt a danger. He
+denounced "the gigantic game of bluff and black-mail" which was in
+progress. The proposed exclusion of Ulster was not a proposition that
+could be considered. It would bring about, he thought, the ruin of
+Ulster's prosperity. "For us it would mean the nullification of our
+hopes and aspirations for the future." It would stereotype an old evil
+in the region where it still existed. What Ulster really feared, he
+said, was the loss, not of freedom or prosperity, but of Protestant
+ascendancy.
+
+This was the truth; Protestant ascendancy, which in his boyhood had
+existed throughout all Ireland, was in consequence of the Irish party's
+work dead in three provinces. It remained and must remain in Ulster,
+where Protestants were a majority, but it would be qualified if that
+region came under the control of a parliament elected by all Ireland.
+That was and is the true reason of Ulster's resistance to national
+self-government. What he would concede and what he would reject, Redmond
+indicated in general words: "There is no demand, however extravagant and
+unreasonable it may appear to us, that we are not ready carefully to
+consider, so long as it is consistent with the principle for which
+generations of our race have battled, the principle of a settlement
+based on the national self-government of Ireland. I shut no door to a
+settlement by consent, but ... we will not be intimidated or bullied
+into a betrayal' of our trust."
+
+It was noted at that time that he had said nothing to rule out Sir
+Edward Grey's proposal, which would have left the local majority
+predominant in Ulster's own affairs; and on December 4th Sir Edward Grey
+spoke again, showing a firmness that was the more impressive because of
+his habitual moderation of tone. One thing, he said, was worse than
+carrying Home Rule by force, and that would be the abandonment of Home
+Rule. Two suggestions had been made--a proposal for the temporary
+exclusion of Ulster and a plan for giving to Ulster administrative
+autonomy. Neither had been received by Ulster "in a spirit which seemed
+likely to lead to a settlement.... Was it a settlement by consent they
+wanted, or was their aim simply the destruction of the Bill?"
+
+This emphasized what Redmond had said a few days earlier at Birmingham,
+when he declared that the fight against Home Rule was not an honest one,
+that its real purpose was to defeat the Parliament Act and restore to
+the Tory party its special control over the legislative machine.
+
+The facts were plain on the surface. The Tories clamoured for a fresh
+general election, urging that the electors never realized that the
+Liberal programme involved civil war. But to concede this claim
+indirectly defeated the Parliament Act, which would then have broken
+down at the first attempt to apply it. What added to the insincerity of
+the argument was Ulster's repeated refusal to be influenced by the
+result of any election. Under no circumstances, speaker after speaker
+from Ulster declared, would they submit to Home Rule. The prospect of
+civil war remained, with only one limitation. Mr. Bonar Law undertook
+that if a general election took place and the Liberals again came back,
+the British Unionist party would not support Ulster in physical
+resistance. They would, however, continue to oppose a Home Rule Bill by
+all constitutional means.
+
+Nevertheless, the English disposition to compromise was already
+operating. Mr. Asquith was the last of mankind to make a quixotic stand
+for principle, and the most disposed to pride himself on a practical
+recognition of realities. His Government was in rough water. During the
+summer Mr. Lloyd George's transaction in Marconi shares had been
+magnified by partisan rancour into a crime. Much more serious was the
+split with Labour, which led to the loss of seat after seat at
+by-elections, when the allied forces which stood behind the Parliament
+Act attacked each other and let the Tories in. The Women's Franchise
+agitation was also coming to its stormiest point.
+
+Redmond's part was one of extraordinary difficulty. The cause for which
+he stood was one affecting the interests of only a small minority of the
+total electorate concerned in the struggle which now spread over both
+islands. The Irish problem belonged in reality to the Victorian era;
+those in the British electorate whom it could stir to enthusiasm were
+stirred by a memory, not by a new gospel. Normally, but for the chance
+of Parnell's overthrow, it would have been solved in Gladstone's last
+years. For most Liberals, for all Labour men, the fact that it had
+passed beyond the sphere of argument meant a lack of driving force. It
+was a part of accepted Liberal orthodoxy; minds were centred rather on
+those social controversies in which Mr. Lloyd George was the dominant
+figure, and upon which opinion had not yet crystallized.
+
+Further, the cry of Protestant liberties in danger, the cause of
+Protestants who conducted their arming to the accompaniment of hymns and
+prayer, made inevitably a searching appeal to the feelings of an island
+kingdom where the prejudice against Roman Catholics is more instinctive
+than anywhere else in the world. Looking back on it all, I marvel not at
+the difficulties we encountered, but at the success with which we
+surmounted them; and the great element in that success was Redmond's
+personality. His dignity, his noble eloquence, his sincerity, and the
+large, tolerant nature of the man, won upon the public imagination. His
+tact was unfailing. In all those years, under the most envenomed
+scrutiny, he never let slip a word that could be used to our
+disadvantage. This is merely a negative statement. It is truer to say
+that he never touched the question without raising it to the scope of
+great issues. Nothing petty, nothing personal came into his discourse;
+he so carried the national claim of Ireland that men saw in it at once
+the test and the justification of democracy.
+
+That is why the Irish cause, instead of being a millstone round the neck
+of the parliamentary alliance, was in truth a living cohesive force. But
+in order to keep it so it must be pleaded, not as a question for Ireland
+only but for the democracy of Great Britain and, in a still larger
+sense, for the Commonwealth of the British Empire.
+
+Liberal statesmen in their desire to simplify their own task
+underestimated altogether the difficulty which their professed
+short-cuts to the goal--or rather, their attempted circuits round
+obstacles--created inevitably for the Irish leader. They did not realize
+that his genuine feeling--based on knowledge--for the British democracy
+at home, and still more for its offshoots overseas, was unshared by his
+countrymen, still aloof, still suspicious, and daily impressed by the
+spectacle of those who most paraded allegiance to British Imperialism
+professing a readiness to tear up the Constitution rather than allow
+freedom to Ireland. Liberal statesmen did not understand that Redmond
+could only justify to Ireland the part which he was taking if he won,
+and that he and not they must be the judge of what Ireland would
+consider a defeat. In all probability, also, they overrated his power
+and that of the party which he led. They did not guess at the potency of
+new forces which only in these months began to make themselves felt, and
+which in the end, breaking loose from Redmond's control, undid his work.
+A new phase in Irish history had begun, of which Sir Edward Carson was
+the chief responsible author.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES
+
+
+The first stir of a new movement in Nationalist Ireland outside the old
+political lines came from Labour--from Irish Labour, as yet unorganized
+and terribly in need of organization. On August 26, 1913, a strike in
+Dublin began under the leadership of Mr. Larkin. It had all the violence
+and disorder which is characteristic of economic struggles where Labour
+has not yet learned to develop its strength; it opened new cleavages at
+this moment when national union was most necessary: it was fought with
+the passion of despair by workers whose scale of pay and living was a
+disgrace to civilization; and after five months it was not settled but
+scotched, leaving dark embers of revolutionary hate scattered through
+the capital of Ireland.
+
+One incident showed some of the consequences ready to spring, even in
+England itself, from the action taken in Ulster. Mr. Larkin at the end
+of October 1913 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sedition
+and inciting to disturbance. A fierce outcry ran through the Labour
+world in Great Britain; by-elections were in progress, and Government
+was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for
+the poor, one law for Labour and another for the Unionist party. To this
+pressure Government yielded, and Mr. Larkin was liberated after a few
+days in jail.
+
+But in Ireland more formidable symptoms soon made themselves manifest.
+Captain J.R. White, son of Sir George White, the defender of Ladysmith,
+was a soldier by hereditary instinct and had won the Distinguished
+Service Order in South Africa. But some strain in his composition
+answered to other calls, and upon Tolstoyan grounds he ceased to be a
+soldier, without ceasing to be a natural leader of men. His first public
+appearance was at a meeting in London in support of Home Rule addressed
+by a number of prominent persons who were not Roman Catholics. But his
+interests were plainly not so much Nationalist as broadly humanitarian;
+freedom for the individual soul rather than for the nation was his
+object: and he suddenly enrolled himself among Mr. Larkin's allies. His
+proposal was outlined to a great assembly of the strikers gathered in
+front of Liberty Hall: Mr. Larkin set it out. They must no longer be
+"content to assemble in hopeless haphazard crowds" but must "agree to
+bring themselves under the influences of an ordered and sympathetic
+discipline." "Labour in its own defence must begin to train itself to
+act with disciplined courage and with organized and concentrated force.
+How could they accomplish this? By taking a leaf out of the book of
+Carson. If Carson had permission to train his braves of the North to
+fight against the aspirations of the Irish people, then it was
+legitimate and fair for Labour to organize in the same militant way to
+preserve their rights and to ensure that if they were attacked they
+would be able to give a very satisfactory account of themselves."
+
+Thus began in a small sectional manner a national movement which led far
+indeed. Mr. O'Cathasaigh, from whose _Story of the Irish Citizen Army_ I
+quote, attributes the failure of that purely Labour organization chiefly
+to the establishment of the Irish Volunteers.
+
+This was a development which Redmond on his part neither willed nor
+approved, yet one which in the circumstances was inevitable. Who could
+suppose that the formation of combatant forces would remain a monopoly
+of any party? There was no mistaking the weight which a hundred thousand
+Ulster Volunteers, drilled and regimented, threw into Sir Edward
+Carson's advocacy. As early as September 1913, during the parliamentary
+recess, Redmond received at least one letter--and possibly he received
+many--urging him to raise the standard of a similar force, and pointing
+out that if he did not take this course it might be taken by others less
+fit to guide it. The letter of which I speak elicited no answer. It was
+never his habit to reply to inconvenient communications--a policy which
+he inherited from Parnell, who held that nearly every letter answered
+itself within six months, if it were let alone. Certainly in this case
+it so happened. Long before six months were up, facts had made argument
+superfluous.
+
+Wisdom is easy after the event, and few would dispute now that the
+constitutional party ought either to have dissociated itself completely
+from the appeal to force, or to have launched and controlled it from the
+outset. Neither of these lines was followed, and the responsibility for
+what was done and what was not done must lie with Redmond. Yet, as I
+read it, the key to his policy lay in a dread, not of war, but of civil
+war. To arm Irishmen against each other was of all possible courses to
+him the most hateful. It opened a vision of fratricidal strife, of an
+Ireland divided against itself by new and bloody memories.
+
+Moreover, though he had, as the world came to know, soldiering in his
+blood--though the call to war, when he counted the war righteous,
+stirred what was deepest in him--by training and conviction he was
+essentially a constitutionalist: he realized profoundly how strong were
+the forces behind constitutionalism in Great Britain, how impregnable
+was the position of British Ministers if they boldly asserted the law
+with equality as between man and man. Where he was mistaken was in his
+estimate of the Government with which he had to deal, and especially of
+Mr. Asquith. Speaking to his constituents early in the New Year of 1914
+he said, "The Prime Minister is as firm as a rock, and is, I believe,
+the strongest and sanest man who has appeared in British politics in our
+time." The verdict of history might have borne out this judgment had Mr.
+Asquith never been forced to face extraordinary times. In the event, it
+was Mr. Asquith's lack of firmness and failure in strength which drove
+Redmond into belated acceptance of a policy modelled on Sir Edward
+Carson's.
+
+As early as July 1913 the demonstrations in Ulster led to discussion of
+a countermove among young men in Dublin. But there was no public
+proposal, until at the end of October Professor MacNeill, Vice-President
+of the Gaelic League, published an article in the League's official
+organ calling on Nationalist Ireland to drill and arm. The first meeting
+of a provisional committee followed a few days later. Support was asked
+from all sections of Nationalist opinion; but, as a whole, members of
+the United Irish League and of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who
+constituted the bulk of Redmond's following, refused to act. Still,
+about a third of the committee were supporters of the parliamentary
+party; they included Professor Kettle, who was from 1906 to 1910 among
+its most brilliant members. It was, however, significant that the Lord
+Mayor, a prominent official Nationalist, refused the use of the Mansion
+House for a meeting at which it was proposed to start the enrolment of
+Irish Volunteers. As a result, the venue was changed to the Rotunda, and
+so great enthusiasm was shown that the Rink was used for the assembly.
+Even that did not suffice for half the gathering. Three overflow
+meetings were held, and four thousand men are said to have been enrolled
+that evening.
+
+Yet the movement did not spread at once with rapidity. By the end of
+December recruits only amounted to ten thousand. For this two causes
+were answerable. The first was the honourable refusal of the committee
+to allow companies to be enrolled except according to locality. They
+would have no sectional companies of Sinn Fein volunteers, of United
+Irish League Volunteers, of Hibernian Volunteers. All must mix equally
+in the ranks. The second was the fear of most Nationalists that by
+joining an organization with which the national leader was not
+identified they might weaken his hand. This operated, although the
+declared intention of the organization was to strengthen Redmond's
+position. At Limerick in January Pearse said: "In the Volunteer movement
+we are going to give Mr. Redmond a weapon which will enable him to
+enforce the demand for Home Rule."
+
+Briefly, for several months the numbers of the new force did not show
+that the whole of Nationalist Ireland was in support of it. Ireland was
+waiting for a sign from Redmond, and it did not come. The events which
+literally drove Irish constitutional Nationalists into following
+Ulster's example had still to occur.
+
+There was, however, a wide extension of the cadres of the organization,
+and it was being spread by men some of whom--like Professor
+MacNeill--dissented from Redmond's attitude of quiescence, while some
+were general opponents of the whole constitutional policy. They covered
+the country with committees, recruited, it is true, from all sections of
+Nationalist Ireland. But it was inevitable that the element who
+distrusted Redmond, and whose distrust he reciprocated, should attain an
+influence out of all proportion to its following in the country.
+
+Government's action--and this sentence will run like a refrain through
+the rest of this book--contributed largely to strengthen the extremists
+and to weaken Redmond's hold on the people. During eleven months the
+Ulster Volunteers had been drilling, had been importing arms, and no
+step was taken to interfere. Within ten days after the Irish Volunteer
+Force began to be enrolled, a proclamation (issued on December 4, 1913)
+prohibited the importation of military arms and ammunition into Ireland.
+A system of search was instituted. But the Ulstermen were already well
+supplied. Redmond was blamed for not forcing the withdrawal of the
+proclamation. He controlled the House of Commons, it was said. This was
+the line of argument constantly taken by dissentient Nationalists; and
+it was true that he could at any moment put the Government out. Critics
+did not stop to ask for whose advantage that would be. Government by
+issuing this proclamation had effected no good: they had embarrassed
+their chief ally, and they had laid the foundation for an imposing
+structure of incidents which grew with pernicious rapidity into a
+monumental proof that law, even under a Liberal administration, has one
+aspect for Protestant Ulster and quite another for the rest of Ireland.
+
+But in England at the beginning of the fateful year 1914 the Irish
+Volunteers had not yet become recognized as a factor in the main
+political situation. An attitude of mind had been studiously fostered
+which found crude expression soon after the House met. One of the
+Liberal party was arguing that Ulster had made Home Rule an absolute
+necessity, because Nationalists would have "fourfold justification if
+they resisted in the way you have taught them to resist the Government
+of this country in maintaining the old system." "They have not the
+pluck," interjected Captain Craig, the most prominent of the Ulster
+members. The present Lord Chancellor, Mr. F.E. Smith, was voluble in
+declarations that Nationalists would "neither fight for Home Rule nor
+pay for Home Rule." These taunts did not ease Redmond's position,
+especially as it became plain that Ulster's threat of violence had
+succeeded.
+
+Mr. Asquith, referring to the "conversations" between leaders which had
+taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had
+been reached the Government had decided to reopen the matter in the
+House. This meant, as Redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the
+Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in
+making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not
+admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward
+some plan.
+
+Yet Redmond's attitude, and the attitude of the House, was considerably
+affected by an unusual speech which had been delivered by the Ulster
+leader.
+
+Sir Edward Carson, as everyone knows, is not an Ulsterman, and the chief
+of many advantages which Ulster gained from his advocacy was that
+Ulster's case was never stated to Great Britain as Ulstermen themselves
+would have stated it. It is not true to say that Ulstermen by habit
+think of Ireland as consisting of two nations, for all Ulstermen
+traditionally regard themselves as Irish and so have always described
+themselves without qualification. But it is true to say that Ulster
+Protestants have regarded Irish Catholics as a separate and inferior
+caste of Irishmen. The belief has been ingrained into them that as
+Protestants they are morally and intellectually superior to those of the
+other religion. Their whole political attitude is determined by this
+conviction. They refuse to come under a Dublin Parliament because in it
+they would be governed by a majority whom they regard as their
+inferiors. It is in their deliberate view natural that Roman Catholics
+should submit to be controlled by Protestants, unnatural that
+Protestants should submit to be controlled by Roman Catholics.
+
+It does not express the truth to say that Sir Edward Carson was adroit
+enough to avoid putting this view of the case to the electors of Great
+Britain or to the House of Commons. Temperamentally and instinctively,
+he did not share it. He was a Southern Irishman who at the opening of
+his life held himself, as not one Ulsterman in a thousand does,
+perfectly free to make up his mind for or against the maintenance of the
+Union. He reached the conclusion not only that Home Rule would be
+disastrous for Ireland, for the United Kingdom, and for the British
+Empire, but that it would mean for Irishmen the acceptance of an
+inferior status in the Empire. As citizens of the United Kingdom, he
+held, they were more honourably situated than they could be as citizens
+of an Irish State within the Empire. This was an attitude of mind which
+Ulster could endorse, although it did not fully represent Ulster's
+conviction: but this was the case which Sir Edward Carson always made on
+behalf of Ulster, and he made it as an Irishman whose personal interests
+and connections lay in the South of Ireland, not in the North. His
+argument was the more persuasive because it was based on a view of
+Ireland's true interest--not of Ulster's only; and it was the harder on
+that account for Redmond to repel peremptorily. More than this, between
+him and Redmond there was an old personal tie. The Irish Bar is a true
+centre of intercourse between men of varying political and religious
+beliefs, and as junior barristers Edward Carson and John Redmond went
+the Munster circuit together.
+
+All this lay behind the appeal which on February 11, 1914, was implied
+rather than expressed in the novel phrase and still more unaccustomed
+tone of a consummate orator.
+
+"Believe me," Sir Edward Carson said, "whatever way you settle the Irish
+question" (and that phrase threw over the cry of "No Home Rule"), "there
+are only two ways to deal with Ulster. It is for statesmen to say which
+is the best and right one. She is not a part of the community which can
+be bought. She will not allow herself to be sold. You must therefore
+either coerce her if you go on, or you must in the long run, by showing
+that good government can come under the Home Rule Bill, try and win her
+over to the case of the rest of Ireland. You probably can coerce
+her--though I doubt it. If you do, what will be the disastrous
+consequences not only to Ulster, but to this country and the Empire?
+Will my fellow-countryman"--and at this emphatic word, which jettisoned
+absolutely the theory of two nations, the speaker turned to his left,
+where Redmond sat in his accustomed place below the gangway--"will my
+fellow-countryman, the leader of the Nationalist Party, have gained
+anything? I will agree with him--I do not believe he wants to triumph
+any more than I do. But will he have gained anything if he takes over
+these people and then applies for what he used to call--at all events
+his party used to call--the enemies of the people to come in and coerce
+them into obedience? No, sir; one false step taken in relation to Ulster
+will, in my opinion, render for ever impossible a solution of the Irish
+question. I say this to my Nationalist fellow-countrymen, and, indeed,
+also to the Government: you have never tried to win over Ulster. You
+have never tried to understand her position. You have never alleged, and
+can never allege, that this Bill gives her one atom of advantage."
+
+Then, carried away by the course of his argument, an angry note came
+into his voice, and before a minute had passed we were back in the old
+atmosphere. He accused us of wanting "not Ulster's affections but her
+taxes."
+
+Well might Redmond say when he rose that Sir Edward Carson had been
+heard by all of us with very mixed feelings. "I care not about the
+assent of Englishmen," he said; "I am fighting this matter out between a
+fellow-countryman and myself, and I say that it was an unworthy thing
+for him to say that I am animated by these base motives, especially
+after he had lectured the House on the undesirability of imputing
+motives."
+
+On the personal note Redmond was to the full as effective as his
+opponent, and his speech of that day was memorable. It was also very
+much more to the taste of the Liberal rank and file than what came from
+their own front bench. "We do not by any means take the tragic view of
+the probabilities or even the possibilities of what is called civil war
+in Ulster," he said; and added that the House of Commons ought, in his
+opinion, "to resent as an affront these threats of civil war." Yet in
+the end he promised, for the sake of peace, "consideration in the
+friendliest spirit" (not very different from acceptance) of any
+proposals that the Government might feel called upon to put forward.
+
+It is noteworthy that in this prolonged debate there was no reference to
+the new fact of a second volunteer force. But on February 12th a
+question was asked about it. On the 17th there was allusion to another
+growing element of danger--the discussions among officers of the Army of
+a combined refusal to serve against Ulster. All these factors must have
+weighed with Redmond and with his chief colleagues in their discussions
+with the Government during the next three weeks. "Friendly
+consideration" passed into acceptance on March 9th, when Mr. Asquith,
+introducing the Home Rule Bill for its passage in the third consecutive
+session (as required by the Parliament Act), outlined the proposed
+modifications in it. They involved partition. But the exclusion was to
+be optional by areas and limited in time.
+
+The proposal to take a vote by counties had, it will be remembered, been
+originally suggested by Mr. Bonar Law, and in following the Prime
+Minister he could not well repudiate it. The test, however, which he now
+put forward was whether or not the proposals satisfied Ulster: and he
+fixed upon the time-limit of six years as being wholly unacceptable.
+Redmond, on the other hand, while declaring that the Government had gone
+to "the extremest limits of concession," said that the proposals had one
+merit: they would "elicit beyond doubt or question by a free ballot the
+real opinion of the people of Ulster." This indicated his conviction
+that if Home Rule really came the majority in Ulster would prefer to
+take their chances under it; the proposal of exclusion being merely a
+tactical manoeuvre to defeat Home Rule by splitting the Nationalists.
+
+Its efficacy for that purpose was immediately demonstrated. Mr. O'Brien
+followed Redmond with a virulent denunciation of "the one concession of
+all others which must be hateful and unthinkable from the point of view
+of any Nationalist in Ireland." Opposition from Mr. O'Brien and from Mr.
+Healy was no new thing. But by acceptance of these proposals the
+Nationalist leader made their opposition for the first time really
+formidable. Telegrams rained in that March afternoon--above all on Mr.
+Devlin, from his supporters in Belfast, who felt themselves betrayed and
+shut out from a national triumph which they had been the most zealous to
+promote. From this time onward the position of Redmond personally and of
+his party as a whole was perceptibly weakened. Especially an alienation
+began between him and the Catholic hierarchy. It was impossible that the
+clergy should be well disposed towards proposals which, as Mr. Healy put
+it, would make Cardinal Logue a foreigner in his own cathedral at
+Armagh.
+
+Yet upon the whole the shake to Redmond's power was less than might have
+been expected--largely, no doubt, because the offer was repelled. Sir
+Edward Carson described it as "sentence of death with stay of execution
+for six years." With a great advocate's instinct, he fastened on the
+point in the Government's proposal which was least defensible.
+
+In my opinion these modifications of the Bill were never adequately
+discussed in the meetings of the Irish party. All was done between the
+Government and Redmond's inner cabinet, consisting of Redmond himself,
+Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor. The negotiations were most
+delicate and difficult, and above all secrecy is hard to maintain when a
+body of over seventy men, each keenly concerned for the view of his
+constituents, comes to be consulted. Yet I think it a pity that the
+party never thrashed this question out. Once the principle of option was
+admitted, a great deal had to be considered. Voting must be a referendum
+either to the province as a whole, to the constituencies separately, or
+to local units of administration. A referendum by constituencies was as
+impossible as one by parishes: for instance, Mr. Devlin's West Belfast,
+out of the city's four divisions, would certainly have voted to remain
+under the Irish Parliament, and an absurd situation would have resulted.
+The choice lay between a vote by counties or by the province as a whole.
+In the province, three counties out of nine were as predominantly
+Nationalist as any part of Leinster. In two others, Tyrone and
+Fermanagh, Nationalists were about 55 per cent of the electorate. But
+the bulk of the population of Ulster resided in four counties of the
+north-east, so that Protestants over the whole province had a majority
+of some two hundred thousand. An appeal to the province, therefore,
+might involve the exclusion from Home Rule of a very large area which
+was thoroughly Nationalist. On the other hand, every scheme of exclusion
+had in view the possibility of the excluded area changing its mind on
+the question after a short trial. To separate the four overwhelmingly
+Protestant counties was to set up a body in which a change of vote would
+be much harder to bring about than in the province. As a matter of
+statesmanship there was much to be said for closing with the Ulstermen's
+original demand that the province should come in or stay out as a whole.
+It satisfied Ulster's sentiment and lessened the chances of
+crystallizing a Protestant block of excluded territory, which would tend
+to become less and less Irish.
+
+The answer to this was that Nationalists would never consent and did
+never consent to the possibility of permanent exclusion for any part.
+Insistence on the time-limit was from this point of view a matter of
+absolute principle. Yet many believed then, and believe now, that if
+any part of Ulster were excluded by legislation it would certainly come
+in voluntarily after a short period. On the other hand, if any part were
+excluded even for a year, it was difficult to believe that it could ever
+be brought in except by its own consent. The view, however, to which we
+were committed (with the party's general approval), was expressed by
+Redmond at the customary St. Patrick's Day Nationalist banquet in
+London.
+
+"To agree to the permanent partition of Ireland would be," he said, "an
+outrage upon nature and upon history." He quoted a phrase used by Mr.
+Austen Chamberlain, who had described it as "the statutory negation of
+Ireland's national claim." But, he argued, no such sacrifice of
+principle had been made. The demand of Nationalists was for a Parliament
+for the whole of Ireland, having power to deal with "every purely Irish
+matter." Temporary limitations of this demand had already been accepted.
+
+"We have agreed, as Parnell agreed in the Bill of 1886, and as we all
+agreed in the Bill of 1893, that the power of dealing with some of the
+most vital of Irish questions should not come within the purview of the
+new Parliament for a definite number of years." The control of police,
+for instance, was reserved to the Imperial Parliament in all those Bills
+for a term of years. But this did not mean that Parnell or we abandoned
+Ireland's right to manage her own police. Reservation of the police in
+perpetuity would have been impossible to accept. In the same way, said
+Redmond, "the automatic ending of any period of exclusion is for us a
+fixed and immutable principle."
+
+To maintain this conformity with national sentiment great advantages
+were sacrificed. The whole debates of this period turned on the question
+of the time-limit. If it had never been raised, opposition would still
+have existed, but the fact would have been plain from the outset that
+Protestant Ulster claimed to dictate not only where it had the majority,
+but where the majority was against it. Redmond probably believed that
+the opinion of Nationalists in the North could not be brought to consent
+to abandonment of the time-limit. If so, he probably underrated, then as
+always, the influence he possessed. It is always easy to persuade
+Irishmen that if you are going to do a thing you should do it
+"decently." What is more, a real effect could have been produced on much
+moderate opinion in Ulster by saying to Ulster: "Stay out if you like,
+and come in when you like. When you come in, you will be more than
+welcome." But the decision for this course would have needed to be taken
+before the proposals were made, since any attempt to enlarge them was
+bound to renew and intensify the inevitable storm of Nationalist
+dissent. Whatever the proposal, it should have been absolutely the last
+word of concession.
+
+If a clear proposal of local option by counties without time-limit had
+been put before Parliament and the electorate, I do not think our
+position in Ireland would have been worse than it was made by the
+proposal of temporary exclusion, and it would have been greatly
+strengthened in Parliament and in the United Kingdom. All moderate men,
+and many pronounced Unionists, were becoming uneasy under the perpetual
+menace of trouble. Events which now followed rapidly turned the
+uneasiness into grave anxiety, but did not turn it to the profit of the
+Government.
+
+The policy which was adopted in Mr. Asquith's proposal of March 9th was
+the policy which Mr. Churchill had pushed from the first introduction of
+the Home Rule Bill, even when it was formally disavowed by the Prime
+Minister. Contemptuous rejection of it by the Ulstermen when it was
+proposed was not calculated to strengthen Mr. Churchill's personal
+position, or to soothe his temper, and on March 14th he made a speech at
+Bradford which very greatly stirred public feeling. If Ulster really
+rejects the offer, said Mr. Churchill, "it can only be because they
+prefer shooting to voting and the bullet to the ballot." Should civil
+war break out in Ulster, the issue would not be confined to Ireland: the
+issue would be whether civil and parliamentary government in these
+realms was to be beaten down by the menace of armed force. Bloodshed was
+lamentable, but there were worse things. If the law could not prevail,
+if the veto of violence was to replace the veto of privilege, then, said
+the orator, "let us go forward and put these grave matters to a proof."
+
+When Mr. Churchill next appeared in the House of Commons, a great
+outburst of cheering showed what a volume of feeling had found
+expression in his speech. Redmond came to the St. Patrick's Day banquet
+under the impression of that scene, and he spoke with a confidence which
+gives to his words a tragic irony to-day. He cited "the superb speech of
+Mr. Churchill" as evidence that "what is our last word is also the last
+word of the Government."
+
+"If the Opposition have spoken their last word," he said, "the Bill will
+now proceed upon its natural course. It will proceed rapidly and
+irresistibly, and in a few short weeks become the law of the land."
+
+The weeks have lengthened into years, and so much has happened in them
+that I keep no clear memory of that evening, though I was present. But
+it represented the temper of the time, among Home Rulers, and more
+particularly among Irish Nationalists, who generally held the opinion
+that the military preparations in Ulster were, as Mr. Devlin called
+them, "a hollow masquerade."
+
+We saw the other side of the picture on Thursday, March 19th, when a
+Vote of Censure was moved. Mr. Bonar Law launched on the House of
+Commons a new and sinister suggestion.
+
+"What about the Army? If it is only a question of disorder, the Army I
+am sure will obey you, and I am sure that it ought to obey you; but if
+it really is a question of civil war, soldiers are citizens like the
+rest of us."
+
+Sir Edward rose immediately the Prime Minister had replied to Mr. Bonar
+Law, and his speech was furious. "In consequence of the trifling with
+this subject by the Prime Minister and the provocation, which he has
+endorsed, by the First Lord of the Admiralty last Saturday, I feel I
+ought not to be here but in Belfast," he said; and he indicated his
+intention of proceeding there as soon as he had spoken. What he had to
+say chiefly concerned the Army, and the preparations which were being
+made at the War Office for the despatch of troops to Ulster. He
+suggested that there was the intention to provoke an attack so that
+there might be "pretext for putting them down."
+
+"You will be all right. You will be no longer cowards. The cowardice
+will have been given up. You will have become men in entrenching
+yourselves behind the Army. But under your direction they will have
+become assassins."
+
+With these words--memorable in connection with what happened later, but
+not in Ulster--the Ulster leader left the House, followed by Captain
+Craig. Friday's papers were of course full of the debate. At noon on
+that day, March 20, 1914, General Sir Arthur Paget, Commander-in-Chief
+in Ireland, held a meeting with the officers at the Curragh and received
+the intimation that the majority of them would resign their commissions
+rather than go on duty which was likely to involve a collision with
+Ulster.
+
+It seems only fair in dealing with this whole incident to print here an
+account of what happened, written from the soldier's point of view, by
+the man who was the spokesman and leader of the resigning
+officers--Brigadier (now Lieutenant) General Sir Hubert Gough.[2]
+
+     '"I never refused to obey orders. On the contrary, I obeyed them. I
+     was ordered to make a decision--namely, to leave the Army or 'to
+     undertake active operations against Ulster.' These were the very
+     words of the terms offered. As I was given a choice, I accepted it,
+     and chose the first alternative, and as a matter of fact I have a
+     letter in existence written the night before the offer was made by
+     Sir A. Paget to my brother, saying: 'Something is up' (we had been
+     suddenly ordered to a conference). 'What is it? If I receive orders
+     to march North, of course I will go.'"
+
+     'All the officers of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade took the same line'
+     (continues the correspondent of the _Manchester Guardian_) 'and
+     resigned. This decision seems not to have been expected by the
+     authorities, and caused great perturbation. General Gough was urged
+     by Sir Arthur Paget to withdraw the resignation. Sir Arthur Paget
+     told them that the operations against Ulster were to be of a purely
+     defensive nature. Unfortunately, Sir Arthur Paget based his appeal
+     on expediency and private interest, and not sufficiently on the
+     call of public duty. This failed to influence the officers. They
+     persisted in their resignations, and only finally withdrew them on
+     receiving a written undertaking from the War Office that they would
+     not be again presented with the alternative of resigning or
+     attacking Ulster.'
+
+The Irish Party had no guess at the inner aspect of the occurrence.
+Naturally, but regrettably, we were the section of the House which had
+least touch with what was thought and felt in barrack-rooms and
+regimental messes. Naturally, but most regrettably, the opinion of the
+Army regarded us traditionally as a hostile body; and at this time every
+effort to accentuate that belief was made by the political party with
+which the Army had most intercourse and connection.
+
+Writing now, as I hope I may write without offence, of a state of things
+not far off in time, but divided from us of to-day by the marks of a
+vast upheaval, it can be said that the old professional Army was a
+society governed in an extraordinary degree by tradition. Part of that
+tradition was that the Army had no politics; and as everyone knows, the
+man who says he has no politics is in practice almost invariably a
+Conservative. In the Army, usage was at its strongest--stronger even
+than at a public school; it was almost bad manners, "bad form," to hold
+political opinions differing from those of your mess. Political
+discussion was sharply discouraged; but this never meant that a man
+might not express vehemently the prevailing opinion. On the broad facts
+it was inevitable that the prevailing opinion should be unfriendly to
+Irish Nationalists. Irish Nationalists had taken passionately the line
+of opposition to the South African War; they had been sharply critical
+of all the minor campaigns in which the Army had been engaged for
+repression or for conquest during the whole period since Parnell began
+his leadership. In Ireland itself, every man who reflected for a moment
+saw at the Curragh the very embodiment of that force which had
+maintained for over a hundred years a Government which had not the
+consent of the governed; and unless he was one of those who regarded
+themselves as "England's faithful garrison in Ireland," protestations of
+enthusiasm for the armed forces of the Crown could not be the natural
+expression of his feelings.
+
+Yet mingled with the Nationalists' attitude of estrangement from the
+forces which upheld a detested system of government there was a
+deep-seated pride in the exploits of Irish troops; and no man ever felt
+this more strongly than Redmond. He seldom spoke of the distinguished
+men he met, but again and again I remember hearing him mention with
+pleasure some talk over a dinner-table with this or that famous
+soldier--Sir John French (as he then was), for instance. It was
+happiness for him to find himself on friendly terms with the service to
+which so many sentiments bound him. The Curragh incident was to him more
+than a grave political event; it pained him beyond measure that this
+opposition should be headed by a representative of one of the Irish
+families most famous for their military record. In the debates which
+dealt with all this matter he said no word, and he kept our party
+silent--a wise course, and one to which every instinct prompted him.
+
+In its political aspect, this action of General Gough and the fifty
+officers allied with him revealed a new and formidable impediment on the
+path to Home Rule; yet it was one of those barriers which rally forces
+rather than weaken them, and in surmounting which, or sweeping them
+aside, a new impetus may be gained. The incident was first discussed in
+the House on Monday, March 23rd, and continued to dominate all other
+questions for several days. From the Labour benches Mr. John Ward (now
+Colonel), who had been a private soldier, gave the first indication of
+the volume of resentment. His speech, remarkable in its power both of
+phrasing and of thought, was delivered quite unexpectedly in a thin
+House; but its effect was electrical. Later, Mr. J.H. Thomas spoke in
+the same strain. When a railway strike was threatened, the soldiers had
+been called out and had come without a murmur. Was the Army to be used
+against all movements except those under the patronage of the Tory
+party? If so, he would tell his four hundred thousand railway men to
+equip themselves to defend their own interests.
+
+These speeches set people thinking very gravely, but their effect was to
+increase the confidence of Home Rulers--the more so as Sir Edward Grey,
+in one of his rare moments of emphasis, declared his determination to go
+as far as either speaker if the case which they foreshadowed should
+arise. But new occurrences disquieted the public; the bungling which had
+characterized dealings with the officers at the Curragh was not ended
+there. General Gough received a document from Colonel Seely, Secretary
+of State for War, countersigned by Sir John French and Sir Spencer
+Ewart, the military heads of the War Office; and this document was in
+part disavowed by the Cabinet. The two Generals resigned and Colonel
+Seely followed their example. I have never seen the House of Commons so
+completely surprised as on the afternoon when the Prime Minister
+announced that he himself would succeed to the vacant office. The
+surprise passed at once into a feeling of immense relief, very widely
+shared by all parties. The right thing had been done in the right way,
+and it was clear that Mr. Asquith possessed enormous authority, if he
+chose to assert it.
+
+The effect of all these happenings was immediately perceptible in the
+resumed discussion on the Home Rule Bill. Mr. Dillon, speaking on the
+second day, said: "Yesterday for the first time I heard this question
+debated in a spirit of reasonableness and conciliation and with an
+evident desire on both sides to reach an agreement." A proposal
+frequently put forward from the Tory side suggested exclusion until a
+federal arrangement for the United Kingdom could be completed. The
+official Tory demand was for either a referendum or a general election.
+But, as Redmond pointed out when he spoke on the fourth and last day of
+the debate, any proposal for a settlement must be a settlement which
+Ulster would accept, and Ulster declared that it would not be influenced
+by any vote of the British people or by any Act of Parliament. In a
+passage of very genuine feeling he indicated what Ulster might do to
+assist him in securing for Ulster the extremest limit of concession:
+
+"Anything which would mean burying the hatchet, anything which would
+mean the consent of these Ulstermen to shake hands frankly with their
+fellow-countrymen across the hateful memories of the past, would be
+welcomed with universal joy in Ireland, and would be gladly purchased by
+very large sacrifices indeed. If the right honourable and learned
+gentleman (Sir Edward Carson) would say to me, 'We are both Irishmen; we
+both love our country; we both hate--and I am sure this is absolutely
+true of both of us--we both hate all the old sectarian animosities, all
+the old wrongs, all the old memories which have kept Irishmen apart; let
+us come together and see what we can do for the welfare of our common
+country, so that we can hand down to those who come after us an Ireland
+more free, more peaceful, more tolerant, an Ireland less cursed by
+racial and religious differences'; if an appeal like that were made to
+me, I say without the smallest hesitation that there are no lengths that
+Nationalist Ireland would not be willing to go to assuage the fears,
+allay the anxieties, and remove the prejudices of their Ulster
+fellow-countrymen.
+
+"But, alas! that is not the position. Even the permanent exclusion of
+Ulster is not put forward as the price of reconciliation; it is simply
+put forward as the one and sole condition upon which they will give up
+their avowed intention of levying war upon their fellow-countrymen."
+
+He dealt with the federal proposal, and once more avowed his desire for
+that solution. "I have been all my political life preaching in favour of
+federalism." But he could not consent that the exclusion of Ulster
+should be prolonged indefinitely pending a settlement on federal lines,
+nor consent to any "watering down of the powers in the present Home Rule
+Bill."
+
+What remained then, if Ulster would not accept the offer? Nothing but
+"to proceed calmly with the Bill." Threats of civil war he discounted.
+Disturbances there would probably be; but when the first Home Rule Bill
+was defeated, there were weeks of the most terrible riots in Belfast.
+The House could not afford to be deterred from any course by threats of
+violence; and he was confident that the Bill would pass into law and
+profoundly confident it would never be revoked.
+
+He gave his reasons for that confidence in a passage almost
+autobiographical in character--if only because it made the House realize
+how completely this man's whole adult life had been devoted to this one
+long service, and how far the labours of our party had achieved their
+purpose.
+
+"In a sense I may say I have lived my whole life within these walls. I
+came in here little more than a boy, and I have grown old in the House
+of Commons, and in the long space of years which have passed since then
+I have witnessed the most extraordinary transformation of the whole
+public life of this country, and I have witnessed an almost miraculous
+change in the position and the prospects of the Irish National Cause.
+When I came to this House, Irish Nationalist members, in a sense, were
+almost outcasts. Both the great British parties--there was no Labour
+party then--divided on everything else, were united in hostility to the
+national movement and the national ideal. Home Rule seemed hopelessly
+out of the range of practical politics. There were only a handful of men
+in this whole House of Commons besides us who were in favour of any
+measure of Home Rule for Ireland. Outside, the public opinion of this
+country was ignorant, and it was actively hostile, and we found it
+impossible to gain the ear of the democracy of England for the voice of
+Ireland. All that has vanished into thin air. All that has radically
+changed. The change has been slow and gradual, but it has been
+continuous and sure. Such a change as that can never be reversed. You
+might as well talk of the world going back to the days before
+electricity or petrol as hope to bring back the prejudices and the
+ignorance of the masses of the people in this country about Ireland, as
+they existed in the past."
+
+His confidence was strong and it communicated itself to Ireland. But
+whatever could be said to shake confidence was said by Mr. O'Brien and
+Mr. Healy, who denounced the Bill as worthless when linked to the plan
+of even temporary partition, and declared that, whatever the Government
+might say at present, we had not yet reached the end of their
+concessions. On the division they and their party abstained, so that the
+majority dropped to 77.
+
+Up to this point it is still true to say that the Nationalist party were
+constant to their faith in strictly constitutional action. But a new
+development was imminent. On the night of Friday to Saturday, April
+24th-25th, Ulstermen brought off their first overt act of rebellion.
+They seized the ports of Larne and Donaghadee, cut off telephone and
+telegraph, landed a very large quantity of rifles and ammunition, and
+despatched them to every quarter of the province by means of a great
+fleet of motor-cars which had been mobilized for the occasion. It was a
+clean and excellent piece of staff work, planned by a capable soldier
+and carried out under military direction: and the Tory Press hailed it
+with no less enthusiasm than was elicited by the most important
+victories in the recent war.
+
+One coastguard, running to give the alarm, died of heart failure:
+otherwise there was no casualty. The police and customs officers were
+confronted with _force majeure_ and submitted without show of
+resistance. The Prime Minister, in answering a question as to the action
+which he proposed to take, used these words:
+
+"In view of this grave and unprecedented outrage the House may be
+assured that His Majesty's Government will take without delay
+appropriate steps to vindicate the authority of the law and protect
+officers and servants of the King and His Majesty's subjects in the
+exercise of their legal rights."
+
+The Opposition was noticeably silent, and next day some embarrassment
+was apparent when they proceeded with a previously arranged Vote of
+Censure on the Government for the military and naval movements in
+connection with which the Curragh incident had occurred. The sum of
+these movements amounted to despatching four companies to points in
+Ulster at which very large stores of arms and ammunition were lying
+under very small guard--and at one of which there was a battery of field
+guns with no protecting infantry. It was regarded as at least possible
+that the stores might be rushed by "evil-disposed persons, not fully
+under the control of their leaders." It was also regarded as possible
+that the movement of these companies might be resisted and that much
+larger operations might be thereby involved. The stationing of the Fleet
+opposite the Belfast coast was part of the measures taken against this
+latter contingency.
+
+All this preparation was denounced as a conspiracy organized by Mr.
+Churchill with intent to provoke rebellion and put it down by a
+massacre. In view of the important military operation which Ulster had
+just carried out against the Crown, Mr. Churchill was not without
+justification in comparing the motion to a vote of censure by the
+criminal classes on the police. Yet, after much hard hitting in speech,
+he once more led the way in retreat from the Government's position. Sir
+Edward Grey had declared, speaking for the Government, that beyond the
+six years' limit they could not go. Mr. Churchill himself had declared
+the Government's offer would be and should be their last word. Yet now,
+avowedly on his own account, and not speaking for the Cabinet, he
+proposed that a new negotiation should be opened with Sir Edward Carson.
+
+This proposal elicited no response, and the debate continued that day in
+a line of violent recrimination. But next day Sir Edward Carson rose and
+affirmed that he had previously declared his willingness to advise
+Ulster to close with a proposal giving exclusion until a Federal scheme
+had been considered, when the whole matter should be reviewed "in the
+light of the action of the Irish Parliament and how they got on." Now he
+said:
+
+"I shall try to make an advance on what I said before. I will say
+this--and I hope the House will believe me, because, though I do not
+want to be introducing my own personality into it, I am myself a
+southerner in Ireland--I would say this: That if Home Rule is to pass,
+much as I detest it, and little as I will take any responsibility for
+the passing of it, my earnest hope, and indeed I would say my most
+earnest prayer, would be that the Government of Ireland for the South
+and West would prove, and might prove, such a success in the future,
+notwithstanding all our anticipations, that it might be even for the
+interest of Ulster itself to move towards that Government, and come in
+under it and form one unit in relation to Ireland. May I say something
+more than that? I would be glad to see such a state of things arising in
+Ireland, in which you would find that mutual confidence and goodwill
+between all classes in Ireland as would lead to a stronger Ireland as an
+integral unit in the federal scheme. While I say all that, that depends
+upon goodwill, and never can be brought about by force."
+
+Redmond remained silent; but months later it became known that he had
+taken action to foster this new spirit. He advised the Prime Minister
+not to proceed with the prosecution which had been threatened against
+the Larne gun-runners. But at the same time he urged upon Government
+that they should withdraw the proclamation against importing arms: and
+for this he had good reason. The Larne affair had rendered the movement
+in support of the Irish Volunteers irresistible, and Redmond had decided
+to throw himself in with it.
+
+The result was an amazing upward leap in the numbers of the Volunteers.
+On June 15th a question brought out that they were estimated at 80,000
+against 84,000 of the Ulster force; but the Nationalist body was
+increasing at the rate of 15,000 a week. By July 9th they were reckoned
+(on police information) at 132,000, of whom nearly forty thousand were
+Army reservists.
+
+These facts now dominated the situation. It was now abundantly clear
+that if passing Home Rule meant civil war, so also would the abandonment
+of Home Rule. On June 16th Lord Robert Cecil raised a debate on the new
+danger. In that debate words were quoted from Sir Roger Casement, one of
+the most active promoters of the movement: "When you are challenged on
+the field of force, it is upon that field you must reply." Mr. Dillon,
+who exulted in the "splendid demonstration of national sentiment shown
+in the uprising of the National Volunteers," urged strongly that the
+growth of a rival body was not a menace to public order but an added
+security. The armed Ulstermen would be "much slower to break the peace"
+when they realized the certainty of formidable resistance--and this, be
+it said, was no ungrounded observation. Yet at the same time the very
+success of the Volunteer movement was disquieting Redmond. He was not in
+the same position as Sir Edward Carson, who from the first had directed,
+presided over, and controlled the raising and equipment of his force;
+and unless the force were to be a menace to his leadership, he must
+secure control. As Mr. Bulmer Hobson puts it in his _History of the
+Irish Volunteers_:
+
+"The Volunteers had men in their ranks who were political followers of
+Mr. Redmond's, and men who were not, and who never had been. The latter
+were willing to help him if he had been ready to help them; they would
+have made terms with him, but were not prepared to be merely absorbed
+into his movement."
+
+The strength of Redmond's position lay in the fact that the vast
+majority of the enrolled men looked to him as their leader: his
+weakness, in that the committees under which enrolment had taken place
+were largely composed of the extremist section. He now determined to
+unite the Volunteers with the parliamentary party as the Ulster
+Volunteers were linked with Sir Edward Carson and his civilian
+organization.
+
+The men with whom he had to deal were principally Professor MacNeill and
+Sir Roger Casement. His first proposal was to replace the existing
+Provisional Committee by another, consisting of nine members, with
+Professor MacNeill, who was regarded as a general supporter of
+Redmond's, in the chair. Oddly enough, the negotiations broke down
+because Redmond nominated Michael Davitt's son along with Mr. Devlin and
+his own brother to be representatives. The young Davitt had at an early
+stage expressed dissent from the movement, and this, coming from his
+father's son, left bitter resentment. The existing Committee now
+proposed to call a National Convention of the Volunteers. Such a body
+would clearly have become a rival, and a powerful rival, to the National
+Convention of a purely citizen type, and Redmond felt himself forced to
+take drastic action. In a public letter dated June 9th he wrote:
+
+"I regret to observe the controversy which is now taking place in the
+Press on the Irish National Volunteer movement. Many of the writers
+convey the impression that the Volunteer movement is, to some extent at
+all events, hostile to the objects and policy of the Irish party. I
+desire to say emphatically that there is no foundation for this idea,
+and any attempts to create discord between the Volunteer movement and
+the Irish party are calculated in my opinion to ruin the Volunteer
+movement, which, properly directed, may be of incalculable service to
+the National Cause.
+
+"Up to two months ago I felt that the Volunteer movement was somewhat
+premature, but the effect of Sir Edward Carson's threats upon public
+opinion in England, the House of Commons, and the Government; the
+occurrences at the Curragh Camp, and the successful gun-running in
+Ulster, have vitally altered the position, and the Irish party took
+steps about six weeks ago to inform their friends and supporters in the
+country that in their opinion it was desirable to support the Volunteer
+movement, with the result that within the last six weeks the movement
+has spread like a prairie fire, and all the Nationalists of Ireland will
+shortly be enrolled.
+
+"Within the last fortnight I have had communications from men in all
+parts of the country, inquiring as to the organization and control of
+the Volunteer movement, and it has been strongly represented to me that
+the Governing Body should be reconstructed and placed on a thoroughly
+representative basis, so as to give confidence to all shades of National
+opinion."
+
+Redmond's proposal was that to the existing Committee there should be
+added twenty-five representative men from different parts of the
+country, nominated at the instance of the Irish party and in sympathy
+with its policy and aims. Failing this, he intimated that it would be
+"necessary to fall back on county control and government until the
+organization was sufficiently complete to make possible the election of
+a fully representative Executive by the Volunteers themselves."
+
+The intimation was not at once accepted. An order was issued calling on
+the Volunteers to elect additional representatives by counties to be
+added to the Committee. Redmond at once publicly declared that this
+amounted to refusal of his offer, and he put the issue very plainly. The
+Provisional Committee was originally self-constituted and had been
+increased only by co-option. The majority of its members, he was
+informed, were not supporters of the Irish party: of the rank and file
+at least 95 per cent., he said, were supporters of the Irish party and
+its policy.
+
+"This is a condition of things which plainly cannot continue. The rank
+and file of the Volunteers and the responsible leaders of the Irish
+people are entitled, and indeed are bound, to demand some security that
+an attempt shall not be made in the name of the Volunteers to dictate
+policy to the National party who, as the elected representatives of the
+people, are charged with the responsibility of deciding upon the policy
+best calculated to bring the National movement to success.
+
+"Moreover, a military organization is of its very nature so grave and
+serious an undertaking that every responsible Nationalist in the country
+who supports it is entitled to the most substantial guarantees against
+any possible imprudence. The best guarantee to be found is clearly the
+presence on the Governing Body of men of proved judgment and
+steadiness."
+
+As a last word he renewed his threat of calling on his supporters to
+organize separate county committees independent of the Dublin centre.
+This was carrying matters with a high hand, and the fact that he
+succeeded proves the greatness of his prestige at the moment. The
+Committee in a published manifesto accepted his terms, but accepted them
+with declared regret, and eight of the original members seceded. Among
+them was Patrick Pearse, with whom went three others who suffered death
+in Easter week two years later.
+
+All this was a disastrous business, and the worst part of it lay in the
+public avowal of divided councils. Moreover, a committee so constituted
+could not, and did not, operate efficiently. The original members were
+primarily interested in the Volunteer Force; the added ones primarily in
+the parliamentary movement. Nearly all of the latter--selected for their
+"proved judgment and steadiness"--were men past middle age; and of the
+whole twenty-five Willie Redmond alone subsequently bore arms.
+
+There was indeed an underlying difference of principle. Redmond knew
+well, and all parliamentarians with him, that under the terms of the
+Home Rule Bill no army could be raised or maintained in Ireland without
+the consent of the Imperial Parliament. The original Volunteer Committee
+laid it down as an axiom that the Volunteer Force should be permanent;
+they were, as Casement put it, "the beginning of an Irish army." Sir
+Edward Carson's policy had produced a new mentality among Irish
+Nationalists, and it made many take Redmond's constitutionalism for
+timidity.
+
+But in the eyes of the world and of Ireland generally, Redmond was just
+as much as Sir Edward Carson the accredited and accepted leader of his
+Volunteer organization, and to him the Volunteers looked for provision
+of arms and equipment. One of his chief preoccupations in those months
+was with this matter, and it explains his desire to have the
+proclamation against the import of arms withdrawn. The Larne exploit had
+proved the futility of it; articles by Colonel Repington in _The Times_
+testified to the completeness of the provision which had been made for
+Ulster. But smuggling is always a costly business, and Nationalists were
+hampered by the cost. More than that, there was ground for suspicion
+that the scales were not equally weighted as between Ulster and the rest
+of the country. On June 30th Redmond wrote a letter to the Chief
+Secretary repeating his case for withdrawal of the proclamation. It is
+all memorable, but especially the warning which concludes the following
+passages from it:
+
+"In the South and West of Ireland, not only are the most active measures
+being taken against the importation of arms, but many owners of vessels
+are harassed unnecessarily.
+
+"The effect of this unequal working of the proclamation has been grave
+amongst our people, and has tended to increase both their exasperation
+and their apprehensions.
+
+"The apprehensions of our people are justified to the fullest. They find
+themselves, especially in the North, faced by a large, drilled,
+organized and armed body. Furthermore, the incident at the Curragh has
+given them the fixed idea that they cannot rely on the Army for
+protection. The possession of arms by Nationalists would, under these
+circumstances, be no provocation for disorder, but a means of preserving
+the peace by confronting one armed force with another, not helpless
+but, by being armed, fully able to defend themselves.
+
+"Finally, we want to call your most serious attention to the grave and
+imminent danger of a collision between Nationalists and the police in
+the effort to import arms. The police in the South and West might not be
+so passive as they were in the recent affair at Larne, and there might
+be serious conflicts, and even loss of life, and from this day forward
+every day which the proclamation is enforced as strictly as it is now
+against the Nationalists brings increased danger of disastrous collision
+between the police and the people."
+
+Within a fortnight a minor incident illustrated the "unequal working"
+referred to in the first of these points. General Richardson, who
+commanded the Ulster Force, had issued on July 1st an order authorizing
+all Ulster Volunteers to carry arms openly and to resist any attempt at
+interference. In Ulster accordingly no search was ever attempted. But on
+July 15th Mr. Lawrence Kettle, brother to Professor Kettle, who had from
+the first been a prominent official of the Volunteers, was returning in
+his motor from the electric works at the Pigeon House; he was stopped by
+the police and his car searched for arms. Such an occurrence in Ulster
+would have been held to justify immediate rebellion, and would have been
+carefully avoided. In Dublin there was no such avoidance of provocation.
+
+Yet the avoidance of anything which might precipitate strife was indeed
+in these days most desirable. June 28th saw the murder of the Archduke
+at Sarajevo. The European sky grew rapidly overcast. Days passed, and
+the possibility of civil war was exchanged for the near probability of
+European war which might find the British Empire divided against itself.
+
+It was necessary in the highest interests of State for the Government to
+make an effort to compose the cause of so much violent faction, which
+might at any moment assume acute form. The Amending Bill, introduced in
+the House of Lords with the Government's offer embodied in it, had been
+altered by the Peers in a manner which Lord Morley described as
+tantamount to rejection. In this shape it was to come before the House
+of Commons on July 20th. But on that Monday, when the House reassembled
+after the weekly holiday, the Prime Minister rose at once and announced
+in tones of no ordinary solemnity that the King had thought it right to
+summon representatives of parties both British and Irish to a Conference
+next day at Buckingham Palace, over which Mr. Speaker would preside.
+
+Redmond in two brief sentences guarded his attitude. He disclaimed all
+responsibility for the policy of calling the Conference and expressed no
+opinion as to its chances of success. The invitation had reached him and
+Mr. Dillon in the form of a command from the King, and as such they had
+accepted it.
+
+Some may remember how radiantly fine were those far-off days in July
+which led us up to the brink of such undreamt-of happenings. On the
+Tuesday night I was sitting alone on the Terrace, when Redmond came out.
+For once, he was in a mood to talk. His mind was full of the strangeness
+and interest of that first day's Conference--a council, or parley, so
+momentous, so unprecedented. It touched what was very strong in him--the
+historic imagination. He told me how the King had received them all,
+stayed with them for some intercourse of welcome, and had been specially
+marked in his courtesy to Redmond himself, who had of course never
+before been presented to him. Then, he had accompanied them to the room
+set apart for their deliberations and had left them with their chairman,
+the Speaker. When I think over Redmond's description of the Sovereign's
+personality, it seems to me that he was describing one so paralysed, as
+it were, by anxiety as to have lost the power of easy, genial and
+natural speech. But the dominant thought in his mind did not concern
+King George. One figure stood out--Sir Edward Carson. "As an Irishman,"
+Redmond said, "you could not help being proud to see how he towered
+above the others. They simply did not count. He took charge absolutely."
+
+As I gathered, the eight members sat four on each side of a long table,
+with the Speaker at the head. The Irish leaders were on his right and
+left, and the discussion was chiefly between them.
+
+It turned mainly on the question of the area to be excluded. Enormous
+trouble had been taken, and Redmond told me later that a great map in
+relief had been constructed, showing the distribution of Protestant and
+Catholic population. This brought out with astonishing vividness the
+contrast: the Catholics were on the mountains and hill-tops, the
+Protestants down along the valley lands.
+
+Nothing could be more cordial, Redmond said, than Sir Edward Carson's
+manner to him. They met as old friends, and I believe that when they
+parted, one asked the other that they should have "one good shake-hands
+for the sake of old times on the Munster circuit." But it was clearly
+recognized that there was a point beyond which neither of them could
+take his followers, and these points could not be brought to meet. Even
+if adjustment had been possible on the question of time-limit, neither
+would give up the debatable counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, in which the
+Nationalists had a clear though small majority of the population, but in
+which the Ulster Volunteer organization was very strong. On Friday, July
+24th, Mr. Asquith announced the failure of the attempt. "The possibility
+of defining an area for exclusion from the operation of the Government
+of Ireland Bill was considered, and the Conference being unable to agree
+either in principle or in detail on such an area, it concluded."
+
+An incident which did not lack significance was that on the second day
+of these meetings Redmond, returning with Mr. Dillon along Birdcage Walk
+to the House, was recognized by some Irish Guards in the barracks, who
+raised a cheer for the Nationalist leaders which ran all along the
+barrack square. The Army was not all disposed to take sides with Ulster
+and against the Nationalists.
+
+But parts of it were. The collision between forces of the Crown and
+Irish Volunteers trying to land arms, which Redmond had foretold and
+deprecated in his letter of June 30th, was fated to occur.
+
+On Saturday, July 25th, five thousand Ulster Volunteers, fully armed,
+with four machine guns--in short, an infantry brigade equipped for
+active service--marched through the streets of Belfast, no one
+interfering. On Sunday, the 26th, a private yacht sailed into Howth
+harbour with eleven hundred rifles on board and some boxes of
+ammunition. By preconcerted arrangement a body of some seven hundred
+Irish Volunteers had marched down to meet the yacht. These men took the
+rifles, and with them set out to march back in column of route to
+Dublin. Two thousand rounds of ammunition were with them in a
+truck-cart, but none was distributed.
+
+Meanwhile the telephones had been busy. The Assistant-Commissioner of
+Dublin Police, Mr. Harrel, an energetic officer, was informed, and he
+acted instantly. The Under-Secretary, permanent official head of Dublin
+Castle, was at his Lodge in the Phoenix Park some two miles distant: Mr.
+Harrel informed him of what was happening and was ordered to meet him at
+the Castle. But Mr. Harrel was not content to delay. He called out what
+police he could muster, some hundred and eighty men, and judging that
+they would be insufficient, decided on his own authority to requisition
+the military. At the Kildare Street Club he found the Brigadier-General
+in command of the troops in Dublin, and this officer immediately ordered
+out a company of the King's Own Scottish Borderers. With this force of
+soldiers and police Mr. Harrel proceeded to a point on the road from
+Howth to Dublin and blocked the way. When the body of Volunteers
+reached him, he demanded the surrender of their rifles. This was
+refused. He then ordered the police to disarm the men. A scuffle
+followed, in which nineteen rifles were seized. Some of the Volunteers
+without orders fired revolvers, and by this firing two soldiers were
+slightly wounded. One Volunteer received a slight bayonet wound.
+
+Then there was a stop and a parley, and the Volunteer leaders threatened
+to distribute ammunition. While the parley lasted the Volunteers in rear
+of the column dispersed, carrying their rifles, leaving only a couple of
+ranks drawn across the road in front, who blocked the view. When Mr.
+Harrel perceived what was happening, he ordered the soldiers to march
+back to Dublin and took the police with him.
+
+By this time wild rumours had spread through the city, and on the way
+back the troops were mobbed. They were pelted with every kind of missile
+and many were hurt, though none seriously; and it understates the truth
+to say that they were in no danger. They had their bayonets, and from
+time to time made thrusts at their assailants. At last, on the quays, at
+a place called Bachelor's Walk, the company was halted, and the officer
+in command intended, if necessary, to give an order for a few individual
+men to fire over the heads of the crowd. But the troops had lost their
+temper, and without order given a considerable number fired into the
+crowd. Three persons were killed and some thirty injured.
+
+The first that I knew of these events was on the Monday, when I got the
+paper at a station in Gloucestershire, on my way to the House. The
+railway-carriage was full of casual English people, and I have never
+heard so much indignant comment on any piece of news. "Why should they
+shoot the people in Dublin when they let the Ulstermen do what they
+like?" That was the burden of it. It is easy to guess what was felt and
+thought and said in Dublin and throughout Ireland.
+
+What Redmond said in the House of Commons is characteristic of his
+attitude. He demanded that full judicial and military inquiry into the
+action of the troops should be held, and that proper punishment should
+be inflicted on those found guilty.
+
+"But," he said, "really the responsibility rests upon those who
+requisitioned the troops under these circumstances. So far as the troops
+are concerned, I deplore more than I can say that this has
+occurred--this incident calculated to breed bad blood between the Irish
+people and the troops. I deplore that. I hope that our people will not
+be so unjust as to hold the troops generally responsible for what, no
+doubt, taking it at its worst, was the offence of a limited number of
+men."
+
+I do not think any soldier could have wished for a fairer or more
+friendly statement; and a chance assisted to realize his hope that the
+troops generally would not be held responsible. One of the killed was a
+woman whose son was a Dublin Fusilier. This man published a letter in
+the Press calling on all Dublin Fusiliers and all soldiers who
+sympathized with him to attend the funeral. It was well that the
+populace should feel on such a matter as this that all the troops were
+not against them; and well that they should be counselled by the leader
+of their nation to be reasonable in the direction of their resentment.
+
+This whole incident should never be forgotten by those who are disposed
+to judge the Irish harshly for what they did, and did not do, in the
+succeeding years. Above all, it should be remembered that the news of
+it, terribly provocative in itself to any people, but tenfold
+provocative by reason of the contrast which it revealed as compared with
+the treatment of Ulster, was published to the world less than ten days
+before Redmond had to face the question, What should Ireland do in the
+war?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: _Manchester Guardian_, February 4, 1919]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WAR IN EUROPE
+
+I
+
+
+The week which began on Monday, July 27th, was feverish and excited.
+Formal discussion on the occurrences at Clontarf and Bachelor's Walk was
+confined to the Monday; but each day had a stormy scene during
+question-time arising out of it. The Amending Bill from the Lords was to
+have been taken on Tuesday, but Mr. Asquith postponed it till Thursday,
+to get a calmer atmosphere. When Thursday came, it was postponed again
+and indefinitely. "We meet," said the Prime Minister, "under conditions
+of gravity which are almost unparalleled in the experience of any one of
+us." It was therefore necessary to "present a united front and be able
+to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation." To continue
+the Home Rule discussion must involve the House in acute controversy in
+regard to "domestic differences whose importance to ourselves no one in
+any quarter of the House is disposed to disparage or belittle."
+
+The Leader of the Opposition assented. Two sentences in his speech have
+importance. The first laid it down that this postponement should not "in
+any way prejudice the interests of any of the parties to the
+controversy." The second indicated that he spoke not only for the
+Unionist party but for Ulster.
+
+It is very difficult now, after all that has crowded in upon us, jading
+the sensitive recipient surface of memory, to reconstitute the frame of
+mind in which we passed those days. One thing I clearly remember,
+perhaps worth noting for its significance. In a division lobby,
+probably on the Wednesday night, I came in touch with a friend, then a
+subordinate member of the Government, who had been among the keenest
+advocates of our cause. I asked how he thought things were going. My
+question had reference to our affairs, which had been for so many months
+the dominant issue; but he answered with reference to the European
+situation, as if that alone existed. Looking back, it seems to me
+strange that one should have been so engrossed in any preoccupation as
+in reality to ignore the vast and imminent possibilities. Yet, after
+all, I believe my case was typical of many. For us Irish, this was the
+crucial point, the climax of a struggle which had been intense and
+continuous now for a period of four years--which in its wider sense had
+gone on, with ebb and flow, yet always in progress during the whole
+adult lifetime of our leader and his principal colleagues. For more than
+us, for scores of Labour men and Liberals, it had become almost a fixed
+belief that European war was only a nightmare of the imagination. War in
+the Balkans, war possibly in the East of Europe, we could think of; but
+war flinging the complex organization, so potent yet so delicate, of
+great and fully civilized States into the melting-pot--that we never
+really believed in. Prophets of finance, prophets of the labour world,
+had told us the thing was impossible. Even our most recent experience,
+the irruption of armed forces into the political arena, had contributed
+to fix in our minds the view that all armaments were merely _in
+terrorem_, part of a gigantic game of bluff.
+
+In a world organized as was Europe in 1914 on the basis of universal
+military service, it is dangerous, not only materially but morally and
+intellectually, to be as the people of these islands were, segregated
+from all military experience. We were almost like children in a magazine
+of explosives: we knew, of course, that there were dangerous substances
+about us; but we did not realize how suddenly and irretrievably the
+whole thing might go off.
+
+I do not know how Redmond gauged the situation. But he spent the end of
+the week in town, and must have been less unprepared than was one like
+myself, who during the Saturday, Sunday and the Monday Bank Holiday was
+away in a most peaceful country-side, remote from news. Even on the
+Tuesday, the instant bearing on our own questions and our own lives of
+what we read in the newspapers was not clear to me. There was to be a
+debate, of course; but only when I saw the attendants setting chairs on
+the floor of the House itself--a thing which had not been done since
+Gladstone introduced his second Home Rule Bill--did I grasp the fact
+that something wholly unusual was expected.
+
+My strong impression is that the House as a whole was in great measure
+unprepared for what it had to face. You could feel surprise in the air
+as Sir Edward Grey developed his wonderful speech. Men, shaken away from
+all traditional attitudes, responded from the depths of themselves to an
+appeal which none of us had ever heard before.
+
+Having failed to secure my place on the Irish benches, I was sitting on
+one of the chairs close by the Sergeant at Arms, just inside the bar of
+the House, so that I saw at once both sides of the assembly: there were
+no parties that day. The Foreign Secretary's speech, intensely English,
+with all the quality that is finest in English tradition, clearly did
+not in its opening stages carry the House as a whole. Passages struck
+home, here and there, to men not to parties, kindling individual
+sentiments. Appeal to a common feeling for France did not elicit a
+general response; but here and there in every quarter there were those
+who leapt to their feet and cheered, waving the papers that were in
+their hands; and the two figures that stand out most vividly in my
+recollection were Willie Redmond, our leader's brother, and Arthur
+Lynch. We were in a very different atmosphere already from the days of
+the Boer War.
+
+It was not until the speaker reached in his statement the outrage
+committed on Belgian neutrality that feeling manifested itself
+universally. Appeal was made to the sense of honour, of fair play, of
+respect for pledges, by a man as well fitted to make such an appeal as
+ever addressed any audience; and it was the case of Belgium that made
+the House of Commons unanimous.
+
+Later in the evening speeches from the Radical group made it clear that
+unanimity was not yet definitive. Labour was hesitant; Germany had still
+to complete Sir Edward Grey's work. With this disposition in England
+itself, what was likely to be the feeling in Ireland? Nobody, I think,
+expected that anything would be said from our benches. There had been no
+consultation in our party, such as was customary and almost obligatory
+on important occasions. I have said before that Redmond's position was
+by understanding and agreement that of chairman, not of leader. Mr.
+Dillon, by far the most important of his colleagues, was away in
+Ireland. Any action that Redmond took he must take not merely in an
+unusual but in a new capacity, as leader, at a great moment, acting in
+his own right.
+
+Neither had there been any consultation between him and the Government.
+He knew only what the general public knew. Parts of Sir Edward Grey's
+speech were to him, as to the other members of the House, a surprise at
+many points. At one point it certainly was. After summing up the
+situation, first in relation to France, then in relation to Belgium, the
+Foreign Secretary, speaking with the utmost gravity, foretold for Great
+Britain terrible suffering in this war, "whether we are in it or whether
+we stand aside." He made it clear that the island safety was not
+unchallengeable; there could be no pledge to send an expeditionary force
+outside the kingdom. Then, with a sudden lift of his voice, he added:
+"One thing I would say: the one bright spot in the very dreadful
+situation is Ireland. The position in Ireland--and this I should like to
+be clearly understood abroad--is not a consideration among the things we
+have to take into account now."
+
+The history of this passage is strange. All who heard assumed that the
+speaker relied on definite promises. Such a promise had been given, from
+one party. The Ulster leader had, with the sure instinct for Ulster's
+interest which guided him throughout, conveyed to the Government through
+Mr. Bonar Law an assurance that they could count on Ulster's imperial
+patriotism. Ulster, so far as pledges went, was the bright spot. Where
+Germany had counted on finding trouble for Great Britain, no trouble
+would be found. But Sir Edward Grey at that moment of his career was
+lifted perhaps beyond himself, certainly to the utmost range of his
+statesmanship. He was a chief member of the Ministry which had brought
+to the verge of complete statutory accomplishment the task which the
+Liberal party inherited from Gladstone. He knew--his words have been
+already quoted--what Ireland's gratitude to Gladstone had been even for
+the unfinished effort; and now, in this crucial hour, he counted upon
+Ireland. From Ulster, which had its bitter resentment, assurances were
+needed: but if Ulster were contented to fall into line, then all was
+well with Ireland. Speaking as one who had done his part by Ireland,
+with the confidence that counts upon full comradeship he assumed the
+generosity of Ireland's response. That did not fail him, sudden and
+unforeseen though the challenge came--for it was an appeal and a
+challenge to Ireland's generosity.
+
+When the notable words concerning Ireland were spoken, Redmond turned to
+the colleague who sat next him, one of his close personal friends, and
+one of his wisest, most moderate and most courageous counsellors. He
+said: "I'm thinking of saying something. Do you think I ought to?" Mr.
+Hayden answered, "That depends on what you are going to say." Redmond
+said: "I'm going to tell them they can take all their troops out of
+Ireland and we will defend the country ourselves." "In that case," said
+Mr. Hayden, "you should certainly speak." Redmond leant over to Mr. T.P.
+O'Connor, who sat immediately below him, and consulted him also. Mr.
+O'Connor was against it. Though the war had no more enthusiastic
+supporter, he thought the risk too great. It was just a week and a day
+since Redmond had moved an adjournment to consider the occasion when
+Government forces were turned out to disarm Irish Volunteers, and when
+troops fired without order on a Dublin crowd. Ireland was still given
+over to a fury of resentment, issuing not alone in speeches but in
+active warlike preparation. On Sunday, August 1st, memorial masses for
+the victims were held up and down the country. In Belfast there was a
+parade of four thousand Irish Volunteers; and finally, at a point on the
+Wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in
+defiance of Government and its troops. Now, forty-eight hours after
+these demonstrations, would the Irish leader ask his countrymen to blot
+from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a
+wound? Would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation's
+feeling? The boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated.
+Redmond did not.
+
+This is not to say that he spoke without full reflection. He always
+thought far ahead; and in these tense days of waiting upon rumour, he
+must have pondered deeply upon all the possibilities--must have had
+intuition of what this opportunity, England's difficulty, might mean for
+Ireland. Other minds were on the same trail. In the Dublin papers of
+that morning were two letters of moment--one of them from Sir Arthur
+Conan Doyle.
+
+"The chief point which has divided Protestant Ulster from the rest of
+Ireland," he wrote, "is that Nationalists were not loyal to the Empire."
+Then, recalling briefly the extent to which Irish Nationalists had
+helped in creating that Empire, he went on: "There is no possible reason
+why a man should not be a loyal Irishman and a loyal Imperialist
+also.... A whole-hearted declaration of loyalty to the common ideal
+would at the present moment do much to allay the natural fears of Ulster
+and to strengthen the position of Ireland. Such a chance is unlikely to
+recur. I pray that the Irish leaders may understand its significance and
+put themselves in a position to take advantage of it."
+
+The other letter, written from a different standpoint, was signed by Mr.
+M.J. Judge, a most active Irish Volunteer who had been wounded in the
+scuffle on the way back from Howth. "England," he said, "might inspire
+confidence by restoring it. She could bestow confidence by immediately
+arming and equipping the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers, properly
+armed and equipped, could preserve Ireland from invasion, and England
+would be free to utilize her 'army of occupation' for the defence of her
+own shores."
+
+Redmond could not have seen either of these letters, but those two
+trains of thought were blended in his speech--which was less a speech
+than a supreme action. It was the utterance of a man who has a vision
+and who, acting in the light of it, seeks to embody the vision in a
+living reality.
+
+Mr. Bonar Law followed Sir Edward Grey with a few brief sentences of
+whole-hearted support. Then Redmond rose, and a hush of expectation went
+over the house. I can see it now, the crowded benches and the erect,
+solid figure with the massive hawk-visaged head thrown back, standing
+squarely at the top of the gangway. While he spoke, as during Sir Edward
+Grey's speech, the cheering broke out first intermittently and scattered
+over the House, then grew gradually universal. Sitting about me were
+Tory members whom I did not know; I heard their ejaculations of
+bewilderment, approval and delight. But in the main body of the
+Unionists behind the front Opposition bench papers were being waved, and
+when Redmond sat down many of these men stood up to cheer him. In five
+minutes he had changed the whole atmosphere of domestic politics in
+regard to the main issue of controversy.--Here is the speech:
+
+"I hope the House will not think me impertinent to intervene in the
+debate, but I am moved to do so a great deal by that sentence in the
+speech of the Foreign Secretary in which he said that the one bright
+spot in the situation was the changed feeling in Ireland. Sir, in past
+time, when this Empire has been engaged in these terrible enterprises,
+it is true that it would be the utmost affectation and folly on my part
+to deny that the sympathies of Nationalist Ireland, for reasons deep
+down in the centuries of history, have been estranged from this country.
+But allow me to say that what has occurred in recent years has altered
+the situation completely. I must not touch upon any controversial topic,
+but this I may be allowed to say--that a wider knowledge of the real
+facts of Irish history has altered the view of the democracy of this
+country towards the Irish question, and I honestly believe that the
+democracy of Ireland will turn with the utmost anxiety and sympathy to
+this country in every trial and danger with which she is faced.
+
+"There is a possibility of history repeating itself. The House will
+remember that in 1778, at the end of the disastrous American War, when
+it might be said that the military force of this country was almost at
+its lowest ebb, the shores of Ireland were threatened with invasion.
+Then a hundred thousand Irish Volunteers sprang into existence for the
+purpose of defending those shores. At first, however--and how sad is the
+reading of the history of those days! no Catholic was allowed to be
+enrolled in that body of Volunteers; yet from the first day the
+Catholics of the South and West subscribed their money and sent it for
+the army of their Protestant fellow-countrymen. Ideas widened as time
+went on, and finally the Catholics of the South were armed and enrolled
+as brothers-in-arms with their fellow-countrymen. May history repeat
+itself! To-day there are in Ireland two large bodies of Volunteers, one
+of which has sprung into existence in the North and another in the
+South. I say to the Government that they may to-morrow withdraw every
+one of their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended by her armed
+sons from invasion, and for that purpose the armed Catholics in the
+South will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant
+Ulster men. Is it too much to hope that out of this situation a result
+may spring which will be good, not merely for the Empire, but for the
+future welfare and integrity of the Irish nation? Whilst Irishmen are in
+favour of peace and would desire to save the democracy of this country
+from all the horrors of war, whilst we will make any possible sacrifice
+for that purpose, still, if the necessity is forced upon this country,
+we offer this to the Government of the day: They may take their troops
+away, and if it is allowed to us, in comradeship with our brothers in
+the North, we will ourselves defend the shores of Ireland."
+
+It needed no gift of prophecy to be certain that such a speech would be
+popular in the House of Commons, and many Unionists that day were almost
+aggrieved that Sir Edward Carson had not risen at once to reply to the
+offer in the same spirit. They did not realize the difficulty of the
+Ulster leader's position. To admit and welcome the unity of Ireland was
+to give away Ulster's case. To accept the Nationalist leader's utterance
+as sincere, still more to assume that Ireland as a whole would endorse
+it, was to weaken, if not to give away, Ulster's best argument, and from
+that hour to the end of the war Sir Edward Carson was most loyal to
+Ulster's interests.
+
+Further, it is conceivable that by some who cheered it the speech may
+have been misunderstood. Yet it is not probable that many who heard
+Redmond believed that in order to serve England he was flinging away
+Ireland's national claim, to the successful furtherance of which his
+whole life had been devoted. The Unionist party as a whole certainly
+understood that to accept Redmond's offer in the spirit in which it was
+made meant accepting the principle of Home Rule: and on that afternoon
+in August they were not unready to accept it. They felt, for the speech
+made them feel, that a great thing had happened. Yet they might well be
+pardoned for some scepticism as to how the utterance might be taken in
+Ireland, and how it would issue in action. A famous Nationalist said
+some ten days later: "When I read the speech in the paper, I was filled
+with dismay. Now I recognize that it was a great stroke of statesmanship
+which I should never have had the courage to advise."
+
+Redmond's instinct had been right. He trusted in the appeal to national
+pride and to the sense of national unity. Ireland was perfectly willing,
+and he knew it, to give loyal friendship to England on the basis of
+freedom. But the test of freedom had now come to be the right to bear
+arms, and this was a proposal that Ireland should undertake her own
+defence. Ireland was sick of the talk of civil war, and this was a
+proposal that Ulstermen and the rest should make common cause. It was an
+appeal addressed by an instinct, which was no less subtle than it was
+noble, to what was most responsive in the best qualities of Irishmen.
+None the less it was a statesman's utterance addressed to a people
+politically quick-minded; Ireland saw as well as Redmond himself that
+what stood in the way of Ireland's national aspiration was the
+opposition of one section of Irishmen. To that extent, and to that
+extent only, was the speech political in its purpose. Whatever made for
+common action made for unity; and whatever made for unity made for Home
+Rule. That is the key to Redmond's attitude throughout the war--perhaps
+also to Sir Edward Carson's.
+
+
+II
+
+The response from Nationalist Ireland had not long to be waited
+for--although the inquest on the victims of the Bachelor's Walk tragedy
+was in progress on the very day when Redmond's speech appeared in the
+Press. Waterford Corporation instantly endorsed their member's
+utterance, and throughout the week similar resolutions were passed all
+over the country, Unionist members of these bodies joining in to second
+the proposals. In Cork, the City Council had before it a resolution
+condemning the Government for its attempt to disarm the Irish
+Volunteers, and calling for stringent penalties on the offenders in the
+Bachelor's Walk affair: the resolution was withdrawn and one of hearty
+support to Redmond's attitude adopted.
+
+Yet Irish opinion did not go so far as Mr. William O'Brien, who proposed
+the complete dropping of the Home Rule Bill till after the war, in order
+to bring about a genuine national unity. The action of the Offaly corps
+of Volunteers, for instance, was typical. They agreed to offer their
+services gladly on two conditions: first, that the Home Rule Bill should
+go on the Statute Book; secondly, that the Volunteers should be
+subsidized and equipped by Government.
+
+But it was assumed in Ireland that no question arose about the safety of
+the Bill, and people gave themselves to the new emotion. Troops were
+cheered everywhere at stations and on the quays: National Volunteers and
+local bands turned out to see them off. Even the battalion of King's Own
+Scottish Borderers, which had been confined to barracks since the
+events of July 26th, was cheered like the rest as it marched down to the
+transports ready for it.[3]
+
+This was the attitude of the general populace. Broadly speaking,
+Redmond's speech pleased the people. It was welcomed by generous-minded
+men in another class, who responded at once in the same spirit. Lord
+Monteagle wrote: "Mr. Redmond has risen nobly to the occasion"; Lord
+Bessborough, that he trusted all the Unionists in the South would at
+once join the Irish Volunteers. The Marquis of Headfort, the Earls of
+Fingall and of Desart, Lord Powerscourt, Lord Langford, all chimed in
+with offers of help. Mr. George Taaffe wrote: "I thank God from the
+bottom of my heart that to-day we stand united Ireland." In county
+Wexford sixty young Protestants came in a body to join up, led by a very
+Tory squire.
+
+It should be clearly noted that while Redmond's aim was to make this
+Ireland's war, in which Irishmen should serve together without
+distinction of North or South, all that he asked of the land in his
+speech of August 4th was that the Volunteers should undertake duties of
+home defence. This was precisely what Sir Edward Carson had asked of
+Ulster. On August 14th, in a letter to the Press, the commander of a
+Fermanagh battalion of Ulster Volunteers wrote: "No one will be asked to
+serve outside Ulster until Sir Edward Carson notifies that he is
+satisfied with the attitude of the Government with regard to the Home
+Rule Bill and Ulster."
+
+Redmond neither could nor did ask any man to serve outside Ireland till
+he was satisfied with the Government's attitude in regard to Home Rule.
+In the first days of the war, however, the critical question for him was
+to know how his offer of assistance from the Volunteers would be
+accepted by the Government, and at the outset all promised favourably.
+On August 8th a telegram was sent to the Lord-Lieutenant:
+
+"His Majesty's Government recognize with deep gratitude the loyal help
+which Ireland has offered in this grave hour. They hope to announce as
+soon as possible arrangements by which this offer can be made use of to
+the fullest possible extent."
+
+That unquestionably represented the mind of Mr. Asquith and his civilian
+colleagues. But a new power had transformed the Cabinet. Lord Kitchener,
+refusing to accept the post of Commander in Chief, had insisted on
+becoming Secretary of State for War.
+
+No one is likely to underestimate Lord Kitchener's value at that hour.
+But probably no one now will dispute that the political control which
+this soldier obtained was excessive and was dangerous. Years of fierce
+faction had shaken the public confidence in politicians, and a soldier
+was traditionally above and beyond politics. But in Lord Kitchener's
+case the soldier was certainly remote from and below the regions of
+statesmanship. Narrow, domineering, and obstinate, he was a difficult
+colleague for anyone; and for a Prime Minister with so easy a temper as
+Mr. Asquith he was not a colleague but a master. He claimed to be
+supreme in all matters relating to the Army, and in such a war this came
+near to covering the whole field of government. It most certainly
+covered the question of dealing with the Irish Volunteers and with the
+Ulster Volunteers, which meant in reality the whole question of
+Ireland.
+
+Immediately on Lord Kitchener's appointment Redmond had an interview
+with him. Redmond's report was that he had been most friendly--and most
+limited in his expectations. "Get me five thousand men, and I will say
+'Thank you,'" he had said. "Get me ten thousand, and I will take off my
+hat to you." Yet the very smallness of the estimate should have been a
+note of warning to us; it indicated a cynical view of Ireland's response
+to Redmond's public declaration.
+
+On the question of the Volunteers he made friendly promises. As the
+Sirdar in Egypt he had been used to giving fair words to native chiefs.
+There is not the least reason to suppose that Lord Kitchener would have
+felt bound to show Redmond his real mind.
+
+The truth was that Lord Kitchener held in respect to Ireland the
+traditional opinions of the British Army. Nobody could blame the
+professional soldier for dislike and distrust of Irish Nationalist
+politicians generally; but when at such a crisis a professional soldier,
+by no means conspicuous for breadth of mind, came to hold such a
+position as Lord Kitchener seized, the result was certain to be
+disastrous for Irish policy unless Liberal statesmanship exercised a
+strong control over him. Neither Mr. Asquith nor Mr. Birrell was likely
+to do this.
+
+Two views were taken of the proposal to encourage and utilize the Irish
+Volunteers. The first view was that Volunteers of any kind were a
+superfluous encumbrance at a moment when the supreme need was for men in
+the actual fighting-line; that encouragement of Volunteers gave an
+excuse for shirking war; and further, that Volunteers outside the
+State's control were a danger; that the danger was increased when there
+were two rival Volunteer forces which might fly at each other's throats;
+and that it was a matter for satisfaction that one of these forces
+should be very greatly inferior to the other in point of arms and
+equipment, so that considerations of prudence would lessen the chance of
+collision. This satisfaction was greatly heightened by the reflection
+that the armed force was thoroughly loyal to the Empire and could be
+trusted to assist troops in the case of any attack upon the Empire begun
+by the other--a contingency which should always be taken into account.
+
+This line of thought was certainly Lord Kitchener's. He had no distrust
+of Irish soldiers in ordinary regiments; no professional soldier ever
+had. But he had a deep distrust of a purely Irish military organization
+under Irish control. At the back of Lord Kitchener's mind was the
+determination "I will not arm enemies." This was the very negation and
+the antithesis of the second view, which was Redmond's.
+
+Redmond's aim was to win the war, no less than Lord Kitchener's. But if
+Lord Kitchener realized more clearly than other men in power how
+far-reaching would be the need for troops, Redmond realized also far
+more than the men in power how vital would be the need for America. He
+saw from the first, knowing the English-speaking world far more widely
+than perhaps any member of the Government, that the Irish trouble could
+not limit its influence to Ireland only. Greater forces could be
+conciliated for war purposes by reconciliation with Ireland--by bringing
+Ireland heart and soul into the war--than the equivalent of many
+regiments. Yet even from the narrower aspect of finding men, he regarded
+the same policy as essential. He assumed that recruiting in Ireland must
+always be voluntary--at any rate a matter for Ireland's own decision:
+the question was how to get most troops. Knowing Ireland, he recognized
+how complete was the estrangement of its population from the idea of
+ordinary enlistment. The bulk of the population were on the land, and in
+Ireland, as in Great Britain, "gone for a soldier" was a word of
+disgrace for a farmer's son. More than that, the political organization
+of which he was head had inculcated an attitude of aloofness from the
+Army because it was the Army which held Ireland by force. Enlistment
+had been discouraged, on the principle that from a military point of
+view Ireland was regarded as a conquered country. A test case had arisen
+over the Territorial Act, which was not extended to Ireland, any more
+than the Volunteer Acts had been. We had voted against Lord Haldane's
+Bill on the express ground that it put Ireland into this status of
+inferiority and withheld from Irishmen that right to arm and drill which
+was pressed upon Englishmen as a patriotic duty. We had explicitly
+declared then in 1907 that our influence should and must be used against
+enlistment.
+
+These facts of history had not merely produced in Ireland an attitude of
+mind hostile to the idea, so to say, of the British Army as an
+institution, though the individual soldier had always been at least as
+popular as anyone else. They had produced a population extraordinarily
+unfamiliar with the idea of armament. The old Volunteers and the
+Territorials had at least conveyed to all ranks of society in Great
+Britain the possibility of joining a military organization while
+remaining an ordinary citizen. In the imagination of Ireland, either you
+were a soldier or you were not; and if you were a soldier, you belonged
+to an exceptional class, remote from ordinary existence. To cross that
+line was a far greater step to contemplate with us than in England.
+Redmond reckoned, and reckoned rightly, that to bring Irishmen together
+in military formations, learning the art of war, was the best way to
+combat this disinclination to enter the Army--this feeling that
+enlistment meant doing something "out of the way," something contrary to
+usage and tradition. He reckoned that the attitude of Nationalist
+Ireland would alter towards a Government which put arms in their hands
+on their own terms; and that with a great war on foot a temper of
+adventure and emulation would very soon draw young men flocking to the
+ranks in which they could see the reality of war. That was Redmond's
+policy and it was the statesman's. Nationalist Ireland was perfectly
+ready to adopt the ideals which moved the British Empire at home and
+overseas in the war: but first the British Empire must show that it
+respected the ideals of Nationalist Ireland. The Empire's statesmen did
+so: the British democracy did so: but Lord Kitchener stood in the way.
+
+From Ulster, it was clear that immediate cordial co-operation could not
+be anticipated. Yet Redmond had implicit faith in the ultimate effect of
+comradeship in danger, and here we know he was right. He was to pay a
+heavy price in blood for the seal set upon that bond; but in the end the
+seal was set. For the moment, Ulster as a whole was sullen and
+distrustful. Feeling that to admit the good faith of Nationalists
+jeopardized their own political cause, they belittled what in the
+interests of the common weal it would have been wise even to over-value.
+At the outset "An Ulster Volunteer" wrote to the papers "Let us all
+unite as a solid nation"; but such an utterance was exceptional. Hardly
+less exceptional was the line taken by "An Officer of National
+Volunteers" who wrote, "If the necessity arose to-morrow and the word
+went out from Headquarters, the National Volunteers would be prepared to
+fight to the very death in defending the homes and liberties of France
+and England." "For Ireland Only" was a motto much inculcated in those
+days among the Irish Volunteers. Suspicion on the one side bred
+estrangement on the other; and every hour lost increased the mischief.
+
+Moreover, in spite of the generous action taken by outstanding
+individuals, the general mass of Unionist opinion was grudging and
+uncordial. A friend who was then closely in touch with it described to
+me the attitude of Dublin clubs: "They were almost sorry Redmond had
+done the right thing." Such men were part of Ireland, and all Ireland
+was remote from war. For them, now as always, Home Rule was the
+paramount consideration, and none could deny that the prospects for
+Home Rule were immensely improved by Redmond's action. In these days,
+when an end of the conflict was expected in three months, when every
+check to the Germans was magnified out of all reason, there was no sense
+of the relative value of issues. Everywhere in Unionist society and in
+the Irish Unionist Press there was ungenerous and unfriendly criticism
+which did much harm.
+
+Two things could have checked these forces for evil. The first would
+have been an immediate decision to make Home Rule law. This would have
+put an end to the pestilent growth of suspicion among Nationalists, and
+it would have enabled Redmond to launch at once his appeal for soldiers.
+The other would have been a decision to make good the pledge contained
+in the Government's message to Lord Aberdeen and to accept in some
+practical way the offered service of the Volunteers.
+
+The latter of these courses involved no controversy with Ulster, and to
+it Redmond first addressed himself. He made constant appeals in private
+to Ministers; he was angry and disappointed over the delay: and after a
+week he thought it necessary to raise the matter in the House. He asked
+the Prime Minister whether British Territorials were to be sent to
+Ireland to replace the troops which had been withdrawn--a step which
+would have been equivalent to a rejection of his offer. On this point he
+received satisfaction; Territorials would not be sent. He asked then if
+the Prime Minister could not say at once what steps would be taken to
+arm and equip the Volunteers. Mr. Asquith's reply emphasized the great
+difficulty which stood in the way. "I do not say," he added, "that it is
+insuperable." The first part was the voice of Lord Kitchener; the
+second, the voice of the Government which had sent the telegram of
+August 8th.
+
+In the War Office the desire to give the National Volunteers as far as
+possible what they wanted did not exist, and the Government, who had
+that desire, had not the determination to enforce it. Such a position
+can never be for long concealed. Let it be remembered, too, that all
+through these days there was proceeding in Dublin a public inquiry into
+the events of the Howth gun-running and the affray at Bachelor's Walk,
+and some measure of Redmond's difficulties may be obtained.
+
+Nevertheless, his policy was winning: and when Parliament rose for an
+adjournment, he spent his first Sunday in Ireland motoring to
+Maryborough, where he inspected a great muster of Volunteers, and was
+able to speak to them with gladness of the response to his appeal.
+
+"From every part of Ireland I have had assurances from the Irish
+Volunteers that they are ready to fulfil this duty: and from every
+part--perhaps better and happier still--evidences of a desire on the
+part of men who in the past have been divided from us to come in at this
+hour of danger."
+
+He told his audience how a battalion of that famous regiment, the
+Inniskilling Fusiliers, had been escorted through the town of
+Enniskillen, in which Orange and Green have always been equally and
+sharply divided, by combined bodies of the Irish and Ulster Volunteer
+Forces. Then turning to the question of equipment, and reminding them
+that the proclamation against importing arms had been withdrawn, he
+announced that he had secured several thousand rifles to distribute.[4]
+He went on then to pledge himself--it must be said with characteristic
+overconfidence--as to the intentions of the Government: "The
+Government--which has withdrawn its troops from Ireland and which has
+refused to send English Territorials to take their place--is about to
+arm, equip and drill a large number of Irish Volunteers." Very soon, he
+told them, every man in the force would have a rifle--and this involved
+a grave responsibility, and the need for discipline in the work which
+was laid upon them.
+
+"I wish them God-speed with their work. It is the holiest work that men
+can undertake, to maintain the freedom and the rights and to uphold the
+peace, the order and safety of their own nation. You ought to be
+proud--you, the sons and the grandsons of men who were shot down for
+daring to arm themselves--you ought to be proud that you have lived to
+see the day when with the good will of the democracy of England you are
+arming yourselves in the light of heaven."
+
+The note of exultation in this passage rings again and again through his
+utterances. He saw, or thought he saw, the symbol of achieved liberty in
+the muster of young men, ready to take up the sword, and no longer
+branded with the name of felons for so doing. Nor was he alone in his
+rejoicing. The host at that meeting was a great Irish landlord, Colonel
+Sir Hutcheson Poe. He, upon reading Redmond's speech of August 4th had
+written to the Press saying that since he was too old to serve he was
+taking steps to arm and equip a hundred National Volunteers. Now, in
+Redmond's presence, addressing a body of the Volunteers, he told them
+what he thought of Redmond's action.
+
+"That five minutes' speech did more to compose our differences, to unite
+all Irishmen in a bond of friendship and good will, than could have been
+accomplished by years of agitation or by a conference, however
+well-intentioned it might be."
+
+That was a notable tribute from one of the eight men who formed the
+historic Land Conference of 1902; and Sir Hutcheson Poe was not the man
+to rest on complimentary expressions. He set to work at once to promote
+a memorial praying for joint action between Ulster and the Irish
+Volunteers and for settlement of the political question which alone
+prevented such action.
+
+Unhappily, this was not easy of accomplishment. When the House
+reassembled after its adjournment of a fortnight, negotiations were
+resumed, with the result that on August 31st the Prime Minister asked
+for a fresh adjournment for ten days, at the end of which time the
+Government hoped to be able to produce satisfactory proposals as to the
+Irish and Welsh Bills. Redmond felt himself obliged to enter a protest.
+It had been agreed that the circumstances of the war should not be
+allowed to inflict political injury on any party in the House; and he
+would give the friendliest consideration to any proposal for giving to
+the Opposition what they might have gained by a discussion on the
+Amending Bill.
+
+"But we must emphatically say that any proposal which would have the
+effect of depriving us of the enactment of the Irish measure--and I
+presume I may say the same with reference to the Welsh measure--an
+enactment to which we were entitled practically automatically when the
+circumstances of the war arose, would do infinite mischief, and would be
+warmly resented by us.
+
+"Just let me say one word more. There has arisen in Ireland the greatest
+opportunity that has ever arisen in the history of the connection
+between the two countries for a thorough reconciliation between the
+people of Ireland and the people of this country. There is to-day, I
+venture to say, a feeling of friendliness to this country, and a desire
+to join hands in supporting the interests of this country such as were
+never to be found in the past; and I do say with all respect, that it
+would be not only a folly, but a crime, if that opportunity were in any
+degree marred or wasted by any action which this country might take. I
+ask this House--and I ask all sections of the House--to take such a
+course as will enable me to go back to Ireland to translate into
+vigorous action the spirit of the words I used here a few days ago."
+
+An angry scene followed. Mr. Balfour asked whether "it was possible
+decently to introduce subjects of acute discussion in present
+circumstances"--in other words, whether all mention of Home Rule must
+not be postponed till after the war. This provoked hot debate, checked
+only by a strong appeal from the Prime Minister. But the general effect
+was not reassuring to Ireland. The contrast with the Tsar's prompt grant
+of autonomy to Poland was sharply drawn. Nobody rated high the chances
+of an amicable agreement. On September 4th Sir Edward Carson outlined
+his views in Belfast. Home Rule "will never be law in our country." But
+"in the interests of the State and of the Empire we will postpone active
+measures." This indicated sufficiently that in his judgment the Bill
+might become law, and that they would not be encouraged to set up
+immediate resistance. The Prime Minister, as chief Minister of the
+nation, must be supported in the war at all costs.
+
+Next day, renewing at Coleraine his appeal for recruits, he said:
+
+"We are not going to abate one jot or tittle of our opposition to Home
+Rule, and when you come back from serving your country you will be just
+as determined as you will find us at home."
+
+This was the answer to Redmond's proposal of fraternization. Clearly Sir
+Edward Carson had made up his mind that he could not prevent the passage
+of the Bill, and he decided upon the strongest course, which was to
+advocate unlimited support to the war. Any other course would have been
+ruinous to his cause, which depended always upon a profession of the
+extremest loyalty. Yet only a strong man, confident in his leadership,
+could have taken this line at a moment when Ulstermen were about to feel
+that all their preparations were wasted and that the game had been won
+against them by a paralysing chance.
+
+Before the House reassembled there was a meeting at the Carlton Club; a
+report communicated to the Press attributed these words to Sir Edward
+Carson--they are typical of the tone of the time:
+
+"We asked for no terms and we got none. We did not object to go under
+the War Office. We did not make speeches calculated to humbug or
+deceive while we meant to do nothing."
+
+On September 15th Government announced its intentions. Both Bills were
+to be placed on the Statute Book, but their operation deferred till the
+end of twelve months, or, if the war were not then over, till the end of
+the war. During the suspensory period Government would introduce an
+Amending Bill. Mr. Asquith made a flattering reference to Sir Edward
+Carson's action in appealing to his organization for recruits, and
+admitted that "it might be said that the Ulstermen had been put at a
+disadvantage by the loyal and patriotic action which they had
+undertaken."--This meant that their preparations for resistance to Mr.
+Asquith's Government were disorganized.--He proceeded to promise that
+they should never have need of such preparations; they should get all
+the preparations aimed at without having to use them.
+
+"I say, speaking again on behalf of the Government, that in our view,
+under the conditions which now exist--we must all recognize the
+atmosphere which this great patriotic spirit has created in the
+country--the employment of force, any kind of force, for what you call
+the coercion of Ulster, is an absolutely unthinkable thing. So far as I
+am concerned, and so far as my colleagues are concerned--I speak for
+them, for I know their unanimous feeling--that is a thing we would never
+countenance or consent to."
+
+This utterance has dominated the situation from that day to this. Ulster
+had organized to rebel, sooner than come under an Irish Parliament; and
+had refrained from rebellion because the Great War was in progress. For
+this reason Ulster should never be coerced, no matter what might happen.
+Sir Edward Carson's line of action had secured an enormous concession:
+he might have gone back to his people and said, "We have won." But he
+was strong enough to represent it as a new outrage, which they for the
+sake of loyalty must in the hour of common danger submit to endure. By
+this course, risky for himself, he vastly improved their position in all
+future negotiation.--After a violent speech from Mr. Bonar Law the Tory
+party walked out of the House in a body.
+
+Redmond rose at once. He denounced the view that Ireland had gained an
+advantage, or desired to gain one. The Prime Minister had at every stage
+assured him that the Bill would be put on the Statute Book in that
+session, and therefore it was unjust to say that his loyalty was only
+conditional; he had asked for nothing that was not won in advance. Now,
+instead of an Act to become immediately operative, Ireland received one
+with at least a year's delay. Yet this moratorium did not seem to him
+unreasonable.
+
+"When everybody is preoccupied by the war and when everyone is
+endeavouring--and the endeavour will be made as enthusiastically in
+Ireland as anywhere else in the United Kingdom--to bring about the
+creation of an Army, the idea is absurd that under these circumstances a
+new Government and a new Parliament could be erected in Ireland."
+
+Further, it gave time for healing work. The two things that he cared for
+most "in this world of politics" were: first, that "not a single sod of
+Irish soil and not a single citizen of the Irish nation" should be
+excluded from the operation of Irish self-government; secondly, that no
+coercion should be applied to any single county in Ireland to force
+their submission.
+
+The latter of these ideals was cast up to him by many in Ireland, first
+in private grumblings, afterwards with public iteration. He saw and
+admitted, what these critics urged, that the one aspiration made the
+other impossible of fulfilment, for the moment. Would it be so, he
+asked, after an interval in which Ulstermen and other Irishmen,
+Nationalist and Unionist, would be found fighting and dying side by side
+on the battlefield on the Continent, and at home, as he hoped and
+believed, drilling shoulder to shoulder for the defence of the shores of
+their own country?
+
+On that hint he renewed his appeal to the Ulster Volunteers for
+co-operation and regretted that he had got no response from them. More
+than that, he urged that his appeal to Government had got no response.
+"If they had done something to arm, equip and drill a certain number at
+any rate of the National Volunteers the recruiting probably would have
+been faster than it had been." Alluding to the taunts at Ireland's
+shirking which had been bandied about in interruptions during the
+debate, he recalled the stories which already had come back from France
+of Irish valour; of the Munster Fusiliers who stood by their guns all
+day and in the end dragged them back to their lines themselves; the
+story told by wounded French soldiers who had seen the Irish Guards
+charge three German regiments with the bayonet, singing a strange song
+that the Frenchmen had never heard before--"something about God saving
+Ireland."
+
+"I saw these men," said Redmond, "marching through London on their way
+to the station; they marched here past this building singing 'God save
+Ireland!'"
+
+But he could not rest his claim, and had no intention of resting it,
+merely on the prowess of the Irish regulars already in the army.
+
+"Speaking personally for myself, I do not think it is an exaggeration to
+say that on hundreds of platforms in this country during the last few
+years I have publicly promised, not only for myself, but in the name of
+my country, that when the rights of Ireland were admitted by the
+democracy of England, Ireland would become the strongest arm in the
+defence of the Empire. The test has come sooner than I, or anyone,
+expected. I tell the Prime Minister that this test will be honourably
+met. I say for myself that I would feel myself personally dishonoured
+if I did not say to my fellow-countrymen as I say to them here to-day,
+and as I will say from the public platform when I go back to Ireland,
+that it is their duty, and should be their honour, to take their place
+in the fighting-line in this contest."
+
+That was a clear pledge. The Home Rule Bill received the Royal Assent on
+September 18th. But before the seal was affixed Redmond's manifesto to
+the Irish people was in all the newspapers. It was his call to arms.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 3: This fact was verified for me oddly enough. When the 16th
+Division went to France, it was put through the usual period of
+apprenticeship with trained troops, and our brigade was attached for
+training to the Scottish Fifteenth Division. Two companies of our
+battalion of the 6th Connaught Rangers were attached to the 8th and 9th
+K.O.S.B. I met two officers who had been in Dublin on July 26th, and it
+was one of these who told me of the cheering. Perhaps I may add that the
+relations between our Connaught Rangers and the Scots were most
+friendly, and that we found probably a hundred Irish Catholics in that
+battalion--Irishmen living in the North of England who had at once
+rushed to enlist in the nearest corps available.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Bought in Belgium by John O'Connor M.P., and T.M. Kettle,
+after the Germans had entered Brussels.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE RAISING OF THE IRISH BRIGADES
+
+I
+
+
+At the ending of the long session of Parliament in 1914 there was a
+curious scene in the House of Commons, where members were crowded to
+assist at the formal passing of the Irish and Welsh Bills. On the
+adjournment, Mr. Will Crooks, from his seat on the front bench below the
+gangway, called out, "Mr. Speaker, would it be in order to sing 'God
+save the King'?" and without more ado uplifted his voice and the House
+chimed in. There must have been strange thoughts in the minds of
+Redmond, of Mr. Dillon, and others of the Irish, standing in the places
+where they had fought so long and bitter a battle, where they had been
+so often the object of fierce reproaches, whence they had hurled back so
+many taunts, now to find themselves the centre of congratulation, and
+joined with English members in singing on the floor of the House that
+national anthem which in Ireland had been for decades a symbol of
+ascendancy, rigidly tabooed by every Nationalist.
+
+When the singing ended, Mr. Crooks's genial voice rose again. "God save
+Ireland!" he shouted.
+
+"And God save England too!" Redmond answered.
+
+That exchange of words outside the period of debate is, contrary to
+usage but very properly, recorded in Hansard.
+
+From this time forth Redmond was on his trial. He had given pledges; he
+must make good to Ireland and make good to Great Britain. For the first,
+since Home Rule could not be brought into operation, he must secure
+recognition of the National Volunteers, must establish and regularize
+their status; for the second, he must obtain recruits as Ireland's
+contribution to the war. The two proposals were in his view--and indeed
+were in reality--inseparably connected. For both, in order to succeed,
+he needed to have the cordial support of his fellow-countrymen; for
+both, he needed whole-hearted co-operation from the British Government.
+It would be too much to say that Ireland backed him cordially; but for
+the limitation of Ireland's response the fault lay chiefly and primarily
+with the Government, which failed him completely. The War Office could
+not actually and directly oppose his effort to raise troops; what they
+could do was to hamper him by the adoption of wrong methods and the
+refusal of right ones. Yet in that part of his task which involved
+making good to England, laying England and the Empire under a debt of
+living gratitude, his appeal was made to Ireland, and he succeeded so
+far that only Ireland herself could have destroyed his work. But on the
+other point, which involved gaining satisfaction for Ireland, the appeal
+was made to Government and the refusal was complete. It was worse than
+absolute, for it was tainted with bad faith. Mr. Asquith as Prime
+Minister accepted the mutual covenant which Redmond had proposed, and
+allowed Lord Kitchener to disallow fulfilment of it.
+
+Redmond's view was not limited to Ireland's interest. No man living in
+these islands felt more keenly for the great underlying principles at
+issue in the war. His mission, as he conceived it, was to lead Ireland
+to serve those principles. But it was futile to suppose that he could
+secure for England all that England expected of Ireland if he could
+obtain from England nothing of what Ireland asked. Redmond wanted
+recognition for the Volunteers chiefly as a basis upon which Ireland
+could feel that she was building an Irish army worthy of her record in
+arms; and this army would be no mean assistance to the nations allied
+against Germany's aggression. Considering all the facts which have to be
+set out, the true cause for wonder is not the limitation but the extent
+of his success.
+
+There was neither delay nor uncertainty in his exposition of Ireland's
+duty. Quite literally, he seized the first chance that came to his hand.
+He left London on the evening when the Act was signed, motored to
+Holyhead, as he liked to do, in the big car which his friends had
+presented to him--it was the only material testimonial which he ever
+received--and crossed by the night boat, driving on in the morning to
+Aughavanagh. When he reached the Vale of Ovoca he found a muster of the
+East Wicklow Volunteers. These were the nearest thing to him in all the
+force--his own friends and neighbours from the Wicklow hills. Aughrim,
+his post-town at the foot of his own particular valley, had its company,
+commanded by a friend of his, the local schoolmaster--typical of what
+was best in the Volunteers, a keen Gaelic Leaguer, tireless in, work for
+the old language and old history. This man, well on in the forties, but
+mountain-bred and hardy, had thrown himself into the new
+movement--little guessing that a few months would see him a private in
+the British Army, or that he would come with honour to command a company
+of a famous Irish regiment on the battlefields of a European war.
+
+If it had been only for the sake of Captain MacSweeny (he was then, of
+course, only a captain of Volunteers), I think Redmond would have
+stopped. But it was a gathering of many friends, who pressed him to
+speak at a moment when his heart was full. Grave results followed from
+what he said that day; but a week sooner or later he was bound to say
+these things, and the results were bound to follow. Here is the pith of
+his utterance:
+
+     "I know that you will make efficient soldiers. Efficient for what?
+     Wicklow Volunteers, in spite of the peaceful happiness and beauty
+     of the scene in which we stand, remember this country at this
+     moment is in a state of war, and the duty of the manhood of Ireland
+     is twofold. Its duty is at all cost to defend the shores of Ireland
+     from foreign invasion. It has a duty more than that, of taking care
+     that Irish valour proves itself on the field of war as it has
+     always proved itself in the past. The interests of Ireland, of the
+     whole of Ireland, are at stake in this war. This war is undertaken
+     in defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and
+     right, and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country, a
+     reproach to her manhood, and a denial of the lessons of her
+     history, if young Ireland confined their efforts to remaining at
+     home to defend the shores of Ireland from an unlikely invasion, or
+     should shrink from the duty of proving on the field of battle that
+     gallantry and courage which have distinguished their race all
+     through all its history. I say to you, therefore, your duty is
+     twofold. I am glad to see such magnificent material for soldiers
+     around me, and I say to you: go on drilling and make yourselves
+     efficient for the work, and then account for yourselves as men, not
+     only in Ireland itself, but wherever the firing-line extends, in
+     defence of right and freedom and religion in this war."
+
+On the following Thursday Mr. Asquith, as Redmond had publicly urged him
+to do, came to Dublin and spoke at the Mansion House with the Lord Mayor
+in the chair. Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin, as well as Redmond, were on the
+same platform and spoke also. The papers of September 25th, which
+reported the speeches of this notable gathering, contained also a
+manifesto from twenty members of the original Committee of the
+Volunteers, definitely breaking with Redmond's policy and taking his
+speech to the Wicklow Volunteers as their cause of action. Having
+recited a version of the facts which led up to the inclusion of
+Redmond's nominees on the Committee, it continued:
+
+     "Mr. Redmond, addressing a body of Irish Volunteers on last Sunday,
+     has now announced for the Irish Volunteers a policy and programme
+     fundamentally at variance with their own published and accepted
+     aims and objects, but with which his nominees are, of course,
+     identified. He has declared it to be the duty of the Irish
+     Volunteers to take foreign service under a Government which is not
+     Irish. He has made this announcement without consulting the
+     Provisional Committee, the Volunteers themselves, or the people of
+     Ireland, to whose service alone they are devoted."
+
+The next paragraph announced the expulsion of Redmond's nominees and the
+reconstitution of the Committee as it existed before their admission.
+Six resolutions followed. It is noteworthy that the attitude taken up
+with regard to autonomy was simply "to oppose any diminution of the
+measure of Irish self-government which now exists as a Statute on
+paper," and to repudiate any "consent to the legislative dismemberment
+of Ireland." There was no word of an Irish Republic and no explicit
+claim beyond immediate operation for the Home Rule Act.
+
+Ireland's attitude towards the war was defined by a resolution:
+
+     "To declare that Ireland cannot, with honour or safety, take part
+     in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a
+     National Government of her own; and to repudiate the claim of any
+     man to offer up the blood and lives of the sons of Irishmen and
+     Irishwomen to the service of the British Empire while no National
+     Government which could speak and act for the people of Ireland is
+     allowed to exist."
+
+Mr. Asquith, when he spoke on Thursday night, must have been informed
+that this split was imminent, and he spoke with a view to that
+situation. He said:
+
+     "Speaking here in Dublin, I address myself for a moment
+     particularly to the National Volunteers, and I am going to ask them
+     all over Ireland--not only them, but I make the appeal to them
+     particularly--to contribute with promptitude and enthusiasm a large
+     and worthy contingent of recruits to the second new army of half a
+     million which is now growing up, as it were, out of the ground. I
+     should like to see, and we all want to see, an Irish Brigade--or,
+     better still, an Irish Army Corps. Don't let them be afraid that by
+     joining the colours they will lose their identity and become
+     absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or what is perhaps equally
+     repugnant, be artificially redistributed into units which have no
+     national cohesion or character.
+
+     "We shall, to the utmost limit that military expediency will allow,
+     see that men who have been already associated in this or that
+     district in training and in common exercises shall be kept together
+     and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them.
+     One thing further. We are in urgent need of competent officers, and
+     when the officers now engaged in training these men prove equal to
+     the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly
+     and gratefully retained. But, I repeat, gentlemen, the Empire needs
+     recruits and needs them at once. They may be fully trained and
+     equipped in time to take their part in what may prove to be the
+     decisive field in the greatest struggle of the history of the
+     world. That is our immediate necessity, and no Irishman in
+     responding to it need be afraid he is jeopardizing the future of
+     the Volunteers.
+
+     "I do not say, and I cannot say, under what precise form of
+     organization it will be, but I trust and I believe--indeed, I am
+     sure--that the Volunteers will become a permanent, an integral and
+     characteristic part of the defensive forces of the Crown.
+
+     "I have only one more word to say. Though our need is great, your
+     opportunity is also great. The call which I am making is backed by
+     the sympathy of your fellow-Irishmen in all parts of the Empire and
+     of the world.... There is no question of compulsion or bribery.
+     What we want, what we ask, what we believe you are ready and eager
+     to give, is the freewill offering of a free people."
+
+     This was a double pledge as to Redmond's two objects. It promised,
+     first, that every inducement should be given to join a corps
+     distinctively Irish and having national cohesion and character;
+     secondly, that the Volunteers should obtain recognition as part of
+     the defensive forces of the Crown. Over and above this was an
+     assurance of enormous importance. There was to be no question of
+     compulsion. Nothing was asked, nothing would be asked, but "the
+     freewill offering of a free people."
+
+Lord Meath followed, a representative figure of Unionist Ireland and a
+most zealous promoter of recruiting. Then Redmond spoke, and as usual
+dwelt on Ireland's contribution to the forces of the Regular Army so far
+actually engaged, which was fully adequate in numbers. "As to quality,
+let Sir John French answer for that, and let my friend and
+fellow-countryman Admiral Beatty from Wexford speak from
+Heligoland."--Nothing gave him more pleasure at all times than to dwell
+on the personal achievement of Irishmen; his voice kindled when he named
+such names.--He went on to give confident assurance, having in it the
+note of defiant answer to the revolt which had been raised:
+
+"I tell the Prime Minister he will get here plenty of recruits and of
+the best material. We will maintain here in Ireland intact and inviolate
+our Irish National Volunteers, and in my judgment that body of
+Volunteers will prove to be an inexhaustible source of strength to the
+new army corps and the new army that is being created."
+
+Then, with disdainful reference to the "little handful of pro-Germans"
+who had "raised their voices in Ireland," he declared that it would be
+no less absurd to consider them representative than to take General
+Beyers and not General Botha as expressing the sentiments of South
+Africa.
+
+Yet, as we know, the danger in South Africa was serious, and South
+Africa possessed freedom, not the promise of freedom. General Botha had
+what Redmond was denied--power to act and act promptly. In Ireland the
+menace was far less grave at this moment, but it was destined to become
+overpowering because Redmond lacked the power to deal with the situation
+in his own way. Already much had been lost. Between the declaration of
+war and the passage of the Home Rule Bill more than six weeks had been
+allowed to elapse in which nothing was done in response to Redmond's
+proposal, except the purely negative decision that Territorials should
+not be sent to garrison Ireland. This inevitably strengthened the hand
+of those who never liked the offer he had made. From the first an accent
+of dissent from the new policy was plainly distinguishable in what came
+from the Committee of the Volunteers. Mr. Bulmer Hobson says of the
+famous speech of August 4th:
+
+     "This statement amounted to an unconditional offer of the services
+     of the Irish Volunteers to the English Government, and was made
+     without any consultation with the Volunteers themselves. The first
+     that members of the Provisional Committee heard of their being
+     offered to the Government was when they read it in the newspapers,
+     and Mr. Redmond's nominees on the Committee were as much surprised
+     as the older members. At the next meeting of the Standing
+     Committee, held a couple of days later, the nominated members
+     strove hard to induce us to endorse Redmond's offer. The utmost
+     they could get, however, notwithstanding their clear party
+     majority, was a statement of 'the complete readiness of the Irish
+     Volunteers to take joint action with the Ulster Volunteer Force for
+     the defence of Ireland.' Further than that the older members of the
+     Committee declined to go. This statement in reality committed, and
+     was meant to commit, the Volunteers to nothing, though it was
+     interpreted by the Press as a complete endorsement of Mr. Redmond's
+     policy."
+
+At the beginning of the war, there were two strong currents of desire in
+the Volunteer body and its backers. One sought that the Volunteers
+should retain complete freedom of action and in no way be brought under
+the War Office. The other craved to see them trained and armed with the
+least possible delay. Colonel Moore,[5] who was the chief of their
+military staff at this time, says Mr. Hobson, saw no way of
+accomplishing the latter object without the assistance of the military
+authorities. Other men, who had come in since Redmond's speech,
+impressed on the public that without legal recognition from the Crown no
+Volunteer could act against the Germans in case of a landing without
+exposing himself and others to the penalties which Germany was
+inflicting in Belgium wherever the civilian population fired a shot. As
+a result, negotiations were opened in August 1914 with the Irish
+Command, and Colonel Moore, in concert with General Paget's staff, drew
+up a scheme for training the Irish and Ulster Volunteers and for using
+them when trained for a short term of garrison duty in Ireland. The
+scheme was submitted to the Provisional Committee, who added conditions
+designed to lead to rejection by the War Office; and in the upshot
+Colonel Moore's proposals were refused by Lord Kitchener on one side and
+by the Standing Committee of Volunteers on the other.
+
+Redmond was of course aware of the failure of this scheme, and took up
+the matter personally. He wrote to the Chief Secretary:
+
+     HOUSE OF COMMONS,
+
+     _September 9, 1914. Private_.
+
+     MY DEAR MR. BIRRELL,
+
+     I am very anxious to put shortly before you on paper my views with
+     reference to the Volunteer question, which we discussed with the
+     Prime Minister to-day. I take so strong a view on the subject that
+     I think I must ask you to show him this letter and to urge upon him
+     the importance of getting the War Office to move. I know the
+     influences that are at work in the War Office throwing cold water
+     on the Volunteers and causing intense dissatisfaction in Ireland by
+     unnecessary delays.
+
+     What I suggest should be done is this: There are two separate
+     questions: (1) Recruits; and (2) Volunteers for Home Defence.
+
+     The first absolutely depends upon the way in which the second is
+     treated. If the existing Volunteer organization is ignored and
+     sneered at and made little of, recruiting in the country will not
+     go ahead.
+
+     On the other hand, if the Volunteers are properly treated, I
+     believe that recruiting will go ahead.
+
+     Now, my suggestion is this: that an announcement should be made
+     immediately that the War Office are taking steps to assist in the
+     equipment and arming and instructing of a certain number of the
+     Irish Volunteers for Home Defence, and that this will be done
+     without interfering in any way with the character or organization
+     of the existing Volunteer Force.
+
+     Carrying out this programme will really not stand in the way of the
+     preparing of the new Army. All that is required is a few thousand
+     rifles, and there are plenty of them in the military stores in
+     Ireland at this moment which are not being used and will not be
+     used, because they are too old, in the training of the recruits,
+     but which would be quite suitable for making a beginning at any
+     rate in the drilling of the Volunteers. It might be stated that
+     they would be replaced by better weapons gradually, as soon as the
+     rush was over.
+
+     A few instructors should be placed at the disposal of the
+     Volunteers.[6]
+
+     If this is done, intense satisfaction will be given all through the
+     country, and the pride and sentiment of the Volunteers will be
+     touched, and the appeal for recruits generally through the country,
+     and even in the ranks of the Volunteers themselves, will, I am
+     confident, be responded to.
+
+     But, as I have said, if this course is not taken, inevitably
+     recruiting will flag.
+
+     I would earnestly beg of you to take this matter vigorously in
+     hand, so that some satisfactory announcement may be made before I
+     return to Ireland next week.
+
+     Very truly yours,
+
+     RIGHT HON. A. BIRRELL, M.P. J.E. REDMOND.
+
+
+Mr. Asquith's speech on September 24th was at least an indication that
+the Prime Minister desired to act in the spirit of Redmond's
+suggestions. The Chief Secretary was of the same disposition. But
+neither of them was able to control the imperious colleague who now had
+taken charge of the Army, and who in the most critical moment thwarted
+effectually the designs of Liberal statesmanship in Ireland.
+
+After Redmond's death an "Appreciation" published in _The Times_ (with
+the signature "A.B.,") by Mr. Birrell, contained this passage:
+
+     "He felt to the very end, bitterly and intensely, the stupidity of
+     the War Office. Had he been allowed to deflect the routine
+     indifference and suspicion of the War Office from its old ruts into
+     the deep-cut channels of Irish feelings and sentiments, he might
+     have carried his countrymen with him, but he jumped first and tried
+     to make his bargain afterwards and failed accordingly. English
+     people, as their wont is, gushed over him as an Irish patriot and
+     flouted him as an Irish statesman. Had he and his brother been put
+     in charge of the Irish Nationalist contingents, and an Ulster man,
+     or men, been put in a corresponding position over the Irish
+     Protestant contingents, all might have gone well. Lord Kitchener,
+     who was under the delusion that he was an Irishman no less than
+     Redmond, was the main, though not the only obstacle in the path of
+     good sense and good feeling."
+
+Yet it is, to say the least, not clear why Lord Kitchener should have
+been allowed to be an obstacle. Redmond was not fortunate in his allies.
+He had set an example of generous courage; it was not followed by
+British statesmen.
+
+From the very outset of his campaign in Ireland he had two hostilities
+to meet. The first was that of the section which had always been opposed
+to him--the Unionist party. Into this block he had already driven a
+wedge. The _Irish Times_, its principal organ in the South and West, was
+now backing him heartily, and, as has been seen, not a few leading
+Unionists were doing their utmost to assist. But the real opposition,
+that of Ulster, was in no way conciliated. On September 28th, "Covenant
+Day," a great meeting was held at which the Ulstermen denounced what
+they called the Government's treachery, and declared their implacable
+determination never to submit to Home Rule. Mr. Bonar Law for the
+British Unionists proclaimed that whereas heretofore his party were
+willing to be bound by the verdict of a general election, they now
+withdrew that condition, and without any reservation would support
+Ulster in whatever course it chose to adopt.
+
+In a purely partisan sense these speeches, and this attitude, did
+Redmond no harm in his campaign with Nationalists. When a certain
+section of Home Rulers were clamouring that he had been tricked and
+betrayed by the Government, had given all and got nothing, it was a good
+rejoinder to point to the fact that in Ulster's opinion the opportunity
+had been used to gain an unfair victory for Home Rule. But Redmond from
+the outbreak of the war had no concern with party or partisan arguments.
+He wanted a real truce, an end of bitterness, in Ireland.
+
+There was, moreover, a feature of the Ulster propaganda in these days
+which disturbed him. General Richardson, a retired Indian officer, who
+had chief command of the Ulster Volunteer Force, in appealing for
+recruits, urged the Volunteers "to recollect the events of March last
+and what the Navy and Army did for Ulster. They came to the help of
+Ulster in the day of trouble, and would come again." He added his
+assurance to the Volunteers that "when the war was over, and their ranks
+were reinforced by some 12,000 men, thoroughly well trained and with
+vast field experience, they would return to the attack and relegate Home
+Rule to the devil."
+
+It did not assist Redmond in gaining recruits for the Army that a
+general officer should represent the services as trusty and proven
+allies of gentlemen whose leading idea in life was to relegate Home Rule
+to such a destination The average Nationalist civilian did not easily
+discriminate between what was said by a retired officer out of
+commission and what was said by officers in uniform. There was a
+tendency to regard General Richardson as speaking of right for the
+Army--for which Nationalist recruits were desired.
+
+The Liberal Government could not help Redmond to allay Ulster or
+Unionist hostility. One thing they could do; they could ensure that
+whatever concession or privilege was extended to those who followed Sir
+Edward Carson should be equally accorded to those who followed Redmond.
+This one thing which they could have done they did not do. They allowed
+the War Office to increase the arrogance of the Ulstermen and to weaken
+Redmond's hand, giving Ulster special privileges, which inevitably
+created jealousy and suspicion in Nationalist Ireland--as shall be shown
+in detail.
+
+But first it is necessary to indicate the other element of
+hostility--far more serious than that of Ulster, because it challenged
+Redmond's leadership. It was that of the extremist group, which rapidly
+began to welcome German successes, not for any love to Germany but
+because it could not conceive of any hope for Ireland except in the
+weakening or Destruction of British power. These men, as been already
+seen, had acquired an influence in the Volunteer Force out of all
+proportion to their numbers, owing to the fact that the Irish party had
+stood aloof from the movement in its early stages. Professor MacNeill
+said later that but for the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic
+Association there would have been no Irish Volunteers. The bulk of both
+these bodies was always antagonistic to the parliamentary movement. When
+their opposition openly declared itself, in consequence of the East
+Wicklow speech, Redmond was not sorry to have a clear issue raised,
+involving a formal breach. In a public letter to Colonel Moore he wrote
+that he read "this extraordinary manifesto with feelings of great
+relief," because communications from all parts of the country had forced
+him to the conclusion that so long as the signatories to this document
+remained members of the governing body, "no practical work could be done
+to put the Volunteer organization on a real business basis."
+
+By a real "business basis" he meant that the Volunteers should be made a
+defensive force to act in concert with the troops engaged in the war.
+That was the clear issue. You must be for the troops or against them. In
+these days the official attitude of those who signed the dissenting
+manifesto was that Ireland should be neutral. But at such a crisis, as
+Mr. Dillon said in a telling phrase, a man who calls himself a neutral
+"is either an enemy or a coward."
+
+It became only too clear later that we had to do with a body of men who
+were enemies and were certainly not cowards. Their number at this moment
+was difficult to determine. What immediately revealed itself was that
+the vast majority of the Volunteers, when choice was forced on them,
+adhered to Redmond.
+
+The case of my own constituency, Galway City, may be given as typical,
+though rather of the towns than of the country. The country-side was
+apathetic; the towns were both for and against Redmond's policy. In
+Galway, Sinn Fein had a strong hold on the college of the National
+University, but, on the other hand, the depot of the Connaught Rangers
+was just outside the city at Renmore, and that famous corps had many
+partisans; while in the fishing village of the Claddagh nearly every man
+was a naval reservist.
+
+I came to Galway on the day the Home Rule Bill was signed and attended a
+couple of Volunteer drills, where I noted the activity of some young men
+going round with a password: "For whom will you serve?" "For Ireland
+only." After the publication of the dissenting manifesto a Committee was
+called, and I obtained leave to be present. There was a sharp
+discussion, and at the finish the vote was a tie, whether to support
+Redmond or the dissentients. This did not at all please me or my
+friends, so we determined to have a big general meeting to see on which
+side public support really lay. Everybody was invited, and a great many
+people could not get into the hall; this mattered the less because the
+Sinn Feiners cut the electric wires leading to the building and plunged
+us in darkness; luckily, it was a fine night, and we took the meeting
+outside with great success. A couple of interruptions were drastically
+dealt with, and complete peace then prevailed. Two of the four county
+members were among the many speakers, and the last man to address the
+meeting was a wounded Connaught Ranger back from the line. We cheered
+for the Rangers, and then we cheered for the King; the local band was
+present, but unable, though quite willing, to assist at this point.
+"Isn't it a pity," the chief bandsman said to me, "there was three of us
+knew the tune well, but they've all gone to the front, and not a one of
+us ever heard it."
+
+But as a net result the original Volunteer organization was killed. The
+pick of the young and keen who were with us went off to the war; the
+young and keen who stayed kept up an organization with very different
+purposes. There was plenty of material in Galway and everywhere else to
+build up a volunteer corps such as Redmond desired to see; but the
+organizing spirits were in the opposite camp, and our friends did not
+interest themselves in what seemed to be a kind of play-acting when such
+serious business was afoot in the world. Had they been set to duties of
+coast patrol, under officers who were available on the spot, and given
+clear recognition as part of the defensive forces, their body would have
+been alive and active; as it was, it atrophied and grew inert. Broadly
+speaking, the same was true all over the country. Redmond was willing to
+make bricks for the War Office to build with; they insisted that he
+should make them without straw.
+
+Facts directly connected with recruiting ultimately convinced the
+British public that the War Office had spoilt a great opportunity in
+Ireland. But the fundamental blunder, the deep-seated cause which
+undermined the force of Redmond's appeal, was the refusal of recognition
+to the National Volunteers and the failure to fulfil the promise held
+out in Mr. Asquith's Dublin speech.
+
+
+II
+
+The other respects in which the War Office crippled the Nationalist
+efforts after recruiting were matters of detail, not of principle. The
+first and best help which Redmond might expect would have come from his
+colleagues in the party; and all the recruiting authorities in Ireland
+should have been directed to secure that help locally. No such step was
+taken. No attempt was made to enlist Nationalists of position as patrons
+of the recruiting campaign. In Catholic Nationalist districts it was the
+rule rather than the exception to select gentlemen of the Protestant
+Church, and of strong Unionist opinions, as recruiting officers. If
+Catholic Nationalists had been selected as the official agents to assist
+in raising the Ulster Division, there would have been an outcry, and
+very rightly; it would have been contrary to common sense. But the War
+Office, always even obsequiously ready to consider the Ulstermen's point
+of view, completely lacked sympathy for that of the majority in Ireland.
+In some cases the choice of a man locally unpopular on public grounds
+afforded--to speak plainly--an excuse for those leading Nationalists
+who were loath to depart from all the tradition of their lifetime. Some
+of Redmond's colleagues held that they had been "extreme men" all their
+lives, and they thought it too hard that they should be expected to ask
+Irishmen to join the English Army. Yet these same men would have worked
+enthusiastically for the Volunteers, and by sympathy for their comrades
+who went out could have been led into a very different attitude.
+
+Many of them, too, felt an honourable scruple about asking others to do
+what they could not do themselves. As a parliamentary group we were
+under a singular disability. In its early days the Irish party had been,
+what Sinn Fein is now, a party of the young. But so strong was the tie
+of gratitude that service in its ranks became an inheritance, and in
+most cases a man once elected stayed on till he died or resigned. By
+1914, of all parties in the House we had by far the largest proportion
+of men over military age. I question whether three out of the seventy
+could have passed the standard then exacted--for two or three of the
+younger men were medically unfit. In these circumstances the War Office
+would have been well advised to waive a regulation or two to facilitate
+matters; but the rigour of the rules was maintained. One of my
+colleagues, a man in the early forties, offered to join as a private; he
+was refused. In my own case a similar refusal was based on Lord
+Kitchener's personal opinion against that of the Under-secretary for
+War, to whom, as a personal friend, I had written; it took nearly six
+months to get the decision altered; and by that time the value of
+example was much depreciated. The beginning was the chance to give a
+lead.
+
+Far graver was the intolerable delay in forming a corps which should
+appeal definitely to Irish national and Nationalist sentiment. The First
+Army included one Irish Division--the Tenth, destined to a splendid
+history, under a popular commander, Sir Bryan Mahon; but it had no
+specially Nationalist colour, so to say, and no connection with the
+Irish Volunteers. Redmond wanted the counterpart of what had been
+readily granted to Sir Edward Carson; and this was what Mr. Asquith had
+outlined in his speech at Dublin. The Sixteenth Division already
+existed; its commander was appointed on September 17th. But the first
+step to give it the desired character was not taken without long delay,
+and much heart-burning and confusion resulted.
+
+Part of the confusion is attributable to the fact that Redmond, in his
+desire to touch the historic memories connected with the famous corps
+which attained its crowning glory at Fontenoy, always spoke of "a new
+Irish Brigade." But at the Mansion House meeting Mr. Asquith spoke of
+something more than a brigade--an army corps; and Redmond, following
+him, instantly accepted the idea. "I used the word 'brigade' in my
+ignorance--I meant an Irish army corps." There was always present to his
+mind the hope that in some larger formation the Ulster Division might
+find itself shoulder to shoulder with other Irish troops.
+
+Yet intending recruits were puzzled, and Lord Meath, writing to Redmond
+on October 10th that he had formed a Recruiting Committee in Dublin "for
+the purpose of endeavouring to raise the Irish Army Corps for which you
+spoke," reported that men came in asking to know where was the Irish
+Brigade, and refused to join anything else. Lord Meath suggested that
+Redmond should obtain from Lord Kitchener "an official declaration
+sanctioning the enlistment of Irishmen in an Irish Brigade, or Irish
+Army Corps, consisting exclusively of Irish officers and men." He wrote
+again on the 14th, asking that the Prime Minister himself should be
+approached, and on the 17th, in reply to some communication from
+Redmond: "I hope you will insist on some official and unmistakable
+statement that your request has been granted."
+
+The tone of these letters, coming from no fire-eating Nationalist but
+the staunchest of Unionist peers, is sufficient proof that Lord
+Kitchener's action or inaction was resented by those who knew Ireland
+and had the best interests of Ireland at heart. The _Irish Times_ wrote
+in the same sense; and on October 19th a formal attack was launched in
+the _Daily Chronicle_, which drew a sharp contrast with the treatment
+accorded to Ulster. "Up to this hour," the writer said, "the Irish
+Division asked for by Mr. Redmond has been refused sanction by the War
+Office." This was an overstatement, but it was true that up to this time
+such a belief naturally prevailed, because the War Office could not be
+induced to make the desired announcement that sanction had been given.
+Moreover, although the concession had been made, it was made in a very
+different way from that used in dealing with Sir Edward Carson. Redmond
+had no voice whatever in the organization. The choice of a divisional
+commander was of infinite importance; and it fell upon
+Lieutenant-General Sir Lawrence Parsons, K.C.B., an artillery officer of
+great distinction, a man of wide general knowledge and culture and of
+strongly marked individuality. Yet his individuality did not make him
+easy for Redmond to work with. He was not simply a typical professional
+soldier of the old Army; he was an idealist in his profession; and part
+of the professional soldier's idealism is to resent and despise
+political considerations. He recognized that Redmond had spoken and
+acted with a statesman's vision; he failed to recognize that in many
+matters political tactics are necessary to carry out a statesman's plan.
+Also, it was very difficult for him or for any other professional
+soldier to realize that recruiting, under such conditions as then
+prevailed, was a politician's task, not a soldier's, even in Great
+Britain; and that this was tenfold more true of Ireland.
+
+The point requires to be emphasized, because it applies to a greater
+personage--Lord Kitchener himself. I believe that Lord Kitchener
+honestly desired the success of Redmond's mission. To my personal
+knowledge he sent for one officer long known to him and took him from a
+command in which he was comfortably placed and sent him, against his
+will, to raise one of our battalions in a difficult area. The choice was
+absolutely sound, and success was achieved by methods which did not
+always follow strictly the letter of King's Regulations. But these
+departures from rule were quite in accordance with the spirit of the old
+Army, and Lord Kitchener was ready to stand over any of them. He would
+do the best he could for our division on the old lines. He would, I am
+certain, have said that he had done the best thing possible for it in
+appointing to the command an Irishman who was a first-rate soldier and a
+first-rate man to supervise the training of troops. So far as my
+judgment is able to go, the credit for making the Sixteenth Division
+what it was when we went to France belongs chiefly to the divisional
+general under whom we trained.
+
+General Parsons had the gift, which appears to be rare in soldiers, of
+imparting ideas not merely about discipline but about the art of war;
+and he had an enthusiasm which communicated itself. But these were the
+qualities of the soldier in his own sphere, with which Redmond had no
+contact. What Redmond knew was the writer of letters which now lie
+before me. Running through them all is the tone of a soldier in
+authority who accepts assistance from a friendly, influential,
+well-meaning but imperfectly instructed civilian. There is no
+recognition of the fact that Redmond was the accepted leader of a
+Volunteer Force numbering over a hundred thousand men; no glimpse of any
+perception that morally, and almost officially, Redmond was the
+accredited head of the nation in whose name the division was being
+raised--a nation to which the statutory right of self-government had
+just been accorded.
+
+The whole position was extraordinary. Legally and theoretically, Redmond
+was a simple member of Parliament. Practically and morally, he was the
+head of Ireland, exactly as Botha was of South Africa; and he was trying
+to do without legal powers what Botha was doing by means of them. He was
+far more than the Leader of the Opposition in Great Britain; for in
+Ireland there really was no Government. Moral authority, which must
+proceed from consent of the governed, the Irish Government had not
+possessed for many a long day; but its legal status had been
+unimpeachable. Now even that was gone; it was merely a stop-gap
+contrivance, carrying on till the Act of Parliament should receive
+fulfilment; and, as a bare matter of fact, it was powerless. No
+operative decision of any moment was taken or could be taken at this
+moment in Ireland. Everything was referred to the Cabinet, and that body
+had no power to carry out a popular policy in Ireland.
+
+Redmond had put forward a policy which they had accepted in principle.
+It could only be carried out through him, and for success he must be
+consulted in detail. Neither Lord Kitchener nor General Parsons in fact
+recognized the status which this implied. They were prepared to listen
+to suggestions from him; they were not prepared to accept guidance, as
+they must have done had he been Prime Minister of the country.
+
+It was impossible that Redmond's attitude in dealing with General
+Parsons should not imply some sense of the position which he held;
+equally impossible, from the temper and mentality of the man, that there
+should not be in General Parsons's letters an underlying assertion that
+in military matters the military must decide.
+
+The correspondence between the two men opened by a letter from Sir
+Lawrence Parsons, who had just established his headquarters at Mallow;
+and its chief purpose was to direct Redmond's attention to the fact that
+an Irish Division was a much finer and nobler unit than an Irish
+Brigade. Two points in it, however, are of interest. "I have been
+appointed by Lord Kitchener," said General Parsons, "because I am an
+Irishman and understand my countrymen." Also, "I have had a considerable
+share in selecting the officers of the Division, almost all Irishmen of
+every political and religious creed."
+
+What lay behind the first of these sentences was a profound conviction
+that the writer thoroughly understood the necessities of the situation.
+That was a disastrous mistake. To understand Ireland at such a moment
+was difficult for anyone, impossible for a man who had not been in close
+touch with the mental condition produced by all these extraordinary
+happenings. The effect of the preparations for rebellion in Ulster, of
+the Curragh incident, and of the collision between troops and people in
+Dublin--the effect of the existence of a permitted Nationalist Volunteer
+Force--the effect of Redmond's appeal: these were three completely novel
+and conflicting currents in the stream of Irish life. Nobody could hope
+to estimate these developments from a general view, however intelligent,
+of Irish history and character, nor even from the most intimate and
+sympathetic acquaintance with Irish troops of the old Army.
+
+A proof of the unhappy lack of comprehension is furnished by the second
+sentence I have quoted. General Parsons had been most rightly allowed by
+the War Office to assist in selecting officers for the Division. But it
+had never occurred to either party to consult Redmond on this critical
+matter. Does anyone suppose that Sir Edward Carson had no voice in the
+staffing of the Ulster Division? He had at all events received from the
+first a clear promise that all professional soldiers who had been
+officers in the Ulster Volunteers would be officers in the Division, and
+that any who had been mobilized should be restored to their associates
+in the Division.
+
+General Parsons brought to this whole matter the fine principle that no
+man's religious or political beliefs should stand in his way. He omitted
+to consider the effect produced on the situation by the fact that the
+Ulster Division had been actually allowed to exclude all Catholics, as
+such, and to accept no officer who was not politically in sympathy with
+Unionist Ulster. Redmond had not the least wish to exclude either
+Protestants or Unionists; he wanted all Irishmen on an equality. But he
+was bound by common sense and by a perception of realities to desire
+that Protestants and Unionists should not appear to monopolize the
+command.
+
+Not one of the three brigadiers appointed was generally known in
+Ireland, personally or by his connections. One was an Englishman. Of the
+officers originally appointed not one in five was a Catholic. No
+Catholic commanded a battalion, scarcely half a dozen were field
+officers. The only Catholic field officer appointed to the Division who
+had been prominently connected with the Volunteers was Lord Fingall, and
+he had severed his connection with that body.
+
+All this was a terrible blunder. Whether it was wise or unwise to allow
+the formation of a division having the peculiar character of the Ulster
+Division may be argued--but certainly Redmond never took exception to
+it, and no man who ever saw these Ulstermen in the field can regret its
+inception. But once it was formed, its existence created a situation
+which had to be recognized. An equivalent ought to have been given; but
+no genuine attempt to do this was made.
+
+In replying to Sir Lawrence Parsons, Redmond raised no controversy as to
+what had been done; he was, indeed, not cognizant of the facts. But he
+addressed himself from the first to making friendly suggestions.
+
+Amongst other things he referred to an appeal which Sir Lawrence Parsons
+had addressed to the women of Ireland, that they should provide
+regimental colours for the battalions of the Division. This appeal was
+promptly met, to Redmond's great delight--delight which was soon
+changed into vexation, for the War Office stepped in, declared the
+proceeding irregular, and prohibited the holding of colours by any
+temporary battalion. General Parsons was obliged to publish an
+explanation which must have been galling to himself, and which went far
+to confirm the impression that the War Office, with all its
+preoccupations, had time to keep an unfriendly eye on the Nationalist
+recruiting effort.
+
+Another trivial matter led to prolonged and irritating controversy.
+Towards the end of October the Belfast and Dublin papers announced that
+the Army Council had approved of "an Ulster badge similar to that worn
+by Ulster Volunteers" as a cap badge for all troops in the Ulster
+Division. It was pointed out that this would have the effect of
+preserving the identity of the Ulster Division. Immediately, and not
+unnaturally, the demand for a similar concession was put forward on
+behalf of the Sixteenth Division. General Parsons was opposed, as any
+old soldier would be, to a variation in the distinguishing marks of old
+and famous regiments. He did not allow for the fact that we needed to
+attract new soldiers in masses--men who as yet knew nothing of
+regimental tradition. Still, he co-operated in forwarding Redmond's
+desire, which was to meet a widely spread sentimental demand. Now that
+the war is over, many soldiers argue that there is no reason in the
+nature of things why Irish regiments should not have a clearly
+distinguishing uniform, as the Scots or the Colonials do. In the last
+months, when recruiting was a matter of urgency, Colonel Lynch induced
+the War Office to consent to equipping an Irish Brigade with a
+completely distinctive dress; unhappily the pattern was (after several
+months) still under discussion when the war ended. I have little doubt
+that from the point of view of recruiting even the badge, to say nothing
+of a distinctive uniform, would have been an asset; I have no doubt at
+all that the refusal of it was a set-back, because it was a refusal
+given after a discussion and correspondence which lasted from November
+till February. The most interesting point, however, is that Lord
+Kitchener found time to occupy himself repeatedly with this question in
+the period between the first and second battles of Ypres. If his
+intervention had been judicious, it would have been as impressive as the
+spectacle of a battery elephant stopping in action to pick up a pin with
+his trunk.
+
+On one point Redmond's representations, heartily backed by General
+Parsons, were successful. Catholic chaplains, of whom no adequate number
+were at first provided for Irish troops, were secured. It is pleasant to
+note that Lord Roberts, who before the war had been vehement on the
+Ulster side, used his personal influence to support this application. A
+month or two later, when death came to the veteran, dramatically, among
+the troops in France, Redmond told the House of Commons how on that
+question Lord Roberts had met him in the friendliest way and endeavoured
+to arrange for attending the great meeting at the Dublin Mansion House.
+
+On another matter Redmond was able to assist the equipment of the
+Division. He suggested, and General Parsons fully admitted the value of,
+regimental bands; but the War Office made no grants for them. Redmond
+drew upon a large sum which had been placed at his disposal by a private
+individual to further his campaign, and all our battalions were indebted
+to him for their fife and drum equipment. There was, in short, no detail
+in which he was not willing and anxious to assist the Division and its
+commander. But the friction between the two men was unmistakable.
+
+The most serious cause of it was the line taken by General Parsons about
+the appointment of officers. He laid down a rule, which I think would
+have had excellent results if enforced throughout the whole of the new
+armies, that no man should be recommended for a commission without
+previous military experience, and that candidates lacking that
+experience must put in a period of service in the ranks. He set apart a
+special company in one battalion, the 7th Leinsters, to which such men
+should be sent, so that while drilling and exercising with the rest of
+the battalion, and enjoying no special privilege, they ate and slept and
+lived together in their own barrack rooms.
+
+Yet the obstacle thus set up deterred a good many of the less zealous,
+who could not understand why that should be made a condition in the
+Irish Division which was not so in the Ulster Division--nor, indeed, so
+far as I know, anywhere else at that time. Men who had been officers of
+Ulster Volunteers got their commissions as a matter of course; the
+officer of National Volunteers had to prove his competence in the cadet
+company. General Parsons fully admitted this difference of treatment,
+and justified it by saying to Redmond that in consequence of it he would
+be very sorry to change officers with the Ulster Division. One cannot
+refuse to admire such a spirit; but he ought to have asked himself
+whether it was fair to impose a handicap on Redmond's efforts.
+Everything turned on getting representative young men from the
+Volunteers, and from the correspondence it appears that few were coming
+from the South and West. From the North they poured in. In our 47th
+Brigade, the 6th Royal Irish Regiment was mainly composed of Derry
+Nationalists; the 7th Leinsters and the 6th Connaught Rangers were
+almost to a man followers of Mr. Devlin from Belfast.
+
+Next after Redmond, Mr. Devlin was the man to whom our Division owed
+most. But the first and the main impetus came from Redmond himself. He
+spoke on October 4th at Wexford, the capital of his native county; on
+the 11th at Waterford, his own constituency; on the 18th at Kilkenny,
+the constituency of his close friend Pat O'Brien. A week later he was at
+Belfast and in the glens of Antrim, among the Nationalists of Ulster.
+Then Parliament kept him for a few weeks; in December he was back, and
+spoke at Tuam and in Limerick. Everywhere the Volunteers turned out in
+great numbers to receive him; and to them his appeal was primarily
+addressed.
+
+At Wexford he laid stress on Mr. Asquith's pledge that the Volunteers
+should remain as a recognized permanent force for the defence of the
+country, and this led him to raise frankly the question of control. Who
+should have authority over Volunteers in a State? Surely the elected and
+responsible government. But pending Home Rule, "the policy and control
+of the Volunteers must rest with the elected representatives of the
+country."
+
+More generally, he reminded them that he had always spoken of the
+possibility of some great political convulsion that might destroy their
+plans. "Nothing but an earthquake can now prevent Home Rule," he had
+said. "The outbreak of this overwhelming war might easily have
+overwhelmed Home Rule. But we have survived it."
+
+And he went on to argue that the delay might be a blessing in disguise.
+Civil war between Irishmen had always seemed to him an impossibility.
+That impossibility was now universally admitted. In a passage of unusual
+heat he denounced the "so-called statesmen" who came over unasked to our
+country to inflame feelings--as Mr. Bonar Law had done; and he appealed
+to all sections "to enable us to utilize the interval before a Home Rule
+Parliament assembles to unite all Irishmen under a Home Rule
+Government."
+
+At Waterford he was largely occupied with repelling the charge that he
+and his colleagues had made a bargain with the Government to ship Irish
+Volunteers overseas to fight whether they would or no. This was the line
+on which opposition was developing, and it was assisted by articles in
+the English Press, which laid it down that unless the Irish furnished a
+sufficiency of recruits, Home Rule should be repealed.
+
+An extension of this argument, that Redmond was buying Home Rule with
+the blood of young Irishmen, raised the question whether Home Rule was
+worth the price. While the Bill was not yet law, it was a flag, a
+symbol. Once it became an Act, men's attitude changed; they turned to
+criticizing what they had got; and one powerful newspaper, bitterly
+hostile to the Parliamentary party, expended much ingenuity in
+exaggerating the limitations of what had been gained. While one set of
+critics endeavoured to show how miserable was the price obtained,
+another dwelt on the unrighteousness of making such a bargain without
+Ireland's consent. In Redmond's speech at Kilkenny there was a note of
+resentment. He refused at any great crisis to consider "what might
+please the gallery or the crowd, or might spare him the insults of a
+handful of cornerboys."
+
+But the kernel of all his thought was put into one sentence by him at
+Belfast. "The proper place to guard Ireland is on the battlefields of
+France." It was from Belfast after this meeting that the first striking
+demonstration of response came--organized and inspired by Mr. Devlin. On
+November 20th nearly a full battalion of recruits, many National
+Volunteers, entrained for Fermoy; a week later they were followed by
+another great detachment. The example spread; and when Redmond spoke at
+Limerick on December 20th, the _Irish Times_ in a friendly leading
+article admitted that "the National Volunteers were now coming forward
+in large numbers and the Irish Brigade was going to be a credit to the
+country." This was a very different note from that which had come from
+Unionist quarters at earlier stages.
+
+
+III
+
+So far as recruiting went, Redmond had won. He was sure of making good
+to England. But in what concerned making good to Ireland, he had no
+progress to report. He stated that already nearly 16,500 men from the
+Volunteers had joined the Army, and he could not understand why
+Government was so chary of giving assistance to train and equip this
+force. There was no doubt as to the mass of men available. Figures
+supplied by the police to the Chief Secretary estimated that between
+September 24th, when the split took place, and October 31st, out of
+170,000 Volunteers, only a trifle over 12,000 adhered to Professor
+MacNeill.
+
+But in Dublin the opponents were nearly 2,000 out of 6,700; and two
+strong battalions went almost solid against Redmond. These battalions,
+along with the Citizens' Army, were destined to alter the course of
+Irish history. It was specially true of them, but true generally of all
+the minority who left Redmond, that they were kept together by a
+resolute and determined group who had a clear purpose.
+
+The "Irish Volunteers," as the dissentients called themselves, were made
+to feel that they were a minority, and an unpopular minority in more
+than one instance. In Galway, when they turned out to parade the
+streets, they were driven off with casualties--retaliation for their
+interference with our meeting in September. In Dundalk there was a
+somewhat similar occurrence. But they got more than their own back one
+day in November by a bold _coup_--forerunner of many. Ninety rifles
+belonging to the National Volunteers were being moved in a cart from one
+place to another. Half a dozen men armed with revolvers held up the cart
+and its driver and carried off the rifles. At their Convention, held in
+the end of October, Professor MacNeill said: "They would go on with the
+work of organizing, training and equipping a Volunteer force for the
+service of Ireland in Ireland, and such a force might yet be the means
+of saving Home Rule from disaster, and of compelling the Home Rule
+Government to keep faith with Ireland without the exaction of a price in
+blood."
+
+That forecast has not as yet realized itself; and many of us think that
+the chief achievement of this section has been to turn to waste a heavy
+price that was paid in blood by other men for the sake of Ireland. But
+unquestionably they were, though the minority, far more of a living
+reality than the mass of the original force--and for a simple reason.
+Their purpose, whether good or bad, was within their own control. The
+purpose of the majority was to carry out Redmond's policy--which was to
+make the Volunteers part of an Irish army of which the striking force
+was designed to defend Ireland on the battlefields of Flanders. But to
+carry out that policy the National Volunteers must be accepted as a
+purely local Irish military organization for home defence--controlled,
+in the absence of a popularly elected Irish Government, by the elected
+Irish representatives. The War Office thwarted that policy. Lord
+Kitchener would not accept it. He continued to be of the opinion that by
+equipping Redmond's followers he would be arming enemies.
+
+It is worth noting that one of the ablest and most detached students of
+Irish affairs was wholly on Redmond's side. Lord Dunraven, appealing on
+behalf of "the new Irish Brigade," pointed out that both sides of
+Redmond's policy must be accepted. "No scheme which fails to take some
+account of the National Volunteer Force can do justice to what Ireland
+can give," he wrote. But was there everywhere a desire to do justice to
+what Ireland could give--and was willing to give? Redmond was warned in
+those days by an influential correspondent in England that a deliberate
+policy was being pursued by the opponents of Home Rule, who undoubtedly
+had strong backing in the War Office. The National Volunteers were to
+become the objects of derision and contempt, which would extend to
+himself. By keeping the Volunteers out of active participation in war
+service, it could be proved that Redmond did not speak for Ireland or
+represent Ireland; that the Irish were raising unreal objections so as
+to keep an excuse for avoiding danger. It was urged on him that he
+should press for the extension of the Territorial Act to Ireland and
+endeavour to bring his men in on this footing.
+
+There were two difficulties in the way of this scheme which nevertheless
+attracted him strongly. The first was that enlistment in the
+Territorials for home service had been stopped--so that the proposal had
+little advantage, if any, over enlistment in the Irish brigades. The
+second was due to the Volunteers themselves, many of whom, though
+willing to serve in the war, were unwilling to take the oath of
+allegiance.
+
+There were limits to the length to which Redmond felt himself able to
+go, and he never dealt with this objection by argument. The example
+which he set was plain to all. He joined in singing "God save the King,"
+in drinking the King's health, and at Aughavanagh now he flew the Union
+Jack beside the Green flag. He was willing to take part in any
+demonstration which implied that Nationalist Ireland under its new legal
+status accepted its lot in the British Empire fully and without reserve.
+It was superfluous for him to argue that Nationalists might consistently
+take the oath of allegiance when Nationalists were pledging their lives
+in the King's service beside every other kind of citizen in the British
+Empire. Over and above his own example was the example of his brother
+and his son. On November 23rd Willie Redmond addressed a great meeting
+in Cork and told them, "I won't say to you go, but come with me." He was
+then fifty-three--and for most men it would have been "too late a
+week." But no man was ever more instinctively a soldier, and to
+soldiering he had gone by instinct as a boy. He was an officer in the
+Wexford Militia for a year or two, till politics drove him out of that
+service and drew him into another. Now he went to the war gravely but
+joyfully. I think those days did not bring into relief any more
+picturesque or sympathetic figure.
+
+One thing ought to be said. Mr. Devlin wished to join also, but Redmond
+held that he could not be spared from Ireland, where his influence was
+enormous; and he was placed in a somewhat unfair position, even though
+everyone who knew him knew that his chief attribute was personal
+courage. But he was indispensable for the work which had to be done, of
+helping at this strange crisis to keep Ireland peaceful and united at a
+time when Government was at its lowest ebb of authority.
+
+Trouble threatened. On October 11th, the anniversary of Parnell's death,
+three bodies of Volunteers turned out in Dublin--the National
+Volunteers, the Irish Volunteers, and the Citizen Army. A collision
+occurred which might easily have become serious. This passed off, but
+early in December the Government suppressed three or four of the openly
+anti-British papers, which were, of course, still more virulent against
+Redmond. They reappeared under other names. But a meeting of protest
+against the suppression was held outside Liberty Hall. Mr. Larkin had,
+by this time, gone to America. His chief colleague, Mr. James Connolly,
+who was the brain of the Irish Labour Movement, presided, and at the
+close declared that the meeting had been held under the protection of an
+armed company of the Citizen Army posted in the windows and on the roof
+of Liberty Hall. Had the police or military attempted to disperse the
+meeting, he said, "those rifles would not have been silent."
+
+Ulster was not the only place where armed men thought themselves
+entitled to resist coercion.
+
+Dublin was the more dangerous because the war, which created so much
+employment in Great Britain, brought no new trade to Ireland, outside of
+Belfast. Agriculture prospered, but the towns knew only a rise of
+prices. Redmond began with high hopes, which Mr. Lloyd George fostered,
+of rapidly-developing munition works, which would at the close of
+hostilities leave the foundation for industrial communities. Here again,
+however, Redmond's representations were in vain. When the heavy extra
+tax on beer and spirits was levied by the first supplementary Budget, he
+opposed it angrily:
+
+     "You are doing some shipbuilding at Belfast, you are making a few
+     explosives at Arklow, you are buying some woollen goods from some
+     of the smaller manufacturers, but apart from that, the bulk of the
+     hundreds of millions of borrowed money which you are spending on
+     the war is being spent in England and in increasing the income of
+     your country."
+
+This tax on alcohol would curtail the most important urban industry of
+the South and West of Ireland, and he feared that it was the old story
+of crushing Ireland's trade under the wheel of British interests.
+
+Here again Redmond could only plead with the Irish Government that they,
+in their turn, should plead with the Imperial authorities. He should
+have been able to act in his own right as the head of an Irish Ministry,
+knowing the importance of providing employment at such a time. He saw
+the need and how to meet it; but he had none of the resources of power.
+As compared with the other men who occupied, in the public eye, a rank
+equivalent to his--with General Botha, for instance--he was like a
+commander of those Russian armies which had to take the field against
+Germans with sticks and pikes.
+
+Yet power he had--power over the heart and mind of Ireland--the power
+which was given him by the response to his appeal. From January onwards
+the Sixteenth Division grew steadily and strongly. Recruiting began to
+get on a better basis. The appointment of Sir Hedley Le Bas in charge of
+this propaganda brought about a healthy change in methods. Appeals were
+used devised for Ireland, and not, as heretofore, simple replicas of the
+English article. Heart-breaking instances of stupidity were still of
+daily occurrence, but imagination and insight began to have some play;
+and there was no longer the complete separation which had existed
+between the effort of Redmond and his colleagues and the effort of men
+like Lord Meath. In January Willie Redmond was posted to his battalion,
+the 6th Royal Irish, at Fermoy, where the 47th Brigade had its
+headquarters. In his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable
+and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the Division was worth
+an immense deal. There was delay also about his younger namesake, John
+Redmond's son--who was for a long time refused a commission in the
+Division in whose formation his father had played so great a part.
+
+Naturally, trained speakers who had joined the Division were utilized
+for recruiting purposes. Willie Redmond did comparatively little of this
+work. It is no light job to take over command of a company, if you mean
+really to command it; and with him, from the moment he joined everything
+came second to his military duty. But private soldiers have a less
+exacting time, and there was scarcely one week of my three months in the
+7th Leinsters in which I did not spend the Saturday and Sunday on this
+business--generally in company with the most brilliant speaker, taking
+all in all, that I have ever heard. Kettle, then a lieutenant in the
+battalion, was wit, essayist, poet and orator: whether he was most a wit
+or most an orator might be argued for a night without conclusion; but as
+talker or as speaker he had few equals. He was the son of a veteran
+Nationalist, who had taken a lead in Parnell's day; but the farmer's son
+had become the most characteristic product of Ireland's capital, which,
+rich or poor, squalid or splendid, is a metropolis--a centre of many
+interests, a forcing-house of many ideas. Nothing in Ireland is less
+English than Dublin, and its tone differs from that of England in having
+active sympathy with the continental mind.
+
+Kettle was always to some extent in revolt against the theories of the
+Gaelic League, which he thought tended to make Ireland insular morally
+as well as materially. He was a good European because he was a good
+Irishman; and because he was both, he was, though largely educated in
+Germany, a fierce partisan of France.
+
+More than all this, he had seen with his own eyes the actual martyrdom
+of Belgium. Sent out by Redmond to purchase rifles, he was in the
+country when Antwerp was occupied, and he wrote with passion of what he
+heard, of what he saw. Louvain to him was more than a mere name. All the
+Catholic in him, and all the Irish Catholic, for Ireland's association
+with Louvain was long and intimate, rose up in fury; he went through
+Ireland carrying the fiery cross.
+
+Everywhere we went we had friendly and even enthusiastic audiences; the
+only place where I met any suggestion of hostility was at Killarney, and
+there it took the form of avoiding our meeting. We were cheered and
+encouraged--but we did not get many recruits, so to say, on the nail.
+Yet they came, generally dribbling in afterwards. From one small meeting
+in county Waterford we came away badly disappointed, having thought an
+effect was made, yet we did not take a single man. I heard later that
+within the next fortnight thirty men from that parish had come in by
+ones and twos to sign on--but at a town several miles away. Local
+pressure, personal not political, was against us, especially that of the
+mothers; and there was a shyness about taking this plunge into the
+unknown.
+
+One exception stands out, in my mind, unlike the general run of these
+gatherings. It was the first field day of our brigade, when, dressed in
+the khaki that had at last been served out, we mustered on the
+race-course at Fermoy, five thousand strong; and I went from the review
+to the train for Waterford. There was no mistaking the temper of
+Redmond's constituency; we got men there in hundreds, including a score
+or so of cadets--young men of education--for our special company of the
+Leinsters, which was filling up fast.
+
+At that meeting we had one force with us which was not often active on
+our side. The Bishop of Waterford was strong for the war; the leading
+parish priest of the town took the chair and spoke straight and plain,
+while one of the Regulars, a Carmelite friar, made a speech which was
+among the most eloquent that I have ever listened to.
+
+At the beginning of April I was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the 6th
+Connaught Rangers, and began to know the Division from another aspect.
+Broadly speaking, the men with whom I had been sharing a hut were
+Nationalist by opinion and by tradition--though by no means all
+Catholics. There were Unionists, but they were few. In the society which
+I now joined--a joint mess of the Royal Irish and the Rangers--matters
+were different.
+
+The personnel of the 6th Royal Irish was strongly characteristic of the
+old Army. The commanding officer, Curzon, was of Irish descent, but of
+little Irish association; his second in command was an Irish Protestant
+gentleman of a pleasant ordinary type. The senior company commander was
+an Englishman. As an offset, Willie Redmond had one company, and another
+was commanded by an ex-guardsman, who had been a chief personage in the
+Derry Volunteers, and brought so many of them with him that General
+Parsons gave him a captaincy straight off.
+
+In my own battalion, no Catholic had then the rank of captain. The
+colonel and the adjutant belonged to well-known families in the North
+of Ireland, deeply involved in Covenanting politics. My own company
+commander was a very gallant little Dublin barrister, who, before the
+war, had exerted on English platforms against Home Rule the gift of racy
+eloquence which he now devoted to recruiting. Not half a dozen of the
+subalterns would have described themselves as Nationalists.
+
+It is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was
+represented, to the outside public of Ireland. From the inside, one
+thing was clear. In our battalion every man desired the success of the
+Division, and more particularly of the Connaught Rangers, absolutely
+with a whole heart. Anything said or done that could have offended the
+men--practically all Catholic and Nationalist--would have drawn the most
+condign chastisement from our commanding officer. I never heard of any
+man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its
+colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it. There was very little
+political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question
+how far Redmond might be held to speak for Ireland. So far as Redmond
+himself was concerned, I think there were few, if any, who did not count
+it an honour to meet him--and some who had never been won to him before
+were won to him for his brother's sake.
+
+Looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself
+in that society. I do not know one survivor of those men who does not
+desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom
+they led. In not a few cases one might put the change higher; some
+opinions as to what was good for Ireland were profoundly affected.
+
+Yet this also is true. The atmosphere of the mess was one in which
+Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger. He had lived all his
+life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief. Knowing the other side
+in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men
+he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were
+political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in
+agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the
+atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which
+every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never
+really was himself. He was only himself with the men.
+
+In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a
+counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that
+the other was Ulster. No attempt was made to make it so, and General
+Parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal--though less
+fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man
+for his opinions or his creed. Yet many persons without design, and some
+with a purpose, spread broadcast the belief that Catholics and
+Nationalists as such were relegated to a position of inferiority in the
+command of this Catholic and Nationalist Division.
+
+The worst of our difficulties lay in the long inherited suspicions of
+the Irish mind. At a recruiting meeting one would argue in appealing to
+Nationalists that the Home Rule Act was a covenant on which we were in
+honour bound to act, and that every man who risked his life on the faith
+of that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded.
+The listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would
+come up privately and say: "Are you sure now they aren't fooling us
+again?" The Sinn Féin propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not
+fail to emphasize the pronouncement of the Tory Press that there should
+be no Home Rule because Ireland had failed to come forward; or to point
+the moral of Mr. Bonar Law's excursion to Belfast, with its violent
+asseveration that Ulster should be backed without limit in opposition to
+control by an Irish Parliament. Ireland, always suspect, has learnt to
+be profoundly suspicious; and suspicion is the form of prophecy which
+has most tendency to fulfil itself.
+
+In one part of the Irish race, however, this cold paralysis of distrust
+had no operation. The Irish in Great Britain, always outdoing all others
+in the keenness of their Nationalism, were nearer the main current of
+the war, and were more in touch with the truth about English feeling.
+They had a double impulse, as Redmond had; they saw how to serve their
+own cause in serving Europe's freedom; and their response was
+magnificent. Mr. T.P. O'Connor probably raised more recruits by his
+personal appeal than any other man in England.
+
+A great part of Redmond's correspondence in these months came from
+Irishmen in England who were joining as Irishmen, and who had great
+difficulty in making their way to our Division. Many thousands had
+already enlisted elsewhere; hundreds, at least, tried to join the
+Sixteenth Division, and failed to get there. But there was one instance
+to which attention should be directed. In Newcastle-on-Tyne a movement
+was set on foot to raise Tyneside battalions, including one of Irish.
+Mr. O'Connor went down, and the upshot was that four Irish battalions
+were raised. They were in existence by January 1, 1915, when General
+Parsons was already writing that unless Irishmen could be found to fill
+up the Division, we must submit to the disgrace of having it made up by
+English recruits. The obvious answer was to annex the Tyneside Irish
+Brigade. Redmond, moreover, held that to bring over this brigade to
+train in Ireland, and to incorporate it bodily in the Sixteenth
+Division, would please the Tyneside men--for a tremendous welcome would
+have greeted them in their own country--and would have an excellent
+effect on Irish opinion generally. But the proposal was rigorously
+opposed by the War Office. It was argued that these men had enlisted
+technically as Northumberland Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers
+they must remain. In reality, as far as one can judge, the War Office
+were penny wise and pound foolish. "We have got these men," they said,
+"and we have a promise from Redmond to fill a Division. Why relieve him
+of one-third of his task?"
+
+Redmond knew, and we all knew, that the essential was to get our
+Division complete and into the field at the earliest possible moment. He
+had confidence that once they got to work they would make a name for
+themselves, which would be the best attraction for recruits. Let it be
+remembered that at this moment popular expectation put the end of the
+war about July. When I joined the Rangers in April 1915, our mess was
+full of young officers threatening to throw up their commissions and
+enlist in some battalion which would give them the chance of seeing a
+fight. We could not expect to move to France before August, and by that
+time all that we could hope would be to form part of the army of
+occupation. Rumour was rife, too, that the Division would be broken up
+and utilized for draft-finding, that it would never see France as a
+unit. All this talk came back to Redmond and increased his anxiety to
+make the work complete.
+
+He held, and I think rightly, that the whole machinery of recruiting
+worked against us; that every officer had instructions to send no man to
+the Sixteenth Division who could be got into a draft-finding reserve
+battalion. Knowing what we know, I cannot blame them; but the game was
+not fairly played. A man would come in and say he wanted to join the
+Irish Brigade. "Which regiment?" Often he might not realize that a
+brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for
+instance, "The Dublins," he was more likely than not to be shipped off
+to the Curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept,
+instead of to Buttevant, where our Dublins were in training.
+
+Still, with all our troubles, things were marching ahead in that April
+of 1915; recruits were coming in to the tune of 1,500 a week. Then came
+a political crisis and the formation of a Coalition Government. Redmond
+was asked to take a post in it. The letter in which the invitation was
+conveyed made it clear that the post could not be an Irish office.
+
+Redmond refused. He said to me afterwards that under no conditions did
+he think he could have accepted. But he added, "If I had been Asquith
+and had wished to make it as difficult as possible to refuse, I should
+have offered a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio and without
+salary."
+
+He was well aware how many and how unscrupulous were his enemies in
+Ireland; he was not prepared to give them the opportunity of saying that
+he had got his price for the blood of young Irishmen and the betrayal of
+his principles. Even apart from the question of salary, the tradition
+against acceptance of office under Government till Ireland's claim was
+satisfied would have been very hard to break. Yet Redmond saw fully how
+disastrous would be the effect on Irish opinion if he were not in the
+Government and Sir Edward Carson was.
+
+Knowing Ireland as he did, he knew that the acceptance of Sir Edward
+Carson as a colleague would be taken in Ireland to imply that the
+Government had abandoned its support of Home Rule. Ireland would assume
+that the Ulster leader would not come in except on his own terms.
+Redmond made the strongest representations that he could to the Prime
+Minister to exclude both Irish parties to the unresolved dispute. But
+Sir Edward Carson in those days was making himself very disagreeable in
+the House of Commons and Mr. Asquith, as usual, followed the line of
+least resistance.
+
+The effect of the Coalition as formed was seen when recruiting in
+Ireland dropped from 6,000 in April-May to 3,000 in May-June. It stayed
+at the lower figure for several months, till it was raised again by
+efforts for which Redmond was chiefly responsible. I do not know
+whether Sir Edward Carson's presence in the Attorney-General's office,
+or his absence from the Opposition benches in debates, was worth ten
+thousand men; but that is a small measure of what was lost in Ireland by
+his inclusion.
+
+
+IV
+
+The formation of the Coalition Government marks the first stage in the
+history of Redmond's defeat and the victory of Sir Edward Carson and
+Sinn Féin.
+
+Of what he felt upon this matter, Redmond at the time said not a word in
+public. Six months later, on November 2, 1915, when a debate on the
+naval and military situation was opened, he broke silence--and his first
+words were an explanation of his silence. He had not intervened, he
+said, in any debate on the war since its inception. "We thought a loyal
+and as far as possible silent support to the Government of the day was
+the best service we could render." This silence had been maintained
+"even after the formation of the Coalition"--when the Irish view had
+been roughly set aside, and when the personal tie to the Liberal
+Government with which he had been so long allied had been profoundly
+modified. He claimed the credit of this loyalty not merely for himself
+but for the whole of his country. "Since the war commenced the voice of
+party controversy has disappeared in Ireland."
+
+This was pushing generosity almost to a stretch of imagination, for the
+voice of party controversy had not been absent from the Belfast Press,
+nor had it spared him. But he was speaking then, and he desired that the
+House should feel that he spoke, as Ireland's spokesman; he claimed
+credit for North and South alike in the absence of all labour troubles
+in war supply. "The spectacle of industrial unrest in Great Britain, the
+determined and unceasing attacks in certain sections of the Press upon
+individual members of the Government and in a special way upon the Prime
+Minister, have aroused the greatest concern and the deepest indignation
+in Ireland," he said. "Mr. Asquith stands to-day, as before the war,
+high in the confidence of the Irish people." The "persistent pessimism"
+had effected nothing except to help in some measure "that little fringe
+which exists in Ireland as in England, of men who would if they could
+interfere with the success of recruiting."
+
+No doubt there was an element of policy, of a fencer's skill, in all
+this. Sir Edward Carson had not maintained silence and certainly had not
+spared the Prime Minister. But in essence Redmond was relying on the
+plain truth. He had pledged support and he gave it to the utmost of his
+power, even at his peril. Mr. Birrell in the posthumous "Appreciation"
+which has been already quoted has this passage:
+
+"Although it was not always easy to do business with him, being very
+justly suspicious of English politicians, he could be trusted more
+implicitly than almost every other politician I have ever come in
+contact with. He was slow to pass his word, but when he had done so, you
+knew he would keep it to the very letter, and what was almost as
+important, his silence and discretion could be relied upon with
+certainty. He was constitutionally incapable of giving anybody away who
+had trusted him."
+
+Nothing but considerations of loyalty had kept him publicly silent in
+the months of this year when so much was done, and so much left undone,
+against his desire and his judgment. In June, the Sixteenth Division was
+within 1,000 of completion. The shortage existed in one brigade--the
+49th--which had been formed of battalions having their recruiting areas
+in Ulster--two of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, one of the Inniskillings
+and one of the Royal Irish Rifles. The conception had undoubtedly been
+to provide for the Nationalists of Ulster. But, as it proved, these men
+vastly preferred to enlist in units which were not associated with the
+avowedly Unionist Division, all of whose battalions belonged to one or
+other of these three regiments; and the 49th Brigade was not nearly up
+to strength. The Tenth Division was now on the point of readiness for
+the field; but when the final weeding out of unfit or half trained men
+was completed its ranks were 1,200 short. The War Office decided to
+draw, not on both the other Irish Divisions, but on the Sixteenth only,
+and only upon the deficient brigade. When the offer of immediate service
+was made, every man in its four battalions volunteered, and the Tenth
+Division was completed; but the Sixteenth was thrown back, and the
+discouraging rumour that it was to be only used as a reserve gained a
+great impetus. Redmond was very angry. He wrote to Mr. Tennant demanding
+that at least the Division's deficiency should at once be made up, by
+giving to us the full product of one or two weeks' recruiting in
+Ireland. Nothing of the kind was done to meet his request.
+
+It was, however, some compensation to think that at least one of our
+purely Irish formations was going to take the field; and we hoped that
+its fortunes might remedy a complaint which began to be loudly
+made--that credit was withheld from the achievements of Irish troops.
+
+The main source of this grievance was the publication of Admiral de
+Robeck's despatch concerning the first landing at Gallipoli. In the
+original document, a schedule was given showing the detail of troops
+told off to each of the separate landings; and the narrative, in which a
+sailor spoke with frank enthusiasm of the desperate valour shown by
+soldiers, was written with constant reference to the detail given. As
+some evil chance willed, the narrative mentioned by name several of the
+regiments engaged; but when it came to describe the forlorn hope at "V"
+Beach, it dealt fully with the special difficulties, and said in brief
+but emphatic phrase, "Here the troops wrought miracles." The War Office,
+in editing the despatch for publication, suppressed the schedule, as
+likely to give information to the enemy, so that in this case it did not
+appear to whom the praise applied.
+
+Certain things are unbelievable. No officer and no man that ever lived
+could from a partisan feeling against Ireland have sought to rob
+regiments who had done and suffered such things as the Dublins and
+Munsters did and suffered at "V" Beach of whatever credit could be given
+to them. Yet in such times as we were living in, the unbelievable is
+readily believed, and men saw malice in the suppression of what could
+not long be secret: Ireland had too many dead that day. What made the
+suggestion more incredible only gave a poignancy to resentment, for
+Admiral de Robeck was an Irishman, with his home some few miles from the
+regimental depot of the Dublins.
+
+Two things, however, should be said. If only in fairness to Admiral de
+Robeck, the explanation should instantly have been given: it was never
+given in full until he came before the Dardanelles Commission, many
+months later, and it has not been officially published to this hour. And
+further, whoever edited the despatch was presumably a soldier, and knew
+how jealous soldiers are, and how jealous their friends are for them, of
+every word that goes to the recognition of such service. The effect of
+omitting the schedule ought to have been foreseen.
+
+Even before the middle of August, when angry letters over this despatch
+were appearing in the Irish Press, other news began to come to Ireland,
+ill calculated to help recruiting. The Tenth Division had come into
+action, but under the unluckiest conditions. When the great attempt was
+made to cut across the peninsula by a renewed push from Anzac and by a
+new landing at Suvla Bay, the Irish were among the reinforcements told
+off for that surprise. But from lack of room on the island bases it was
+considered impossible to keep them together as a division, and one
+brigade, the 29th, lay so far off that it could not be brought into the
+concerted movement on Suvla. It was therefore sent separately to Anzac,
+and joined in with the Australians. Broken up by regiments and not
+operating as a unit, it furnished useful support; but no credit for what
+the men did could go to Ireland. The other two brigades, the 30th and
+31st, were left under the command of their divisional general and were
+to attack on the left of the bay. But owing to some defect in
+exploration of the coast-line, the movement was not so carried out; six
+battalions out of the eight were landed on the south of the bay and were
+attached to the right-hand force. Thus, in the actual operations Sir
+Bryan Mahon had under his command only two battalions of his own men.
+The remaining six operated under the command of the divisional general
+of the Eleventh Division, who delegated the conduct of the actual attack
+to one of his brigadiers. It is sufficient to say that immediately after
+the action both these officers were relieved of their commands. The same
+fate befell the corps commander under whose directions this wing of the
+concerted movement was placed.
+
+In face of these facts it would be absurd to deny that the troops were
+badly handled. They suffered terribly from thirst, and the suffering was
+in large measure preventible. The attack was a failure. All the success
+achieved was the capture of Chocolate Hill, and the Irish claim that
+success. It is disputed by other regiments. This much is certain: the
+Irish were part of the troops who carried the hill, and at nightfall,
+when the rest were withdrawn to the beach, the Irish were left holding
+it.
+
+But they had paid dearly, and in the days which followed many more were
+sacrificed in the hopeless effort to retrieve what had been lost when
+the surprise attack failed. The loss fell specially on a picked
+battalion, the 7th Dublins, which had grown up about a footballers'
+company, the very flower of young Irish manhood. Grief and indignation
+were universal when tales of what had happened began to come through.
+
+But of all this Redmond said no word in public. He threatened disclosure
+in debate at one period; yet on a strong representation from Mr.
+Tennant--in whose friendliness, as in the Prime Minister's, he had
+confidence--he refrained. To this abstention he added the most practical
+proof of good will. Lord Wimborne, now Lord-Lieutenant, seriously
+concerned at the continued drop in recruiting, which had not shown any
+sign of recovery since the Coalition Government was formed, came to him
+with the proposal for a conference on the subject. In pursuance of this
+suggestion Redmond went to London, where an interview took place between
+him and Lord Kitchener, Mr. Birrell and Mr. Tennant assisting. Redmond
+put in a memorandum stating his complaints, and thrashed out the subject
+to satisfactory conclusions on all points that directly affected
+recruiting. The conference ultimately met at the Viceregal Lodge on
+October 15th. It included the Primate of All Ireland, Lord Londonderry,
+Lord Meath, Lord Powerscourt, Sir Nugent Everard, the O'Conor Don and
+Colonel Sharman Crawford, the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork,
+and Redmond. The military were represented by Major-General Friend,
+commanding the troops in Ireland, with whom Redmond always had the most
+cordial relations.
+
+Only those who understand something of Irish tradition will realize how
+great a departure from established usage it was for Parnell's lieutenant
+and successor to take part formally in a meeting at the Viceregal
+Lodge--or indeed to cross its threshold for any purpose. But Redmond
+always had the logic of his convictions. As part of a compact, he was
+helping to the best of his power the Government which must carry on
+till Home Rule could come into operation; and here as elsewhere he was
+ready to mark his conviction that the enactment of Home Rule had made
+possible a complete change in his attitude.
+
+Among his papers is a very full note of what passed on this occasion. It
+is confidential, but one may note the extreme friendliness of attitude
+as between Redmond and the Ulster representatives, and also the fact
+that the operative suggestions agreed on were proposed first by Redmond
+himself. They were the result of his interview with Lord Kitchener.
+Recruiting in Ireland should no longer be left to voluntary effort, but
+a Department should be formed corresponding to that over which Lord
+Derby had been appointed to preside in Great Britain; and the
+Lord-Lieutenant himself should accept the position of its official head,
+and should appoint or nominate some man of known business capacity to
+preside over the detail of organization. Redmond pressed also that the
+country should be told definitely what Lord Wimborne had told the
+conference, that the need was for a total of about 1,100 recruits per
+week.
+
+He insisted also very strongly on the publication of a letter which Lord
+Kitchener at his instance had written to the conference. Its last
+paragraph read:
+
+"The Irish are entitled to their full share of the compliments paid to
+the rest of the United Kingdom for their hitherto magnificent response
+to the appeal for men: but if that response is to reap its due and only
+reward in victory, the supply must be continued."
+
+Over 81,000 recruits had been raised in Ireland since the war started--a
+period of eighty-two weeks. Viewed in comparison with Lord Kitchener's
+original anticipations, the result might well be called "magnificent."
+But it was necessary to maintain the same weekly average, and for four
+months the figure had been much below this. The result of the new
+campaign was to raise nearly 7,500 men in seven weeks.
+
+In the campaign thus launched, as Redmond so keenly desired, under the
+joint auspices of Ulstermen, Southern Unionists and Nationalists, one
+circumstance attracted attention. It was proposed to hold a great
+meeting at Newry, the frontier town where Ulster marches with the
+South--a centre in which recruiting had been singularly keen and
+successful. The scheme was to unite on one platform the Lord-Lieutenant,
+Redmond and Sir Edward Carson. Sir Edward Carson, however, "did not
+think the proposal would serve any useful purpose," and the meeting was
+held without him, in December 1915.
+
+By this time the Sixteenth Division was under orders for France. We had
+been since September in training at Blackdown, near Aldershot; and here
+Redmond was one of several distinguished visitors who came to see us and
+address the troops. He came down also unofficially more than once, for
+his brother had a pleasant house among the pine-trees--where he guarded,
+or was guarded by, the brigade's mascot, the largest of three enormous
+wolfhounds which, through John Redmond, were presented to the Irish
+Division.
+
+Towards the end of the year new rumours were afloat. The 49th Brigade
+had never been made up to strength, and there were stories that a
+non-Irish brigade was to be linked up with us. Letters from two
+commanding officers of the 49th Brigade illustrate the extent to which
+Redmond had come by all ranks to be regarded as our tutelary genius; to
+him they appealed for redress, fearing that they would be turned into a
+reserve brigade. The matter was settled at last to his content and
+theirs by a decision that the two brigades which were ready should go
+out in advance, to be followed by the 49th; and we entrained accordingly
+on December 17th.
+
+Sir Lawrence Parsons wrote to Mr. Birrell: "As the last train-load moved
+out of Farnborough station the senior Railway Staff Officer came up to
+me and said, 'Well, General, that is the soberest, quietest, most
+amenable and best disciplined Division that has left Aldershot, and I
+have seen them all go.'" The compliment was well paid to General
+Parsons, and it may have been some consolation for a sore heart: that
+keen spirit had to be content to be left behind. Major-General W.B.
+Hickie, C.B., who had greatly distinguished himself in France, now took
+over command. It would be disingenuous to say that John Redmond was not
+content with this change; but his brother was deeply impressed by the
+hardship inflicted on a gallant soldier.
+
+The Ulster Division had preceded us by three months. All three Irish
+Divisions were now in the field, and reserve brigades were established
+to feed them. Redmond could feel that in great measure his work was
+done, and that he could await the issue in confidence.
+
+He wrote at this time, in a preface contributed to Mr. MacDonagh's book
+_The Irish at the Front_, a passage of unusual emotion which tells what
+he thought and felt upon this matter.
+
+     "It is these soldiers of ours, with their astonishing courage and
+     their beautiful faith, with their natural military genius, carrying
+     with them their green flags and their Irish war-pipes, advancing to
+     the charge, their fearless officers at their head, and followed by
+     their beloved chaplains as great-hearted as themselves--bringing
+     with them a quality all their own to the sordid modern
+     battlefield--it is these soldiers of ours to whose keeping the
+     Cause of Ireland has passed. It was never in holier, worthier
+     keeping than with these boys offering up their supreme sacrifice of
+     life with a smile on their lips because it was given for Ireland."
+
+He wrote this when fresh from a sight of troops in the field. This visit
+took place in November 1915, and he was full of the experience when he
+came down to say good-bye before we went out. Nothing in all his life
+had approached it in interest, he said to me. The diary of his tour is
+prefixed to Mr. S.P. Ker's book, _What the Irish Regiments Have
+Done_--but it conveys little, except this dominant impression: "From the
+Irish Commander-in-Chief himself right down through the Army one meets
+Irishmen wherever one goes." On that journey he got the same welcome
+from Ulstermen as from his own nearest countrymen in the Royal Irish
+Regiment.
+
+
+V
+
+One thing at least Redmond gained, I think, from his visit to the
+front--the sense that with the British Army in the field he was in a
+friendly country. He never had that sense with regard to the War Office.
+Running all through this critical year 1915 is the history of one long
+failure--his attempt to secure the creation of a Home Defence force in
+Ireland. Given that, he would be confident of possessing the foundation
+for the structure of an Irish Army--an army which would be regarded as
+Ireland's own. Without it, the whole fabric of his efforts must be
+insecure. He desired to build, as in England they built, upon the
+voluntary effort of a people in whom entire confidence was placed. In
+the War Office undoubtedly men's minds were set upon finding a regular
+supply of Irish troops by quite other methods--by the application of
+compulsion.
+
+Redmond saw to the full the danger of attempting compulsion with an
+unwilling people; it was a peril which he sought to keep off, and while
+he lived did keep off, by securing a steady flow of recruits, by gaining
+a reasonable definition of Ireland's quota, and by exerting that
+personal authority which the recognition of his efforts conferred upon
+him. I do not think he was without hope of a moment when Ireland might
+come, as Great Britain had come by the end of this year, to recognize
+that the voluntary system levied an unfair toll on the willing, and that
+the community itself should accept the general necessity of binding its
+own members. But before this could be even dreamed of as practicable,
+the whole force of Volunteers, North and South, must feel that they were
+trusted and recognized, a part in the general work.
+
+The practical organization of the great body at his disposal was under
+discussion between him and Colonel Moore from February 1915 onwards; and
+the idea was mooted that by introducing the territorial system Ulster
+Volunteers and National Volunteers might be drawn into the same corps.
+This, however, was for the future; the immediate need was to extend the
+arming and training under their own organization. Redmond learnt at once
+that Lord Kitchener was against this; that he pointed to the existence
+of another armed force in the North of Ireland and argued that to create
+a second must mean civil war; that he believed revolutionary forces to
+exist in Ireland which Redmond could not control and perhaps did not
+even suspect. Those who then thought with Lord Kitchener can say now
+that events have justified his view. They omit to consider how far those
+events proceeded from Lord Kitchener's refusal to accept Redmond's
+judgment.
+
+Of the danger Redmond was fully aware. "I understand your position to
+be," Mr. T.P. O'Connor wrote to him in January 1915, "that unless your
+plan as to the Irish Volunteers is adopted we are face to face with a
+most critical and dangerous situation in Ireland." Just as fully was he
+convinced of the way to meet it. In February, replying indignantly to
+Sir Reginald Brade, who had complained that Irish recruiting was
+"distinctly languid," he enumerated the points at which the War Office
+had failed to act on his own advice, and urged once more, in the first
+instance, his original policy of employing both Ulster and Nationalist
+Volunteers for Home Defence. "If the two bodies of volunteers were
+trusted with the defence of the country under proper military drill and
+discipline, the result would unquestionably be that a large number of
+them would volunteer for the front. Recruiting can best be promoted by
+creating an atmosphere in which the patriotism of the younger men of the
+country can be evoked, and we have done a good deal already in this
+direction."
+
+On April 4th a display was made of the force available. A review was
+held in the Phoenix Park of 25,000 men--splendid material, but half of
+them with neither arms nor uniform. The Unionist Press was friendly in
+its comments upon the statement which Redmond supplied after the parade,
+claiming that these men should be utilized for Home Defence. That day
+was Easter Sunday of 1915. No one guessed then what the next Easter was
+going to bring about.
+
+On April 19th I find him writing officially to Mr. Birrell, seeking the
+Chief Secretary's influence with the War Office, and claiming, what was
+the truth, that the Irish Command shared his view. But at the moment
+recruiting was increasing weekly and the War Office were in no mood to
+make further concessions than those by which the improvement had been
+brought about. Then came the Coalition, and the consequent reduction of
+recruiting from close on 7,000 to 3,000 a month; and in July the
+Adjutant-General, Sir Henry Sclater, of his own motion approached
+Redmond. He suggested a meeting between Redmond and the War Office, with
+Sir Matthew Nathan and General Parsons in attendance. Redmond agreed to
+the proposal, but formulated his views in a lengthy memorandum. The
+first three points dealt with matters directly concerning the Sixteenth
+Division, but in the fourth, weighty emphasis was laid on the suggestion
+of recruiting Volunteers for Home Defence. Sir Henry Sclater's reply
+omitted completely all reference to this last--an omission on which
+Redmond commented sharply. He elicited the official answer that by
+urging men to join on a special enlistment for home service the numbers
+who would join for general service would be reduced. This was
+diametrically opposite to Redmond's view, and he said so, and urged
+again that the Irish Command was of his opinion.
+
+The proposed conference resolved itself--to Redmond's indignation--into
+a discussion of Redmond's memorandum between the Adjutant-General and
+Sir Lawrence Parsons. Only in September, when at Lord Wimborne's
+instance he interviewed Lord Kitchener, did he have the opportunity of
+raising the matter by direct speech. Lord Kitchener then declared
+himself willing to admit that on the question whether enlistment for
+Home Defence would promote or retard recruiting, Redmond's judgment was
+probably more valuable than his own, and he promised to review the
+question of Home Defence again in the light of it. But of this promise
+nothing came.
+
+Meantime Redmond was being warned that the Volunteer organization as it
+stood had exhausted its usefulness; its enthusiasm was gone--a natural
+result of having no purpose. A new opening seemed to be created by the
+Bill which Lord Lincolnshire introduced to recognize a Volunteer Force
+in Great Britain which should perform military duties under the War
+Office control. Redmond hoped to see this carried with an extension of
+it to Ireland, and this was the practical proposal with which he
+concluded his speech when, on November 2nd, for the first time in that
+year, he raised in debate the questions to which so much of his time and
+thought had been given.
+
+How was the Irish recruiting problem to be dealt with? He declared
+himself absolutely against compulsion, to impose which would be "a folly
+and a crime" unless the country was "practically unanimous in favour of
+it." The voluntary system had never had fair play--at all events in
+Ireland.
+
+     "It is a fact, which has its origin in history, and which I need
+     not refer to more closely--it is a fact that in the past recruiting
+     for the British Army was not popular with the mass of the Irish
+     people. But when the war broke out, my colleagues and I, quite
+     regardless, let me say, of the political risks which stared us in
+     the face, instantly made an appeal to those whom we represented in
+     Ireland, and told them that this was Ireland's war as well as
+     England's war, that it was a just war, and that the recent attitude
+     of Great Britain to Ireland had thrown upon us a great, grave duty
+     of honour to the British Empire. We then went back from this
+     country, and we went all through Ireland. I myself, within the
+     space of about a month after that, made speeches at great public
+     meetings in every one of the four provinces of Ireland. We set
+     ourselves to the task of creating in Ireland--creating, mind
+     you--an atmosphere favourable to recruiting, and of creating a
+     sentiment in Ireland favourable to recruiting. I say most solemnly,
+     that in that task we were absolutely entitled to the sympathy and
+     the assistance of the Government and the War Office. I am sorry to
+     say we got neither."
+
+He disclaimed all imputation upon the Prime Minister or the
+Under-Secretary, Mr. Tennant--exceptions which pointed the reference to
+Lord Kitchener.
+
+     "The fact remains that when we were faced with that difficult and
+     formidable task, practically every suggestion that we made, based
+     on the strength of our own knowledge of what was suitable for
+     Ireland and the conditions there, was put upon one side. The
+     gentlemen who were responsible for that evidently believed that
+     they knew what was suited to the necessities of Ireland far better
+     than we did. A score of times, at least, I put upon paper and sent
+     to the Government and the War Office my suggestions and my
+     remonstrances, but all in vain. Often, almost in despair, I was
+     tempted to rise in this House and publicly tell the House of
+     Commons the way in which we were hampered and thwarted in our work
+     in Ireland. I refrained from doing so from fear of doing mischief
+     and from fear of doing harm. To-day I am very glad that I so
+     refrained, because in spite of these discouragements, in spite of
+     this thwarting and embarrassing, and in spite of the utterly faulty
+     and ridiculous system of recruiting that was set on foot, we have
+     succeeded, and have raised in Ireland a body of men whose numbers
+     Lord Kitchener, in his letter to the Irish conference, declared
+     were magnificent."
+
+He quoted the Unionist _Birmingham Post_ for the saying that what had
+happened in Ireland was "a miracle." From the National Volunteers 27,054
+men had joined the colours; from the Ulster Volunteers 27,412. In both
+forces there must be many left who could not leave Ireland, yet might be
+utilized in Ireland.
+
+     "It may be remembered that the very day the war broke out I rose in
+     my place in this House and offered the Volunteers to the Government
+     for Home Defence. I only spoke, of course, of the National
+     Volunteers. I was not entitled to speak for the Ulster Volunteers,
+     but I suggested that they and we might work shoulder to shoulder.
+     From that day to this the War Office have persistently refused to
+     have anything to say to these Volunteers. The Prime Minister, a few
+     days after I spoke, in answer to a question told me that the
+     Government were considering at that moment how best to utilize
+     these Volunteers. They have never been utilized since. A few days
+     after I made my speech I went myself to the War Office, and as a
+     result of my interviews there I submitted to the Government a
+     scheme which would have provided them at once with 25,000 men. If
+     that offer had been accepted, not 25,000, not 50,000, but 100,000
+     men would have been enlisted for Home Defence within the month. But
+     no, it was obstinately refused. I hear that an hon. member below me
+     is now apparently inclined to take the point that the War Office
+     took. The War Office said that would interfere with recruiting in
+     Ireland. Of course, we know Ireland better than the hon. member. We
+     know our difficulties in Ireland. We do not believe that it would.
+     On the contrary, we believe that it would have promoted recruiting.
+     We believe that the enlistment of these men, their association in
+     barracks and in camp, with the inevitable creation and fostering of
+     a military spirit, would have led to a large number of volunteers
+     for foreign service. Our views counted for nought. In this instance
+     they were not only our views. These views had the approval of the
+     Irish Command, and from the purely military point of view the Irish
+     Command was in favour of some such scheme as I had outlined, and
+     the reason was plain. They have to provide, and are providing to
+     this day, 20,000 to 25,000 men from the Regular Army for the
+     defence of the coasts of Ireland--guarding the coast, guarding
+     piers, railways, bridges, and so forth. If these men of ours had
+     been taken up, within two or three months of training and in camp
+     they would have been able to do this work, and would have done it
+     ever since, and would thereby have released from 20,000 to 25,000
+     men. That is the chief reason, I fancy, why the Military Command in
+     Ireland were in favour of this idea. But to this moment the refusal
+     continues. I see that an unofficial Bill was introduced by the
+     Marquess of Lincolnshire into the House of Lords doing, to a great
+     measure, for England and Wales what we have been asking should be
+     done for Ireland. I claim that that Bill shall be extended to
+     Ireland."
+
+The Volunteer Bill came to the House of Commons in a form making it
+applicable to Ireland. There it was opposed by Sir Edward Carson, who
+demanded that no man of military age should be accepted as a volunteer
+unless he consented to enlist for general service if called. This killed
+the Bill.
+
+Sir Edward Carson was of opinion that the necessities of the case
+demanded universal compulsory service; and conscription was already in
+sight. With that prospect Redmond's anxiety became very grave.
+
+On November 15th he wrote his mind to the Prime Minister:
+
+     HOUSE OF COMMONS,
+
+     _November_ 15, 1915.
+
+     _Private_.
+
+     MY DEAR MR. ASQUITH,
+
+     I have been in a state of great anxiety for some time on the
+     question of a possible Conscription Bill, and I have discussed the
+     matter fully with Mr. Birrell, who knows my views, and who, no
+     doubt, has communicated them to you.
+
+     I think it well, however, to shortly put, in writing, our position.
+
+     In your Dublin speech you asked the Irish people for "a free
+     offering from a free people," and the response has been, taking
+     everything into account, in the words of Lord Kitchener,
+     "magnificent."
+
+     Recruiting is now going on at a greater rate than ever in Ireland,
+     and it would be a terrible misfortune if we were driven into a
+     position on the question of conscription which would alienate that
+     public opinion which we have now got upon our side in Ireland.
+
+     The position would, indeed, be a cruel one, if conscription were
+     enacted for England, and Ireland excluded.
+
+     On the other hand, I must tell you that the enforcement of
+     conscription in Ireland is an impossibility.
+
+     Faced with this dilemma, if a Conscription Bill be introduced, the
+     Irish party will be forced to oppose it as vigorously as possible
+     at every stage.
+
+     I regret having to write you in this way, but it is only right that
+     I should be quite frank in the matter.
+
+     Very truly yours,
+
+     J.E. REDMOND.
+
+     RT. HON. H.H. Asquith, M.P., _Prime Minister_,
+
+Assurances reached him that the first tentative Bill for compelling
+unmarried men to enlist would only be introduced to fulfil a pledge
+given by Mr. Asquith in connection with the Derby Scheme, and that as
+the Derby Scheme had not applied to Ireland, the pledge also had no
+bearing there. By December 21st the matter was raised in the House of
+Commons. Redmond, after the Prime Minister had spoken, defined what he
+was careful to call "my personal view" on the question of compulsory
+service.
+
+"I am content to take the phrase used by the Prime Minister. I am
+prepared to say that I will stick at nothing--nothing which is
+necessary, nothing which is calculated to effect the purpose--in order
+to end this war." He added: "That is the view, I am certain, of the
+people of Ireland."
+
+The whole question was presented by him as "one of expediency and
+necessity, not of principle." From that standpoint he declared himself
+unconvinced that the adoption of compulsion in any shape was either
+expedient or necessary. It was inexpedient because it would "break up
+the unity of the country"--unnecessary because they had already many
+more men than they could either train or equip. In Ireland, a limited
+task had been defined, to keep up the necessary reserves for fifty-three
+battalions of infantry, and he pointed to the fact that so far the new
+organization of recruiting was producing the stipulated flow.
+
+On these grounds, he said, the Irish party would oppose the measure, and
+on January 5th that opposition was offered, though Ireland was excluded
+from the Bill. But the first division showed a majority of more than ten
+to one for the proposal; and in face of that, when the House returned to
+the discussion, Redmond declared that Irish opposition must
+cease--especially in view of the support given by the responsible
+leaders of Labour. Sir Edward Carson, following, pressed him to go one
+step farther and accept the inclusion of Ireland in the Bill. Nothing,
+he said, could do so much to conciliate Ulster. This was the first time
+that any suggestion of this possibility had come from that quarter, and
+it came in backing a suggestion which Redmond could not accept. I was
+not present at the debate, and it is hard to judge of such matters from
+the printed record, but the impression on my mind is that the suggestion
+was made without any desire to embarrass. A few days later, in the
+Committee stage, an Ulster member moved an amendment which would have
+included Ireland. Mr. Bonar Law, speaking for the Government, advised
+against it--on the ground of expediency; it would not be an easy thing
+to put this measure into operation in Ireland. Sir Edward Carson spoke
+later and counselled the dropping of the amendment. With matters in this
+stage Redmond spoke very fully to the House, recognizing the absence of
+all partisan tone in the speeches of Ulster members. He had long felt,
+he said, that "if conscription came, Ireland's whole attitude towards
+the war was likely to suffer cruel and unjust misrepresentation,"
+because it must emphasize a difference between the two countries.
+Conscription in Ireland would be "impracticable, unworkable and
+impossible." Instead of leading to the increase in the supply of men it
+would have the opposite effect.
+
+"It would most undoubtedly paralyse the efforts of myself and others who
+have worked unsparingly--and not unsuccessfully--since the commencement
+of the war, and would play right into the hands of those who are a
+contemptible minority among the Nationalists of Ireland, and who are
+trying--unsuccessfully trying--to prevent recruiting and to undermine
+thus the position and power of the Irish party because of the attitude
+we have taken up."
+
+He complained once more of the Government's failure to utilize the
+Volunteers and of the damping effect which had resulted from the
+non-fulfilment of Mr. Asquith's words. Yet Ireland was doing all that
+was asked of it--maintaining the reserves of Irishmen for Irish
+regiments at the front.--This was true at the moment; but the Sixteenth
+Division had scarcely yet begun to come into the line and the Ulster
+Division, during its first few months, suffered slight casualties. In
+point of fact, however, the bare rumour of conscription had checked
+recruiting, and Redmond was guarded in his terms. It was, he said, "on
+the whole very satisfactory, and in the towns amazing"; but he admitted
+that the country districts had not given an adequate response.
+
+But he made now an appeal to the House as a whole to lift the
+consideration of this whole matter on to broad lines, to view it on the
+plane of statesmanship. If five years earlier anyone had foretold that
+in a great war Ireland would send 95,000 volunteer new recruits to fight
+by the side of England, would he not have been regarded as a lunatic?
+"The change in Ireland has been so rapid that men are apt to forget its
+history." That was a true saying; his own success had created
+difficulties for him. Once more he quoted the example of the other
+statesman in the Empire whose position had most analogy with his own. "I
+honestly believe," he said, "that General Botha's difficulties were
+small compared with those we had to confront in Ireland.... It is true
+to say at this moment that the overwhelming sentiment of the Irish
+people is with the Empire for the first time."
+
+That was his claim, and in that month of January 1916 he was fully
+entitled to make it; and the House, I think, recognized his
+justification. His speech has in it the ring of confidence, of assurance
+that he would be taken at his word.
+
+"Rest satisfied," he said; "do not try to drive Ireland." Wise words,
+and they were not unwisely listened to. There was no room for doubting
+this man's earnestness when he went on to tell how he himself had
+recently met Irish troops in the field, and had then pledged himself to
+them to spare no effort in raising the necessary reserves for their
+ranks among their own countrymen. "Trust us," he said to the House,
+indicating himself and his colleagues, "trust us to know, after all, the
+best methods. Do not carp at Irish effort, and do not belittle Irish
+effort." Then they might count on loyal and enduring support till the
+great struggle was ended.
+
+That speech, as I read it, marks the highwater-line of Redmond's
+achievement. His statesmanship in the counsels of the Empire had
+prevailed for his own country. The Home Rule Act was on the Statute
+Book, and though not in legal operation it was present in all minds; and
+now on a supreme issue--the blood-tax--Ireland's right to be treated as
+self-governing was recognized in fact. The argument which underlay
+implicitly Redmond's whole contention was never set out; it was
+contentious, politically, and he wisely avoided it. He spoke for a
+nation to which autonomy had been accorded by statute; he preferred men
+to feel for themselves rather than be asked to admit that no
+self-governing nation will submit voluntarily to the imposition of the
+blood-tax without its own most formal consent. All that he said was, in
+effect: You have Ireland with you for the first time, by our assistance;
+do not destroy our power to continue that assistance, do not alienate
+Ireland. In the counsels of the Empire his argument prevailed; and
+during the early months of 1916 the relations between Great Britain and
+Ireland were better and happier than at any time of which history holds
+record. An utterance from one Irishman, and the general response to it,
+showed this in extraordinary degree.
+
+Our Division, or rather two brigades of it, had detrained in France on
+the 19th of December; the first impression as we shook ourselves
+together for the march to strange billets was the sound of guns.
+Scattered about in different villages lying round Bethune, our
+battalions passed the next two months in the usual training before we
+should take up our own sector of the line, and we saw little or nothing
+of each other. March found us engaged, though still only attached by
+companies to more seasoned troops, in some rough crater-fighting on the
+ugly mine-riddled stretch between Loos and Hulluch. It was when we were
+marching out from broken houses about the minehead at Annequin that we
+first met again our old stable companions, the Royal Irish--and that I
+first saw Willie Redmond in France at the head of his company.
+
+He was on foot as always, for he never could be persuaded to ride while
+the men were marching, and I never saw more geniality of greeting on any
+countenance than was on his when he came up with outstretched hand to
+where I was sitting by the roadside--for we had halted to see them go
+by. Here was a man utterly in his element, radiant literally in the
+enthusiasm of his devotion. He refused to listen to our talk of the bad
+time we had been through in the place where they were to succeed us (and
+in two winters of that war I never saw worse); all his talk was of the
+good time which we should have in the billets we were going to, which
+they had just left. Back there, in and about Allouagne, they rejoined
+us; and I remember dining with him in his company mess and hearing his
+eulogies of the splendid fellows that his company officers were. Then,
+about the time we moved up into trenches, our first leaves began and he
+got home in March. Naturally, he looked in at the House of Commons, and
+realized for the first time how uneasy well-informed persons in the
+lobbies were about the chances of the war. Everybody who ever came home
+from the front must have experienced the effect of that strange
+transition from unquestioning confidence to worried anxiety; but Willie
+Redmond was the only man who ever adequately gave expression to it.
+
+It was on the eve of St. Patrick's Day, and the Army Estimates were
+under discussion in a very thin House--a wrangling, fault-finding
+debate. In the middle of it Willie Redmond got up, and said that as he
+was not likely to be there again, he had one or two things to say which
+he thought the House would be glad to know. Speaking as one of the
+oldest members, who had all but completed his thirty-third year in
+Parliament, he told them that every soul in the House should be proud of
+the troops--not of the Irish troops, but of the troops
+generally--because more than anything else of the splendid spirit in
+which they were going through the privations and dangers,--which he
+described with passion. If he were to deliver a message from the troops,
+he knew well what it would be:
+
+     "Send us out the reinforcements which are necessary, and which are
+     naturally necessary. Send us out, as we admit you have been doing
+     up to this, the necessary supplies, and when you do that, have
+     trust in the men who are in the gap to conduct the war to the
+     victory which everyone at the front is confident is bound to come.
+     'And when victory does come,' the message would run on, 'you in the
+     House of Commons, in the country, and in every newspaper in the
+     country, can spend the rest of your lives in discussing as to
+     whether the victory has been won on proper lines or whether it has
+     not.' Nothing in the world can depress the spirits of the men that
+     I have seen at the front. I do not believe that there was ever
+     enough Germans born into this world to depress them. If it were
+     possible to depress them at all, it can only be done by pursuing a
+     course of embittered controversy in this country--as to which was
+     the right way or the wrong way of conducting affairs at the front.
+     When a man feels that his feet are freezing, when he is standing in
+     heavy rain for a whole night with no shelter, and when next morning
+     he tries to cook a piece of scanty food over the scanty flame of a
+     brazier in the mud, he perhaps sits down for a few minutes in the
+     day's dawn and takes up an old newspaper, and finds speeches and
+     leading articles from time to time which tell him that apparently
+     everything is going wrong, that the Ministers who are at the head
+     of affairs in this country, upon whom he is depending, are not
+     really men with their hearts in the work, but are really more or
+     less callous and calculating mercenaries, who are not directing
+     affairs in the best way, but are simply anxious to maintain their
+     own salaries. I say that when speeches and articles of that kind
+     are found in the newspapers they are calculated, if anything is or
+     can be so calculated, to depress the men who are at the front."
+
+Then came a few words in praise of the Irish troops and in deprecation
+of the failure to recognize some of their services; a confident
+assurance that, "whether they are remembered or not," the Sixteenth
+Division would do their duty, with an equal assurance that the Ulster
+men would do as well as they--and he reached to his conclusion:
+
+     "Since I went out there I found that the common salutation in all
+     circumstances is one of cheer. If things go pretty well and the men
+     are fairly comfortable, they say 'Cheer O!' If things go badly, and
+     the snow falls and the rain comes through the roof of a billet in
+     an impossible sort of cow-house, they say 'Cheer O!' still more.
+     All we want out there is that you shall adopt the same tone and say
+     'Cheer O!' to us."
+
+It is not too much to say that this speech was received with a cry of
+gratitude all over the country and throughout the Army. It said what
+badly needed to be said, and said it with a freshness and a dash that
+came superbly from a company commander in his fifty-fourth year. It was
+the best service that had yet been rendered to John Redmond's policy.
+Everybody quite naturally and simply accepted the Nationalist Irishman
+as the spokesman for all the troops who were actually in the line. Mr.
+Walter Long, always a generous and candid human being, was quick to give
+voice to this feeling:
+
+     "The honourable and gallant member for East Clare has been in
+     conflict, not only with one particular political party, but during
+     the greater part of his career with every party in turn, and has
+     engaged in bitter controversy with them. Does anybody doubt the
+     fact that when war was declared one great factor in the mind of the
+     Emperor responsible for this war was that dissension would paralyse
+     the hands of Great Britain? Ireland, whatever may have been our
+     differences in the past, and whatever may be our differences in
+     happier days again when we are at peace, everybody must feel by the
+     action of her representatives, who have fought so bitterly in this
+     House and in the country, has created a new claim for herself upon
+     the affection, the gratitude, the respect of the people of the
+     Empire by the great and proud part that she has played in this
+     great struggle."
+
+That was the position to which Redmond's policy, backed by the Irishmen
+who supported it with their lives, of whom his brother was the
+outstanding representative, had brought this great issue. The next
+thing which brought the name of Ireland prominently before the world was
+the story of action taken by other Irishmen, also at the risk of their
+lives, to reverse the strong current which was then carrying us forward
+with so hopeful augury.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 5: Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Moore, C.B., an officer who had
+served with distinction in South Africa, and whose father, George Henry
+Moore, had been a famous advocate in Parliament of Tenant Right and
+Repeal.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Rifles were really not available, nor competent
+instructors. But the essential was recognition. A grant towards
+equipment should have been given, and possibly other assistance. We
+secured several thousand rifles in Belgium about this time. For
+instructors, any old crippled veterans paid by Government would have
+conveyed the sense of recognition.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE REBELLION AND ITS SEQUEL
+
+I
+
+
+The facts of the Irish rebellion are too generally familiar to need more
+than the briefest restatement--and perhaps too little known for an
+attempt at detailed analysis. Broadly, a general parade of the Irish
+Volunteers all over the country was ordered for Easter Sunday. On the
+night before Good Friday a German ship with a cargo of rifles was off
+the Irish coast. This ship, the _Aud_, was a few hours later captured
+and taken in convoy by a British sloop, so that the arms were never
+landed. Emissaries from the Volunteers who had gone to Kerry by
+motor-car to receive and arrange for distributing the arms were killed
+in a motor accident while hurrying back to get in touch with their
+headquarters. On Saturday the general parade was cancelled by order of
+Professor MacNeill, chief of the Volunteer organization. On Monday,
+against his wish, a portion of the Volunteer force in Dublin, including
+the battalion specially under command of Pearse and MacDonagh, with the
+Citizen Army under James Connolly, paraded, scattered through the city
+and seized certain previously selected points, of which the most
+important was the Post Office. From it as headquarters they proclaimed
+an Irish Republic. Slight attempts at rising took place in county
+Wexford, where the town of Enniscorthy was seized, in county Galway, and
+in county Louth. At Galway, at Wexford and at Drogheda the National
+Volunteers turned out to assist in suppressing the rising. Except for a
+serious encounter with a police force in county Dublin, the fighting
+was confined to the capital. It terminated by the unconditional
+surrender of the rebels on the Saturday. The struggle was prolonged by
+the total lack of artillery in the early stages. Riflemen established in
+houses could not be dislodged by direct assault of infantry without very
+heavy casualties to the attacking force.
+
+The purpose of this book is to show Redmond's connection with this event
+and the succeeding developments from it. He failed to foresee the event;
+he failed to direct its developments into the course he desired. How far
+he is to be held responsible, or blameworthy, for these failures,
+readers may be assisted to decide.
+
+From the beginning of 1916 onwards the Irish Government was warned of
+danger. One of its members--the Attorney-General, Sir James
+Campbell--advocated the seizure of arms from men parading with what were
+evidently stolen service rifles or bayonets. But the Chief Secretary
+refused to take any action which could be described as an attempt to
+suppress or disarm the Irish Volunteers until there was definite
+evidence of actual association with the enemy.
+
+Proof of sympathy was not difficult to obtain, and the propaganda
+against recruiting had now reached the point of attempts to break up
+recruiting meetings. Still, Mr. Birrell was in a difficulty. He had a
+logical mind, and he knew what had been permitted to Ulster. The fact
+that the Attorney-General himself had been a main adviser of the
+Provisional Government did not make it easier to follow his advice to
+disarm men who professed disaffection to the existing authority. Mr.
+Birrell knew that if he took such action he could be attacked in the
+official Nationalist Press for having one law in Ulster and another in
+the South. Further, Redmond would certainly not have disavowed, and
+might even have endorsed, such a line of criticism. The reason was that
+Redmond, as he had never believed in the reality of the Ulster danger,
+so now did not believe in this one.
+
+Later, when Mr. Birrell resigned his post after the insurrection was
+suppressed, Redmond chivalrously took on himself a part of the
+responsibility. "I feel," he said, "that I have incurred some share of
+the blame which he has laid at his own door, because I entirely agreed
+with his view that the danger of an outbreak of the kind was not a real
+one, and in my conversations with him I have expressed that view, and
+for all I know that may have influenced him in his conduct and his
+management of Irish affairs." A later debate--on July 31st--showed that
+his strong personal feeling for Mr. Birrell had moved him rather to
+overstate than to belittle his advisory responsibility. Dublin Castle
+had never consulted him as to policy. Conferences had taken place with
+the Under-Secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, but these were concerned with
+considering and framing the machinery to be created for bringing the
+Home Rule Act into operation, whenever the time came.
+
+"There was no conference at all about the state of the country or about
+Sinn Fein. When once or twice in casual consultation the matter came
+up--I hope the House will listen to this--I did not hesitate to say what
+in my opinion ought to be done in certain cases by the Government. For
+example, I expressed a strong view to them as to how they should deal
+with seditious newspapers and with prosecutions. What I did suggest,
+they never did; what I said they ought not to do, they always did. And I
+want to say something further. They never gave me any information, bad
+or good, about the state of the country. From first to last I never saw
+one single confidential Government report from the police or from any
+other source. I know nothing whatever about their secret confidential
+information."
+
+It is fair to add that the Under-Secretary was in communication from
+time to time with other members of the party, who were of course in
+touch with Redmond. But the substantial accuracy of Redmond's statement
+is sufficiently evidenced by one fact. Everybody knew that Sir Roger
+Casement was in Berlin and had tried--most unsuccessfully--to recruit an
+Irish Brigade from among the Irish prisoners. But neither Redmond nor
+any Irish member knew that from April 17th Dublin Castle had warning
+that a ship was on its way from Germany with rifles. The Navy was on the
+alert, and when the _Aud_ came off Fenit, in Kerry, on Good Friday
+morning, she was promptly challenged.[7] But in the dark hours of that
+morning she had landed Sir Roger Casement and his two confederates, one
+of whom was arrested with him the same day. On Saturday morning
+Government decided to take action against what was now clearly a rebel
+organization. But as the Chief Secretary and the General Commanding in
+Chief were both in London, and as the available force of men in Dublin
+was small, a postponement was decided on. No special precautions appear
+to have been taken against the contingency of an immediate rising. On
+Monday a very large proportion of the officers from the Curragh and the
+Dublin garrison were at the Fairyhouse races. In the Castle itself there
+was only the ordinary guard.
+
+Redmond at this date was also in London. His lack of apprehension is
+sufficiently indicated by the fact that his son and daughter were both
+at the races, and drove up unknowingly to an armed barricade. Had he
+been in authority and known, as the Government knew on Saturday, that
+the Irish Volunteers expected and had arranged for the landing of a
+heavy cargo of arms on Good Friday, and that a general parade of their
+men had been ordered for Easter, I hope that he would have either had
+troops in the utmost readiness to move, or have put strong guards in
+places of importance. But this is a futile speculation, for had he been
+in power the situation would never have arisen.
+
+The decisive thing which drove most of the relatively small number among
+the Volunteers who broke away from Redmond into their original hostility
+was Government's failure to recognize them. Their force stood in their
+own eyes for the assertion of Ireland's nationality; and many of those
+who took active part in the rebellion were at the outset fully prepared
+to assert that nationality in jeopardy of their lives in the Allied
+cause. Redmond's policy, had effect been given to it by the Government,
+still more had he himself been invested with the right to embody it in
+action, would have prevented the estrangement of all but a very few.
+Once the estrangement took place, however, I think that he undervalued
+what was opposed to him, both in respect of its power and of its
+quality. He lacked appreciation and respect for the idealists whose
+ideals were not his own. He underrated their sincerity, and the danger
+of their sincerity. The beauty of sacrifice in the young men who went
+out to the war, carrying Ireland's cause in their keeping, moved him
+profoundly; and he saw the practical bearing of their acts on the great
+practical problem of statesmanship to which his life had been given. He
+did not guess at the sway which might be exercised over men's minds by
+an almost mystical belief which disdained to count with practicalities,
+Redmond for fifteen years had been the leader, and for thirty-five years
+had been a member, of a party which presented itself--with great
+justification--as the winner for Ireland of many positive material
+advantages on the way to an ultimate goal. Pearse, at a time when all
+the world was plunged in a prodigal welter of destruction, came forward,
+demanding from Irishmen nothing but a sacrifice--promising nothing but
+the chance for young men to shed their blood sacramentally in the cause
+of Ireland's freedom. Redmond also was calling for the extreme risk, but
+on a sane and sound calculation, to ensure the full development of
+something already gained. Pearse preached, mystically, the efficacious
+power simply of blood shed in the name of Ireland. Those whom he brought
+with him into the pass of danger were few, but they were touched with
+his own spirit; and even the very recklessness of their act touched the
+popular imagination. Irish regiments, after all, could do only what
+other regiments were doing; their deeds were obscured in a chaos of war
+from which individual prowess could not emerge. Pearse and his
+associates offered to Irishmen a stage for themselves on which they
+could and did secure full personal recognition--the complete attention
+of Ireland's mind.
+
+All this would have seemed vanity to Redmond's solid, positive
+intelligence--vanity in all senses of the word. It would have moved him
+to nothing but angry contempt--anger against the spirit which was
+prepared to divide Ireland's effort, contempt for the futility of the
+reasoning. But one aspect of the rising dominated all the others in his
+mind. He had neither tolerance nor pity for Roger Casement, who was in
+his eyes simply one who tried to seduce Irish troops by threats and
+bribes into treason to their salt, one who made himself among the worst
+instruments of Germany. At the re-assembly of Parliament on April 27th
+he expressed the "feeling of detestation and horror" with which he and
+his colleagues had regarded the events in Dublin; a feeling which he
+believed to be shared "by the overwhelming mass of the people of
+Ireland." On May 3rd, in a statement to the Press, he denounced fiercely
+"this wicked move" of men who "have tried to make Ireland the cat's-paw
+of Germany." "Germany plotted it, Germany organized it, Germany paid for
+it." The men who were Germany's agents "remained in the safe remoteness
+of American cities," while "misguided and insane young men in Ireland
+had risked, and some of them had lost, their lives in an insane
+anti-patriotic movement." It was anti-patriotic, he urged, because
+Ireland held to the choice she had made, to the opinion which thousands
+of Irish soldiers had sealed with their blood. It was "not half so much
+treason to the cause of the Allies as treason to the cause of Home
+Rule."
+
+On the day when that statement appeared the sequel had begun to unroll
+itself. In the House of Commons Mr. Asquith announced the trial,
+sentence and shooting of three signatories to the Republican
+proclamation--Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh. With the exception of James
+Connolly, these were the men most directly answerable for launching an
+attempt which had cost five hundred lives and destroyed over two
+millions' worth of property, Redmond accepted their doom as just.
+
+"This outbreak happily seems to be over. It has been dealt with with
+firmness, which was not only right, but it was the duty of the
+Government so to deal with it."
+
+But now that example had been made, he held that other thoughts should
+guide those in authority.
+
+"As the rebellion, or the outbreak, call it what you like, has been put
+down with firmness, I do beg the Government, and I speak from the very
+bottom of my heart and with all my earnestness, not to show undue
+hardship or severity to the great masses of those who are implicated, on
+whose shoulders there lies a guilt far different from that which lies
+upon the instigators and promoters of the outbreak. Let them, in the
+name of God, not add this to the wretched, miserable memories of the
+Irish people, to be stored up perhaps for generations, but let them deal
+with it in such a spirit of leniency as was recently exhibited in South
+Africa by General Botha, and in that way pave the way to the possibility
+... that out of the ashes of this miserable tragedy there may spring up
+something which will redound to the future happiness of Ireland and the
+future complete and absolute unity of this Empire. I beg of the
+Government, having put down this outbreak with firmness, to take only
+such action as will leave the least rankling bitterness in the minds of
+the Irish people, both in Ireland and elsewhere throughout the world."
+
+It is well to recall what he had in his mind. After the suppression of
+the South African rebellion in 1914, one man only was put to death--an
+officer who changed sides during an action. No attempt was made to try
+accused persons before a jury; a special tribunal of judges was set up
+by the South African Parliament. But their power of inflicting
+punishment was limited by the Parliament to a sentence of three years.
+General de Wet, the chief figure in the rebellion, was dismissed without
+punishment to his farm. That was the manner in which a strong native
+Government, realizing the possibilities of future trouble, dealt with an
+insurrection infinitely more serious in a military sense than that which
+broke out in Dublin. But in Ireland there was no native government; and
+the announcement of Mr. Birrell's resignation meant in reality that Mr.
+Asquith's Ministry had abdicated so far as Ireland was concerned. Quite
+properly, they had called in a competent soldier to deal with the
+military exigency. Quite shamefully, they left him in sole authority to
+handle what was essentially the task of statesmanship.
+
+Everybody saw that in such a case the need was to prevent a rebellious
+spirit from spreading. Sir John Maxwell took the simple view that the
+way to secure this was by plenty of executions. Knowledge of Irish
+history cannot be expected in an English Minister, still less in an
+English soldier; but it could have taught him how often and how
+ineffectually that recipe had been applied. Still less could it be hoped
+that a soldier, in no sense bound to the study of contemporary politics,
+should allow for the effect of two factors which must certainly
+influence Irish judgment and Irish feeling. The first of these was the
+precedent within the Empire created by General Botha's Government. This,
+I think, English opinion generally, and particularly English
+Imperialist opinion, wholly disregarded; but it was the point to which
+Redmond had instantly directed attention. For him, the idea of an
+Imperial Commonwealth of States was a reality, and within one
+Commonwealth there cannot be two standards of justice. The second factor
+was the licence accorded by a Liberal Government, and the sanction given
+by a Tory Opposition, to preparations for rebellion, and acts of
+rebellion, in Ulster. This was generally recognized by public opinion,
+though I think deliberately set aside by Sir John Maxwell--who perhaps
+is not to be blamed. But the Prime Minister, who had been chiefly and
+ultimately responsible for the decision to let Ulstermen do as they
+liked, was specially bound to consider and provide for the consequences
+of that line of policy in the past as it affected the present
+development. He was also, as the Minister responsible alike for carrying
+a Home Rule Act and for denying to it operation, specially bound in such
+a pass as this to be guided largely by the judgment of the man who but
+for that postponement would have been head of an Irish Government. But,
+under the various pressures of the moment, Mr. Asquith moved in a wholly
+different direction. Redmond's appeal and advice went totally
+disregarded. Yet Redmond knew Ireland as no Englishman could know it;
+and his hands were clean of guilt for what had happened. Mr. Asquith by
+his past inaction, his Tory colleagues by their action before the war,
+were deeply involved in responsibility. It is difficult, if not
+impossible, to find in Mr. Asquith's conduct any recognition of this
+cardinal fact. He judged rebels as if preparations for rebellion had
+never been palliated or approved.
+
+All that Redmond could achieve was by incessant personal intervention to
+limit the list of executions, to put some stay on what he called later
+"the gross and panicky violence" with which measures of suppression
+were conceived and carried out. He could not prevent the amazing
+procedure of sending flying columns throughout the country into places
+where there had been no hint of disturbance, and making arrests by the
+hundred without reason given or evidence produced. In many cases, men
+who had been thoroughly disgusted by the outbreak found themselves in
+jail; and disaffection was manufactured hourly.
+
+On May 3rd, when Redmond made his public appeal to Mr. Asquith, it was
+still not too late to prevent the mischief from spreading. By general
+consent, Redmond was right when he said that the rising was thoroughly
+unpopular in Ireland, and most of all in Dublin. The troops on whom the
+insurgents fired were in the first instance Irish troops. Later in that
+year I was attached to one of these battalions (the 10th Dublins), and
+asked them how they did their scouting work during the conflict. "We
+needed no scouts," was the answer; "the old women told us everything."
+The first volley which met a company of this battalion killed an
+officer; he was so strongly Nationalist in his sympathy as to be almost
+a Sinn Féiner. Others had been active leaders in the Howth gun-running.
+It was not merely a case of Irishmen firing on their fellow-countrymen:
+it was one section of the original Volunteers firing on another.
+
+Yet from the moment when English troops came on the scene, another
+strain of feeling began to make itself felt. A lady ordered tea to be
+made for one of the incoming regiments, halted outside her house on the
+line of march. The refreshment was long in coming, and she went down to
+see why. She found her cook up in arms: "Is it me boil the kettle for
+Englishmen coming in to shoot down Irishmen?" Yet that was still the
+voice of a minority. When I came home from France a few weeks later, a
+shrewd and prosperous Nationalist man of business said to me with fury:
+"The fools! It was the first rebellion that ever had the country
+against it, and they turned the people round in a week."
+
+Nothing could have prevented the halo of martyrdom from attaching itself
+to those who died by the law for the sake of Irish freedom: the
+tradition was too deeply ingrained in Ireland's history. Yet Redmond did
+not go beyond the measure of average Irish opinion when he accepted the
+first three executions as just. People at least knew who these men were,
+and their signatures to the proclamation of an Irish Republic proved
+their leadership. They were given the death of rebels in arms, to which
+no dishonour attaches. But a fatal mistake was made in suppressing all
+report of the proceedings of the court-martial on them, and this mistake
+was to be repeated indefinitely. Ireland was made to feel that this
+whole affair was taken completely out of the hands of Irishmen--that no
+attempt even was made to enlist Irish opinion on the side of law by a
+statement of the evidence on which law acted. Day by day there was a new
+bald announcement that such and such men had been shot; and these were
+men whose names Ireland at large had never heard of.
+
+Then on top of all came the appalling admission that an officer
+suffering from insanity had taken out three prisoners and caused them to
+be shot without trial on his own responsibility, none of these men
+having any complicity with the rebellion. This incident would have
+inflamed public opinion in any community; in Ireland its effect was
+beyond words poisonous. It revived the atmosphere of the Bachelor's Walk
+incident; and there was only too much justification for holding that the
+military authorities were indisposed to take the proper disciplinary
+action. Its effect detracted from the excellent opinion which the troops
+generally had earned by their conduct: it instilled venom into the
+resentment of those few cases (and it was beyond hope that they should
+not occur) in which soldiers had either lost their heads or yielded to
+the temptation of revenge in its ugliest shapes.
+
+The result can be best expressed by recording the experience of one Sinn
+Féiner who was captured in the fighting. While the military escort was
+taking him through the streets to his place of confinement, a crowd
+gathered round and ran along, consisting of angry men and women who had
+seen bloodshed and known hunger during these days. They shouted to the
+soldiers to knock his brains out there and then. Three weeks later he
+was again marched through the streets on his way to an English prison,
+and again a crowd mustered. But this time, to his amazement, they were
+shouting: "God save you! God have pity on you! Keep your heart up!
+Ireland's not dead yet!"
+
+These were the effects produced in Ireland on the mind of common people
+by the action of Government in enforcing the ultimate sanction of law
+which the members of that same Government by their action and by their
+inaction had brought into contempt. In England, in the meanwhile, a new
+Military Service Bill was going through the House, and naturally
+attempts to include Ireland in its operation were renewed. Sir Edward
+Carson, criticizing the Government of Ireland, said that (as Redmond put
+it in replying) Nationalists had held the power but not the
+responsibility. There was a note of angry protest in the Irish Leader's
+rejoinder. "I wish to say for myself that certainly since the Coalition
+Government came into operation, and before it, but certainly since then,
+I have had no power in the Government of Ireland. All my opinions have
+been overborne. My suggestions have been rejected, and my profound
+conviction is that if we had had the power and the responsibility for
+the Government of our country during the past two years, recent
+occurrences in Ireland would never have taken place."
+
+I think that view was at that moment very generally shared in England.
+The British Press had shown by their attitude towards the events in
+Dublin how deeply Redmond had made his mark. Almost without exception
+Unionist papers refrained from any attempt to identify Nationalist
+Ireland generally with the rising: they did full justice to the valour
+and the sufferings of Irish troops--who, indeed, at that very moment
+were passing through a cruel ordeal. In that Easter week the Sixteenth
+Division was subjected to two attacks with poison gas of a concentration
+and violence till then unknown, and under weather conditions which
+prolonged the ordeal beyond endurance. The 48th and 49th Brigades had
+very terrible losses. We of the 47th relieved them in the line.
+
+That was a long tour of trenches, some eighteen days beginning on the
+29th of April, and throughout it papers came in with the Irish news. I
+shall never forget the men's indignation. They felt they had been
+stabbed in the back. For myself, I thought that a situation had arisen
+in which Irish members who were serving had a more imperative duty at
+home, and I went to discuss the matter with Willie Redmond, whose
+battalion was then holding the front line to the left of Loos.
+
+I found him in the deep company commander's dug-out in the bay of line
+opposite Puits 14 bis, which will be known to many Irish soldiers. We
+came up to the light to talk, and he agreed with me in my view. We
+arranged that each of us should discuss with his commanding officer the
+question of asking for special leave. Mine advised me to go, and I have
+no earthly doubt that his would have said, or did say, the same; but
+Willie Redmond never brought himself to leave his men. Next month,
+however, he was invalided back, very seriously ill.
+
+But in our talk that day, when we discussed the possibility of our
+having some special influence, he said this: "Don't imagine that what
+you and I have done is going to make us popular with our people. On the
+contrary, we shall both be sent to the right about at the first General
+Election." I think he was wrong, at least to this extent, that any man
+who served would not have lessened his chance by doing so. When the tide
+flowed strongest against us, in three provinces one Nationalist only
+kept his seat--John Redmond's son, Major William Archer Redmond.
+
+
+II
+
+Already the tide had begun to turn in Ireland. On May 11th Mr.
+Dillon--who had been in Dublin during the rebellion--moved the
+adjournment of the House to demand that Government should state whether
+they intended to have more executions upon the finding of secret
+tribunals, and to continue the searches and wholesale arrests which were
+going on through the country. The list of executions had now reached
+fourteen, and no word of evidence had been published. Also the Prime
+Minister stated that he heard for the first time of the shooting of Mr.
+Sheehy-Skeffington and others by Captain Bowen Colthurst.
+Unquestionably, discussion was urgently needed, and Mr. Dillon was fully
+justified in emphasizing the mischief done in Ireland by alienating
+men's minds. But Mr. Dillon spoke as one who felt to the uttermost the
+passion of resentment which he depicted, and in his indignation against
+charges which had been brought against the insurgents, he was led to
+praise their conduct almost to the disparagement of soldiers in the
+field. Even in print the speech seethes with growing passion; and its
+delivery, I am told, accentuated its bitterness and its anti-English
+tone.
+
+It would be futile to deny that this utterance had a great effect in
+Ireland and in England, or to conceal Redmond's view that the effect was
+most lamentable. But it had one notable result. Mr. Asquith, in
+replying, announced his intention to visit Ireland and look into the
+situation for himself. Within a fortnight--on May 25th--he reported to
+the House his impressions.
+
+"The first was the breakdown of the existing machinery of the Irish
+Government; and the next was the strength and depth, and I might almost
+say, I think without exaggeration, the universality of the feeling in
+Ireland that we have now a unique opportunity for a new departure for
+the settlement of outstanding problems, and for a joint and combined
+effort to obtain agreement as to the way in which the Government of
+Ireland is for the future to be carried on."
+
+He indicated that an attempt would be made to renew negotiations for a
+settlement which would enable the Home Rule Act to be brought into
+operation at once; and that Mr. Lloyd George had consented to undertake
+the task of reconciling parties. But he begged that there should be no
+debate upon this proposal or upon Irish affairs at all. Redmond, in
+accepting, said that the request for acceptance without discussion was
+putting the goodwill of Nationalists to a very severe test.--A
+discussion would at once have produced this criticism: that Ireland
+would say to-morrow, "The Parliamentary party brought to Ireland a
+post-dated order for Home Rule, liable to an indefinite series of
+postponements: Sinn Fein by a week's rebellion secures that Home Rule
+shall be brought into force at once."
+
+In truth, the rapid growth of Sinn Fein from May 1916 onwards is due
+largely to this reasoning; but also to resentment against the
+Government's dealing with the rebellion, and against the Irish party's
+silence in Parliament in spite of the numerous actions of the military
+power which called for vigorous criticism.
+
+Irish Nationalist members realized the unpopularity of their silence and
+submitted to it, for the negotiations appeared to offer a real chance.
+We held that Mr. Lloyd George could not afford to fail, and had power
+enough to carry through a settlement. We did not know, and could not,
+that the Minister of Munitions had been called off from his regular work
+within five weeks before the beginning of the offensive on the Somme,
+for which an unprecedented outlay of material had been undertaken.
+
+The negotiations proceeded, and were conducted on the principle of
+discussion through a go-between. The parties never met: Mr. Lloyd George
+submitted proposals to each side separately. Redmond and his colleagues
+insisted on protecting themselves by securing a written document, so
+that, as it was hoped, there could be no understanding and the terms
+come to would be final.
+
+Those of us who hoped for a completely new approach to the problem were
+doomed to disappointment. The affair was taken up where the Buckingham
+Palace Conference left it. The terms to be arranged were terms of
+exclusion for Ulster; and the two questions of defining the area and the
+period met the negotiators on the threshold.
+
+It has been shown above that Redmond regarded as vital the distinction
+between temporary and permanent exclusion. His purpose was to stamp the
+whole of this proposed agreement with a provisional and transient
+character. It was to be simply a war measure, subject to re-arrangement
+at the close of hostilities; and it was to be adapted to a community
+still agitated by rebellion.
+
+An Irish Parliament with an Executive responsible to it was to be set up
+at once. But no elections were to be held. The existing members for the
+existing constituencies were to be the provisional Parliament till the
+war ended.
+
+The same considerations precluded the possibility of a referendum in
+Ulster. Nationalists accepted an area defined by agreement. It left out
+of "Ulster" the three counties, Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, in whose
+eight constituencies no Unionist had been returned since 1885. But it
+left to the excluded area the counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh, each
+with a Nationalist majority, and the boroughs of Newry and Londonderry,
+both represented by Home Rulers.
+
+This was a provision which no body of men could be expected to acquiesce
+in permanently as representing the equity of the case. It was accepted
+for the sake of peace, as a temporary expedient. A strong inducement was
+added by Mr. Lloyd George's proposal that at the close of the
+provisional period the whole matter should be referred to a Council of
+the Empire with the Prime Ministers of the Dominions taking a hand in
+the settlement. But to guarantee and seal its provisional and transitory
+character an extraordinary clause was added. Until a permanent
+settlement was reached, the Irish membership at Westminster was to
+remain at its original number of 103.
+
+The document embodying these conclusions was accepted in identical terms
+by each side, and each party of negotiators set out for Ireland to
+endeavour to secure acceptance of it. But before he left London Sir
+Edward Carson asked for an interpretation of the terms. Did the
+agreement mean that none of the six excluded counties could be brought
+under a Dublin Parliament without an Act of Parliament? In other words,
+was the exclusion permanent until Parliament should otherwise determine?
+He was answered that the Prime Minister accepted this interpretation,
+and would be prepared to say so when the matter came before Parliament.
+Knowledge of these communications was not conveyed to Redmond. Redmond's
+interpretation was that at the termination of the war this arrangement
+lapsed, and the Home Rule Act, which was the law of the land, came into
+force. If Ulster, or any part of it, were to be excluded, it must be by
+a new amending Act. Had the assurance given to Sir Edward Carson been
+conveyed to Redmond, either the negotiations must have been resumed or
+they must have been rendered abortive.
+
+On June 13th the Ulster Council accepted the terms, no doubt with great
+reluctance. The signatories to the Covenant in the three western
+counties felt themselves betrayed. The whole body found itself committed
+to acceptance of Home Rule in principle for twenty-six counties. But the
+war necessity was pressed upon them and they submitted.
+
+The Nationalist Convention met ten days later in Belfast. Mr. Devlin had
+been strenuous in his exertions throughout the province, but the whole
+force of the ecclesiastical power was thrown against him. Apart from the
+detestation of partition, the Catholic Church conceived that the
+principle of denominational education would be lost in the severed
+counties, where the dominant Presbyterian element was opposed to it.
+Very many delegates came to the Convention pledged in advance to resist
+the proposals: and the general anticipation was that Redmond would be
+thrown over.
+
+The proceedings were secret. But in the result the Nationalists of the
+North refused to be any party to denying the rest of Ireland
+self-government. A division was taken, and consent to temporary
+exclusion was carried by a large majority. The victory was in the main
+due to Mr. Devlin's extraordinary personal gifts, exercised to carry a
+conclusion which inevitably must injure himself where he was most
+sensitive to a wound, in the hearts of those among whom he was born and
+bred.
+
+It must have been in the weeks immediately after this that Redmond spoke
+to me, as I never heard him speak of any other man, his mind about Mr.
+Devlin. "Joe's loyalty in all this business has been beyond words," he
+said. "I know what it has cost him to do as he has done." He knew well
+that the younger man's influence had been more efficacious than the
+threat of his own resignation--which was not withheld. A man of other
+nature might have been jealous of the young and growing power: but such
+an element as this was so foreign to Redmond's whole being that even
+the thought of it never entered the most suspicious mind.
+
+The result of the Belfast Convention was communicated and discussed at a
+meeting of the Irish party held at the Mansion House on June 26th. It
+was one of the most hopeful moments in our experience; reaction from a
+depression approaching to despair gave confidence to the gloomiest among
+us. Hope was in the air. The effect of Mr. Asquith's sentence upon the
+whole machinery of Dublin Castle had not yet worn off. No new Government
+had been installed: the Chief Secretaryship remained vacant, the
+Lord-Lieutenant also had retired from his office. It seemed a certainty
+that we should enter, under whatever auguries, into the realization of a
+self-governing Ireland. Even those who were most enthusiastic for the
+birth of a new and glorious era that was to date from the stirring
+action of the rebels, and who were most open-mouthed in condemnation of
+Redmond's futile efforts, in practice shared our view. I asked one such
+man how he counted on securing the necessary first step of establishing
+an Irish Government. "Oh, I suppose," was his answer, "the Irish party
+will manage that somehow."
+
+But soon delay began to hang coldly on this temper of anticipation, and
+to delay were added disquieting utterances. On June 29th Lord Lansdowne
+announced in the House of Lords that the "consultations" which had been
+taking place were "certainly authorized" by the Government but were not
+binding upon it; and that he, speaking for the Unionist wing of the
+Cabinet, had not accepted the proposals. This was disturbing. Lord
+Selborne had retired from the Government before the negotiators went to
+Ireland, because he knew of the proposals and was not prepared to
+sanction them. We assumed that other Unionists who shared this view
+would have followed him in his frank action. Now we perceived that Lord
+Lansdowne and his friends had frugally husbanded their force. It was
+expected by many that Ireland would do the work for them. Failing that,
+they had still the last stab to deliver. But we counted upon one thing:
+that Mr. Lloyd George, if not Mr. Asquith, would feel himself committed
+to see the deal through--and that his resignation would have to be faced
+as a part of the consequences if attempts were made to go back on the
+bargain.
+
+Parliament reassembled and still nothing was said and nothing done: but
+the Press was full of rumours. On July 19th Redmond asked that a date
+should be fixed for the introduction of the proposed Bill, and next day
+he renewed his demand, urging that the constant delays and postponements
+were "seriously jeopardizing the chance of settlement." This was only
+too true. A furious agitation against the proposal of even temporary
+partition was raging through Ireland. Once more, the tide had been
+missed: time had been given to inculcate all manner of doubts and
+suspicions--and once more the suspicions proved to be only too well
+justified. The whole story was revealed to the House on July 24th.
+
+Redmond, in his speech, emphasized it that the proposals had come not
+from the Nationalists, but from the Government; they had, however, been
+accepted, after considerable negotiation and many changes in substance,
+as a plan which Nationalists could recommend for acceptance.
+Nationalists had been pressed to use the utmost despatch, had been told
+that every hour counted and that it was essential in the highest
+Imperial interests, if Ireland endorsed the agreement, that it should be
+put into operation at once. "That is two long months ago," he said.
+Action had been taken; the unpopularity of the proposals, fully
+foreseen, had been faced, on a clear understanding.
+
+"The agreement was in the words of the Prime Minister himself, for what
+he called a provisional settlement which should last until the war was
+over, or until a final and permanent settlement was arrived at within a
+limited period after the war. This was the chief factor of this plan,
+and without it not one of my colleagues or myself would for a moment
+have considered it, much less have submitted it to our followers."
+
+The retention of Irish members at Westminster in full strength was
+covenanted for "as an indispensable safeguard of the temporary character
+of the whole arrangement."
+
+It was on this construction of the agreement that consent to it had been
+secured, in the face of very strong and organized opposition: and
+consent was secured to it as a final document. Nevertheless, when
+Redmond arrived in London he had been at once confronted with a demand
+for modifications--of which the first were unimportant. Yet to consent
+to any alteration was a sacrifice of principle; but he was told that
+this concession would secure agreement in the Cabinet. Later, however,
+came a public statement from Lord Lansdowne that "permanent and
+enduring" structural alterations would be introduced into the Home Rule
+Act. Redmond had seen the draft Bill in which the Government's draftsmen
+embodied the terms of the agreement, and he had accepted this, as
+conforming to his covenant. In reply to Lord Lansdowne, he had pressed
+for the production of this Bill, but could not get it. The end was that,
+after a Cabinet held on July 19th, he was told that "a number of new
+proposals had been brought forward"; that the Cabinet did not desire to
+consult him about these at all; and on the 22nd Mr. Lloyd George and Mr.
+Herbert Samuel were instructed to convey to him the Cabinet's decision,
+with an intimation that there would be no further discussion or
+consultation. That decision was to make the exclusion of six counties
+permanent, and to withdraw the provision for retaining Irish members at
+full strength during the transitory period.
+
+Redmond attacked no individual. His anger was beyond words. He said
+this, however:
+
+"Some tragic fatality seems to dog the footsteps of this Government in
+all their dealings with Ireland. Every step taken by them since the
+Coalition was formed, and especially since the unfortunate outbreak in
+Dublin, has been lamentable. They have disregarded every advice we
+tendered to them, and now in the end, having got us to induce our people
+to make a tremendous sacrifice and to agree to the temporary exclusion
+of these Ulster counties, they throw this agreement to the winds, and
+they have taken the surest means to accentuate every possible danger and
+difficulty in the Irish situation."
+
+That day really finished the constitutional party and overthrew
+Redmond's power. We had incurred the very great odium of accepting even
+temporary partition--and a partition which, owing to this arbitrary
+extension of area, could not be justified on any ground of principle; we
+had involved with us many men who voted for that acceptance on the faith
+of Redmond's assurance that the Government were bound by their written
+word; and now we were thrown over.
+
+Apart from the effect on Redmond's position, the result was to engender
+in Ireland a temper which made settlement almost impossible. No British
+Minister's word would in future be accepted for anything; and any
+Irishman who attempted to improve relations between the countries was
+certain to arouse anger and contempt in his countrymen.
+
+More particularly the relations between Irish members and the most
+powerful members of the Government were hopelessly embittered. Mr. Lloyd
+George put aside completely--probably he never for a moment
+entertained--the thought of seriously threatening resignation because
+his agreement with the Irish was repudiated by his colleagues. He was
+entirely engrossed with the work of the War Office, where he thought,
+and was justified in thinking, himself indispensable. Mr. Asquith, whose
+object was to keep unity in his Government at all costs, when it came
+to a choice whether to quarrel with the Irish who formed no part of it,
+or with the Unionists who were his colleagues, had no hesitation which
+side to throw over.
+
+I have never seen the House of Commons so thoroughly discontented and
+disgusted. There was much genuine sympathy with Redmond. Sir Edward
+Carson evidently shared it, and he made a conciliatory speech in which
+he proposed that he and the Nationalist leader should shake hands on the
+floor of the House. That is a gesture which comes better from the loser
+than from the winner, and there was no doubt that Sir Edward Carson had
+won. But he knew Ireland well enough to realize the meaning of his
+victory, and his speech indicated disquiet and even horror at the
+prospect before us. He was quite avowedly anxious to see a start made
+with Home Rule, Ulster standing apart. In a later debate, when the
+Government announced its intention to fill again the vacant Irish
+offices (appointing Mr. Duke as Chief Secretary), Redmond referred
+hopefully to this utterance of the Ulster leader and generally to "the
+new and improved atmosphere which has surrounded this Irish question
+quite recently."
+
+The end of this speech dealt with one of the elements which had
+contributed most to the improvement. In the great battle of the Somme,
+which opened on July 1st, the Ulster Division went for the first time
+into general action, and their achievement was the most glorious and the
+most unlucky of that day. They carried their assault through five lines
+of trenches, and, because a division on their flank was not equally
+successful, were obliged to fall back, adding terribly in this
+withdrawal to the desperate losses of their advance. Side by side with
+them on the other flank was the Fourth Division, containing two
+battalions of Dublin Fusiliers, in one of which John Redmond's son
+commanded a company; so that he and the Ulstermen went over shoulder to
+shoulder. He came back unwounded; all other company commanders in the
+battalion were killed. The only thing in which Redmond was entirely
+fortunate during these last years of his life was in his son's record
+during the war.
+
+Another Nationalist well known to the House of Commons served also in
+the Dublin Fusiliers on the Somme, with a different fortune. Professor
+Kettle, owing to conditions of health, had been unable to come to France
+with the Sixteenth Division, and had been mainly employed in recruiting.
+Now in these summer months he pushed hard to get out to France, though
+he was not physically fit for the line. He got to France, and, as was
+easy to foresee, broke down and was sent to work at the base on records:
+but before he left his regiment he knew that it was under orders for a
+general action, and he insisted that he should have leave to rejoin for
+that day. He came back accordingly, found himself called on to take
+command of a company, and led it with great gallantry, and on the second
+day of action was shot dead. It was the fate that he expected; he, like
+so many, had a forerunning assurance of his end. So was lost to Ireland
+the most variously-gifted intelligence that I have ever known.
+
+The Sixteenth Division were still on the sector about Loos, and their
+casualties were heavy and continuous in the perpetual trench warfare.
+With the last days of August they were withdrawn--for a rest, as they
+believed at first; but their march was southwards to the Somme.
+
+The purpose was to use them for an attack on Ginchy; but a shift of
+arrangements brought the 47th Brigade into line against Guillemont and
+its quarries, which had on six occasions been unsuccessfully attacked.
+The Irish carried them. Three days later the whole division was launched
+against Ginchy. They equalled the Ulstermen's valour, and were luckier
+in the result. For these achievements praise was not stinted. Colonel
+Repington in _The Times_ described the Irish as the "best missile
+troops" in all the armies.
+
+
+III
+
+The deeds of Irish soldiers helped us greatly outside of Ireland; in
+Ireland, the news was received with mingled feelings. There was
+passionate resentment against the Government, and the question was
+asked, For what were their men dying? Redmond's answer could not be so
+confident as it would have been six months earlier. There were many who
+said that he dare not face the country. His answer to this was given at
+Waterford, where on October 6, 1916, his constituents received him with
+their old loyalty--though now for the first time there were hostile
+voices in the crowd. He spoke out very plainly, saying with justice that
+in all his life he had never played to the gallery and would not now.
+Things had to be looked at squarely.
+
+"We have taken a leap back over generations of progress, and have
+actually had a rebellion, with its inevitable aftermath of brutalities,
+stupidities and inflamed passions."
+
+He would impugn no man's motives, least of all the motives of the dead;
+but those who had set this train of events in motion had been always the
+enemies of the constitutional movement. The constitutional movement must
+go on, he said; but it would be folly to pretend that it could go on as
+if nothing had happened. Ireland must face its share in the
+responsibility. But the real responsibility rested with the British
+Government.
+
+To establish this he entered on a review of the whole series of
+circumstances, not omitting Ulster's preparations for civil war, and
+stressing heavily the mischief that was done when Sir Edward Carson was
+chosen "by strange irony" to be the First Law Officer of the Crown.
+
+Passing from his review, he issued grave warning against the idea of
+conscription: it would be resisted in every village and its attempted
+enforcement would be a scandal which would ring through the world. For
+Ireland also he had admonition. He had told them before that Home Rule
+was an impregnable position. But "no fortress is impregnable unless the
+garrison is faithful and united."
+
+This, alas! was already a counsel of perfection for a country so deeply
+divided in opinion as Nationalist Ireland had come to be. The old
+loyalties had gone--and he felt it. Ending on a personal note, he
+referred to his age: he was over sixty; he had done thirty-five years of
+work which would have broken down any man less robust in constitution
+than it had been his luck to be born. He believed in youth, he said, and
+would gladly give way to younger men.
+
+"But one thing I will not do while I have breath in my body. I will not
+give way to the abuse and calumny and the falsehoods of men whom I have
+known for long years as the treacherous enemies of Ireland."
+
+With all his reticence, he was a sensitive man; and for months now he
+could scarcely take up a newspaper, except his party's official organ,
+without finding himself accused of imbecility, of idle vanity, of
+corrupt bargaining, of every unworthy motive. Worse than all, he
+realized the inherent weakness of his position. He told his hearers at
+Waterford that the Irish party would not vary its attitude upon the war,
+but that we should now become a regular and active opposition. He was
+far too experienced not to be aware that during a war--and such a
+war--he neither could nor would offer to the Government in power
+opposition in the sense in which Nationalist Ireland would understand
+the word.
+
+But he took steps at once for raising the Irish question by a direct
+vote of censure. On October 18th he moved:
+
+"That the system of Government at present maintained in Ireland is
+inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies are fighting in
+Europe, and has been mainly responsible for the recent unhappy events
+and for the present state of feeling in that country."
+
+His speech avoided all controversial reference to what had preceded the
+war, but it reviewed with great power the long series of blunders,
+beginning with the delay in putting the Home Rule Bill on the Statute
+Book, and ending with the Cabinet's destruction of the agreement entered
+into in June. Now, as the end of all, Dublin Castle, after the Prime
+Minister's description of its hopeless breakdown, was set up again with
+a Unionist Chief Secretary and a Unionist Attorney-General: with a
+universal system of martial law in force throughout the country, and
+with hundreds of interned men in prison on suspicion. He warned the
+Government of the inevitable effect upon the flow of recruits for the
+Irish Divisions; and in a passage which showed how close his attention
+was to all this matter of recruitment, he pressed the War Office for
+certain minor concessions to Irish sentiment which would help us to
+maintain the Division that had so greatly distinguished itself at
+Guillemont and Ginchy.
+
+But the real pith of his speech was political in the larger sense. He
+pressed upon the House the injury which England's interest was suffering
+through the alienation of American opinion, and through the reflection
+of Irish discontent in Australia; he pleaded for the withdrawal of
+martial law. Nothing came of the debate, except a speech in which Mr.
+Lloyd George admitted the "stupidities, which sometimes almost look like
+malignancy," that were perpetrated at the beginning of recruiting in
+Ireland. The Labour men and a few Liberals voted for our motion. But as
+a menace to the Government it was negligible.
+
+I was in France during the period of intrigue which followed, leading up
+to the displacement of Mr. Asquith. When the change occurred, members of
+Parliament who were serving were recalled by special summons. I found
+Redmond in these days profoundly impressed with the strength of Mr.
+Lloyd George's personal position. He was convinced that the new Premier
+could, if he chose, force a settlement of the Irish difficulty, and was
+very hopeful of this happening. Sir Edward Carson dared not, he thought,
+set himself in opposition; at this moment the Ulster party was not
+popular, while there was in the House a widespread feeling that Redmond
+in particular had been treated in a manner far other than his due.
+Another of his brother's interventions in debate gave an impetus to this
+sympathy.
+
+Again in a thin House, during some discussion on Estimates, Willie
+Redmond got up and spoke out of the fullness of experiences which had
+profoundly affected his imagination. He told the House of what he had
+seen in Flanders, where the two Irish Divisions had at last been brought
+into contact, so that the left of the Ulster line in front of
+Ploegstreet touched the right of ours in front of Kemmel. It had always
+been said that the two factions would fly at each other's throats: by a
+score of happy detailed touches the soldier built up a picture of what
+had actually happened in the line and behind the line, and then summed
+it up in a conclusion:
+
+"They came together in the trenches and they were friends. Get them
+together on the floor of an Assembly, or where you will, in Ireland, and
+a similar result will follow."
+
+Then, from this theme, he passed to one even more moving--the fate of
+Irish Nationalists, who were confronted daily with evil news of their
+own land. "It is miserable to see men who went out with high hearts and
+hopes, who have acquitted themselves so well, filled with wretchedness
+because their country is in an unhappy condition." He appealed for a new
+and genuine attempt to set all this right; and he eulogized once more
+with warm eloquence the conduct of the troops, Ulstermen and the rest
+alike. Raw lads, who eighteen months before had never thought of seeing
+war, had come in before his eyes bringing prisoners by the hundreds from
+the most highly trained soldiery in Europe.
+
+Man after man, when Willie Redmond had ended, rose and thanked him; but
+the most notable words came from Mr. Bonar Law:
+
+"His name and his action, in connection with that of the leader of his
+party, stand out as a landmark for all the people of this country as to
+what is being done by those who represent Nationalist feeling."
+
+All this increased Redmond's hopes of what might be expected from the
+new Premier, the representative of another small nationality, whose
+early days in Parliament had linked him almost more closely with Irish
+Nationalists than with British Liberalism. I was on the upper bench when
+Mr. Lloyd George came in, amid loud cheering. "Look at him," said Willie
+Redmond (his senior in the House by ten years), who sat beside me: "It
+seems only the other day he was sitting over here cheering like mad for
+the Boers; and there he is now, Prime Minister."
+
+But Mr. Lloyd George's speech, which had been deferred for several days
+owing to illness, was long before it came to Ireland, and then its tone
+was no way hopeful. He referred back to the negotiations of June and
+July, with their "atmosphere of nervous suspicion and distrust,
+pervasive, universal, of everything and everybody."
+
+"I was drenched with suspicion of Irishmen by Englishmen and of
+Englishmen by Irishmen and, worst of all, of Irishmen by Irishmen. It
+was a quagmire of distrust which clogged the footsteps and made progress
+impossible. That is the real enemy of Ireland."
+
+No one could say that the transaction to which Mr. Lloyd George was
+referring had helped to destroy distrust: and in view of the opinion
+held by Irishmen--and not by Irishmen only--of Ministers' dealing with
+Ireland, it was natural that this passage should provoke the resentment
+which was evident in Redmond when he rose.
+
+He followed Mr. Asquith, and made it clear that Ireland did not keep its
+praises for the rising star. He commended in weighty words the
+patriotism, the reticence and the magnanimity of the dispossessed
+leader; he renewed Ireland's expression of gratitude for the service
+done in the Home Rule Act; then, turning to the new power, he told Mr.
+Lloyd George bluntly that his words would be received in Ireland with
+the deepest disappointment. This was to be a Ministry of quick and
+effective decisions; but so far as our question was concerned, they had
+shown every disposition to wait and see. Was Ireland only to be let
+drift? Two courses might be taken--the statesman's, of real remedy; the
+politician's, of palliatives. Even of the latter nothing had been said.
+Martial law could be removed; untried men could be released from jail.
+Yet there was no sign. The Prime Minister intervened angrily. He had
+been ill, he said. Redmond was in no way inclined to accept the reason
+as sufficient, and again Mr. Lloyd George rose to say that it was "not
+merely unfair, but a trifle impolitic" not to give him a couple of days
+to consult with the Chief Secretary.
+
+Still Redmond maintained his tone of aggression. A radical reform was
+needed, and of those things that must be borne in mind the first was
+that time was of the essence of success. Promptness was essential.
+Secondly, Government must take the initiative themselves; they must not
+seek to evade their responsibility by putting the blame on other
+shoulders (this was his rejoinder to the allegation of paralysing
+distrust); there was no use in resuming negotiations, going to this man
+and to that man to see what he would be willing to take. Thirdly, the
+problem must be approached by a different method; it must be dealt with
+on lines of a united Ireland. The time had gone by, in effect, for any
+proposals of partition, temporary or permanent.
+
+He added a caution that there must be no attempt to mix up the problem
+of an Irish settlement with conditions about recruiting or conscription.
+"That question must be left to a change of heart in Ireland." In
+conclusion he expressed to the House of Commons--though in no sanguine
+accents--what he had expressed to me a fortnight earlier in private
+talk: his belief that the time was "ripe for drastic, decided and bold
+action" by the Prime Minister. Powerful influences were at Mr. Lloyd
+George's back--in the Press of all parties, in the opinion of leading
+men of all parties. Three-quarters of the House of Commons, Redmond
+said, would welcome such action: the whole of the overseas Dominions
+would be for it; and it would have "the sympathy of all men of good will
+in the Empire."
+
+For the first time I noticed lack of cordiality in the response of the
+House--not from want of agreement, but from a profound depression. The
+old temper of bickering had revived, especially between some of our
+party and those who disagreed with them. One was glad to get back to
+France for Christmas, even in that grim winter.
+
+When I was invalided back in February, I found that things had not stood
+still in Ireland. Redmond's suggested palliative had been applied, and
+the deported persons were let back home for Christmas. But this produced
+little easing of the situation, and within a few weeks Government
+rearrested several of them.
+
+One, however, Count Plunkett, was still in Ireland when a vacancy
+occurred in Roscommon. He was not in himself a likely man to appeal to
+that constituency. He had been an applicant for the Under-Secretaryship
+at Dublin Castle, and was therefore clearly not a person of extreme
+Nationalist views. But one of his sons, a young poet, had been among the
+signatories to the proclamation of an Irish Republic, and had paid for
+it with his life; Count Plunkett stood really as the father of his son.
+He was returned by a very large majority. This was the first open defeat
+inflicted by the physical force men on the Constitutional party since
+the beginning of Parnell's day.
+
+In March, Redmond desired to bring the Irish question again before
+Parliament, and Mr. T.P. O'Connor introduced a motion calling on the
+House "without further delay to confer upon Ireland the free
+institutions long promised her."
+
+That debate will always be remembered by those who heard it for one
+speech. Willie Redmond was among the oldest members of the Parliamentary
+party; not half a dozen men in all the House had been longer
+continuously members; he had always been one of the most popular figures
+at Westminster and in Ireland; and he had always spoken a great deal.
+Yet he had never been in the front rank either as a speaker or as a
+politician. The humour and the wit which made him the joy of groups in
+the smoking-room on the occasions when he was in full vein of
+reminiscence never got into his set speeches--though no man oftener lit
+up debate with some telling interruption. He was often merely
+rhetorical; he had the name--though in my experience he never deserved
+it--for being indiscreetly vehement. His early reputation, which he had
+never lived down, is not unkindly represented by a story which he used
+to tell against himself. When the first Home Rule Bill was introduced he
+had a great desire to speak in the debate, and went to Parnell with his
+request. "Will you promise," said Parnell, "that you will write out what
+you are going to say, and show it to me, and say that and no more?" He
+promised, and handed in his manuscript. Days went by and he heard
+nothing, so he went back to the Chief. "Ah yes," said Parnell, "I have
+it in my pocket. An excellent speech, my dear Willie. If I were you I
+shouldn't waste it on the House of Commons. It's too good for them."
+
+Later, in the days from 1906 onwards, with all his experience, it cannot
+be said that he ever affected opinion in the House. What he said was the
+common stuff of argument: it was all what someone else might have
+said--until the war came. Then, he was a changed creature. He went
+through in the Army the same experience as hundreds of other members of
+Parliament; but he and he only seemed to have got the very soul out of
+it. He took to his soldier's duty as a religion: he saw all that
+concerned him in the light of it. It has been told already how his two
+speeches on almost casual occasions affected public feeling: but in them
+he was chiefly an Irish member of Parliament speaking about soldiers and
+about Irish soldiers. In this debate he was an Irish soldier pleading
+with Parliament for Ireland in the name of Irish soldiers--who had
+responded to the call to arms because, as he said, they were led to
+believe that a new and better and brighter chapter was about to open in
+the relations of Great Britain and Ireland.
+
+"I do not believe that there is a single member of any party in this
+House who is prepared to get up and say that in the past the government
+and treatment of Ireland by Great Britain have been what they should
+have been. Mistakes, dark, black, and bitter mistakes, have been made. A
+people denied justice, a people with many admitted grievances, the
+redress of which has been long delayed. On our side, perhaps, in the
+conflict and in the bitterness of contest, there may have been things
+said and done, offensive if you will, irritating if you will, to the
+people of this country; but what I want to ask, in all simplicity, is
+this, whether, in face of the tremendous conflict which is now raging,
+whether, in view of the fact that, apart from every other consideration,
+the Irish people, South as well as North, are upon the side of the
+Allies and against the German pretension to-day, it is not possible from
+this war to make a new start?--whether it is not possible on your side,
+and on ours as well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence
+a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries?
+Why cannot we do it? Is there an Englishman representing any party who
+does not yearn for a better future between Ireland and Great Britain?
+There is no Irishman who is not anxious for it also. Why cannot there be
+a settlement? Why must it be that, when British soldiers and Irish
+soldiers are suffering and dying side by side, this eternal old quarrel
+should go on?....
+
+"If there ought to be an oblivion of the past between Great Britain and
+Ireland generally, may I ask in God's name the First Lord of the
+Admiralty [Sir Edward Carson] why there cannot be a similar oblivion of
+the past between the warring sections in Ireland? All my life I have
+taken as strong and as strenuous a part on the Nationalist side as my
+poor abilities would allow. I may have been as bitter and as strong in
+the heated atmosphere of party contests against my countrymen in the
+North as ever they have been against me, but I believe in my soul and
+heart here to-day that I represent the instinct and the desire of the
+whole Irish Catholic race when I say that there is nothing that they
+more passionately desire and long for than that there should be an end
+of this old struggle between the North and the South.
+
+"The followers of the right honourable gentleman the First Lord of the
+Admiralty should shake hands with the rest of their countrymen. I appeal
+to the right honourable gentleman here in the name of men against whom
+no finger of scorn can be pointed; in the name of men who are doing
+their duty; in the name of men who have died; in the name of men who may
+die, and who at this very moment may be dying, to rise to the demands of
+the situation. I ask him to meet his Nationalist fellow-countrymen and
+accept the offer which they make to him and his followers, and on the
+basis of that self-government which has made, and which alone has made,
+the Empire as strong as it is to-day, come to some arrangement for the
+better government of Ireland in the future.
+
+"Why does the right honourable gentleman opposite not meet us half way?
+I want to know what is the reason. It surely cannot be that the right
+honourable gentleman and his friends believe that under a system of
+self-government they would have anything to fear. Nothing impressed me
+more than the opinion I heard expressed by a high-placed Roman Catholic
+officer who is in service with the Ulster Division, when he told me of
+his experience there, and when he said that although he was the only one
+of the Catholic religion in that Division, it had dawned upon him that
+they certainly were Irishmen and were not Englishmen or Scotsmen.[8] The
+right honourable gentleman knows perfectly well that it would not take
+so very much to bring his friends and our friends together, and I ask
+him why the attempt is not made? I ask him whether the circumstances of
+the time do not warrant that such an attempt should be made? I ask him
+whether he does not know in his inmost heart that it would bring to the
+common enemy more dismay and consternation than the destruction of a
+hundred of their submarines if they knew that England, Scotland and
+Ireland were really united, not merely within the confines of the shores
+of these islands, but united in every part of the world where the Irish
+people are to be found?
+
+"What is it that stands in the way of Ireland taking her place as a
+self-governing part of this Empire? Ireland is the only portion of the
+Empire now fighting which is not self-governing. The Australians whom I
+meet from time to time point to their government being free; the
+Canadians and the New Zealanders do the same, and we Irishmen are the
+only units in France to-day taking our part in the war who are obliged
+to admit that the country we come from is denied those privileges which
+have made the Empire the strong organization which it is to-day. If
+safeguards are necessary--I speak only for myself, and I do not speak
+for anybody else on these benches, because I have been away from this
+House so long that I have almost lost touch with things--as far as my
+own personal opinion goes, there is nothing I would not do, and there is
+no length to which I would not go, in order to meet the real objections
+or to secure the real confidence, friendship and affection of my
+countrymen in the North of Ireland.
+
+"For my own part, I would gladly, if it would ease the situation, agree
+to an arrangement whereby it might be possible for His Majesty the King,
+if he so desired, to call in someone at the starting of a new Irish
+government, a gentleman representing the portion of the country and the
+section of the community which the First Lord represents; and if a
+representative of that kind were placed with his hand upon the helm of
+the first Irish Parliament, I, at any rate, as far as I am concerned,
+would give him the loyal and the strong support which I have given to
+every leader I have supported in this House. After all, these are times
+of sacrifice, and every man is called upon to make some sacrifices. Men
+and women and children alike have to do something in these days, and is
+it too much to appeal to the right honourable gentleman and his friends
+to sacrifice some part of their position in order to lead the majority
+of their countrymen and to bring about that which the whole
+English-speaking world desires, namely, a real reconciliation of
+Ireland? I apologize for having detained the House so long, but this is
+a matter upon which I feel strongly, and I feel all the more strongly
+about it because I know that I am trying altogether too feebly, but as
+strongly as I can, to represent what I know to be the wishes nearest to
+the hearts of tens of thousands of Irishmen who went with me and their
+colleagues to France, many of whom will never return, all of whom are
+suffering the privations and the hardship and the risk and the wellnigh
+intolerable circumstances of life in France. I want to speak for these
+men, and if they could all speak with one voice and with one accord,
+they would say to this House, to men in every part of it, to
+Conservatives, Liberals and Labour men, to their Nationalist countrymen
+and to their countrymen from the North of Ireland: In the name of God,
+we here who are about to die, perhaps, ask you to do that which largely
+induced us to leave our homes; to do that which our fathers and mothers
+taught us to long for; to do that which is all we desire: make our
+country happy and contented, and enable us, when we meet the Canadians
+and the Australians and the New Zealanders side by side in the common
+cause and the common field, to say to them, 'Our country, just as yours,
+has self-government within the Empire.'"
+
+I have given the speech almost in full as it stands in print after the
+opening paragraph. But I cannot give the effect of what was heard by a
+densely crowded House in absolute silence. It was not an argument; it
+was an appeal. There was not a cheer, not a murmur of agreement. They
+were not needed, they would have been felt an impertinence, so great was
+the respect and the sympathy. As the speaker stood there in war-stained
+khaki, his hair showed grey, his face was seamed with lines, but there
+was in every word the freshness and simplicity of a nature that age had
+not touched. In his usual place on the upper bench beside his brother,
+he poured out his words with the flow and passion of a bird's song. He
+was out of the sphere of argument; but the whole experience of a long
+and honourable lifetime was vibrant in that utterance. He spoke from his
+heart. All that had gone to make his faith, all the inmost convictions
+of his life were implicit--and throughout all ran the sense in the
+assembly who heard him, not only that he had risked, but that he was
+eager to give his life for proof. It was not strange that this should be
+so, for he was going on what he believed would be his last journey to
+France; and when he reached the supreme moment of his passion with the
+words "In the name of God, we here who are about to die, perhaps," the
+last word was little more than a concession to the conventions.
+
+It was a speech, in short, that made one believe in impossibilities; but
+in Parliament no miracles happen. Mr. Lloyd George replied, as John
+Redmond expected--declaring that the Government were willing to give
+Home Rule at once to "the parts of Ireland which unmistakably demand
+it," but would be no party to placing under Nationalist rule people who
+were "as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook
+from the rest of Ireland as the inhabitants of Fife or Aberdeen." No
+Liberal Minister had ever before so completely adopted the Ulster theory
+of two nations. Taxed with the refusal to allow Ulster counties to
+declare by vote which group they belonged to, he declined to discuss
+"geographical limitations" at present, but indicated that if Irish
+members could accept the principle of separate treatment for two
+peoples, there were "ways and means by which it could be worked out."
+Suggestion of a Conference of Irishmen was thrown out, or of a
+Commission to discuss the details of partition. Redmond, in replying,
+answered to this that "after experience of the last negotiations he
+would enter into no more negotiations." He warned the Government that
+the whole constitutional movement was in danger. There were in Ireland
+"serious men, men of ability, men with command of money," who were bent
+on smashing it.
+
+"After fifty years of labour on constitutional lines we had practically
+banished the revolutionary party from Ireland. Now again, after fifty
+years, it has risen."
+
+The rest was a prophecy only too accurate:
+
+"If the constitutional movement disappears, the Prime Minister will find
+himself face to face with a revolutionary movement, and he will find it
+impossible to preserve any of the forms even of constitutionalism. He
+will have to govern Ireland by the naked sword. I cannot picture to
+myself a condition of things in which the Prime Minister, with his
+record behind him, would be an instrument to carry out a government of
+that kind.... I say this plainly. No British statesman, no matter what
+his platonic affection for Home Rule may have been in the past, no
+matter what party he may belong to, who by his conduct once again
+teaches the Irish people the lesson that any National leader who, taking
+his political life in his hands, endeavours to combine local and
+Imperial patriotism--endeavours to combine loyalty to Ireland's rights
+with loyalty to the Empire--anyone who again teaches the lesson that
+such an one is certain to be let down and betrayed by this course, is
+guilty of treason, not only to the liberties of Ireland but to the unity
+and strength and best interests of this Empire."
+
+After these bitter words he called on his colleagues not "to continue a
+useless and humiliating debate," but to withdraw from the House: and we
+accordingly followed him into the lobby. In our absence the discussion
+continued, in a tone not flattering to the Government. It was remarkable
+for one utterance from Mr. Healy, concerning Redmond:
+
+"I wish to say at the outset that in my opinion this Empire owes him a
+debt of gratitude which it can never repay, and I wish also to say of
+him as an opponent that in my opinion, if his advice had been taken by
+the War Office, it is absolutely true, as he contends, that you would
+have marshalled in Ireland from two hundred thousand to three hundred
+thousand men, from whom large drafts could have been drawn; and I will
+further say I believe if his advice had been taken the elements of
+rebellion would have been appeased."
+
+It was plain that matters could not stay at this point; but our breach
+with the Government was complete for the moment. Redmond's demand was
+for a full and definite statement of policy, which should be made in
+the House of Commons and there discussed. On May 15th Mr. Bonar Law
+announced that the Prime Minister would make a communication to the
+leaders of Irish parties. It was explained that this method of outlining
+the proposals would be only preliminary to discussion.
+
+On that evening a great banquet to General Smuts was given in the House
+of Lords by Parliament. Strong pressure was used with Redmond to attend
+it, and he consented unwillingly. He was ill--physically ill, probably
+with the beginnings of his fatal disease--and morally sick at heart and
+out of hope. Another Irish election in South Longford had been
+strenuously fought by the party and had been won by the Sinn Feiner; a
+decisive factor in the election was the issue of a letter from
+Archbishop Walsh which grossly misrepresented Redmond's whole policy and
+action. He was in no humour for banquetings, and at this moment the
+Irish party was nearly back at its old attitude, which dictated a
+refusal to have part or lot with the House on such ceremonial
+occasions.[9] But Redmond's feeling for South Africa was specially
+strong, his feeling about the war was unchanged; and this was a
+recognition of a great South African statesman's services in the war. He
+let himself be persuaded into accepting.
+
+At the dinner he sat next to a Liberal peer, a member of the late
+Government, who talked with him of Irish possibilities. Redmond did not
+know what the Government intended. He was told, now, that the Government
+had written a letter to him and to Sir Edward Carson setting out plainly
+an offer for the immediate introduction of Home Rule with the exclusion
+of the six counties.
+
+Redmond said: "It is impossible that we should accept; nothing can come
+of it." He was asked then what hope he saw. He answered, as he had for
+some time been saying in private, that the only chance lay in a
+Conference or Convention of Irishmen; but it must include everybody, and
+in no sense be limited to discussion between the Irish party and the
+Unionists. The Liberal peer expressed great interest and proved it in
+action. Next morning he was with Redmond by ten o'clock, and got his
+view in writing that it might be placed before the Cabinet, who were to
+meet at eleven to decide finally the terms of their letter.
+
+As a result of this intervention, the letter, instead of containing a
+single proposal, offered two alternatives: the second was so oddly
+tacked on that many at the time said it read like a postscript. So, in
+point of fact, it was. That was the genesis of the Irish Convention.
+
+His son, from whom I know this, said to me that more than once, when
+things were hopeful in the Convention, Redmond said to him, "What a
+lucky thing it was I went to that dinner!"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 7: The Admiralty do not appear to have communicated their
+information to Dublin Castle.]
+
+[Footnote 8: This might mislead. The exclusively Protestant character of
+the Ulster Division was not maintained in France, and it came to include
+many Catholic Irishmen in the rank and file and not a few among the
+officers--all in equal comradeship.--S.G.]
+
+[Footnote 9: We had never been parties, for instance, to receptions of
+Prime Ministers from the overseas Dominions, even when they were our
+close friends and supporters.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CONVENTION AND THE END
+
+I
+
+
+The Longford election had in reality been not merely a symptom, but an
+event of great importance. It was a notice of dismissal to the
+Parliamentary party. There was no reason to suppose anything specially
+unfavourable to us in the local conditions. Neither candidate made a
+special appeal to the electors; nor was the constituency in any sense a
+stronghold of Sinn Fein. The fact was that the country as a whole had
+ceased to believe in the Parliamentary party as an efficient machine for
+obtaining the national ends. The organization of the United Irish League
+had lost touch with the young; the main support we had lay in the
+Ancient Order of Hibernians, which many Nationalists disliked on
+principle because it was limited to Catholics. What had riot yet
+disappeared up till July 1916, though it was threatened, was belief in
+the principle of constitutional action as against revolutionary methods.
+
+Willie Redmond, who never lacked instinct, and whose separation from
+party politics by conditions of service gave him a vantage-ground of
+detachment, reached a shrewd view of the position before the Longford
+vacancy occurred. He pressed upon his brother that we should all retire,
+saying plainly that we had been too long in possession, and should hand
+over the task of representing Ireland at Westminster to younger men. His
+association with the Volunteer Committee, brief though it was, had made
+him more aware than most of our colleagues how wide was the
+estrangement between us and the new Ireland; but it also taught him to
+believe that many of the men whom he had met there would be willing to
+take up the task on constitutional lines.
+
+This proposal never came before the party. But after Longford had given
+its decision, it was proposed that we should accept the verdict in
+general and resign in a body. Those who put forward the suggestion felt
+that some drastic action was needed to force upon Ireland the
+responsibility for a clear choice between the two courses,
+constitutional and unconstitutional. Redmond, as Chairman, advised
+strongly against this. He said that it would be a lack of courage: that
+one defeat or two defeats should not turn us from our course. But it is
+clear to me that he welcomed the Convention as another and a better
+means of effecting the same end--of replacing the existing Parliamentary
+party by another body of men.
+
+On May 21st Mr. Lloyd George's speech gave the go-by completely to the
+detailed proposal for a settlement on the basis of partition to which
+the Cabinet--including Sir Edward Carson--had consented. It dealt only
+with the alternative plan suggested in the conclusion of the published
+letter. The Government had decided to invite Irishmen to put forward
+their own proposals for the government of their country, he said. This
+invitation was directed to a Convention not merely of political parties,
+although they must all be represented--the followers of Redmond, of Mr.
+O'Brien, the Ulster Unionists, the Southern Unionists, "and he hoped
+also the Sinn Feiners as well." But in the main it was to consist of
+"representatives of the local governing bodies, of the Churches, of the
+trade unions, of the commercial interests, of educational interests"; it
+was to be "a real representation of Irish life and activity in all their
+leading branches." It was to be pledged in advance to no
+conclusions--except one, and that was only indicated by implication. "If
+substantial agreement should be reached as to the character and scope
+of the Constitution for the future government of Ireland within the
+Empire" (these three words were the limitation), Government would
+"accept the responsibility for taking all the necessary steps to enable
+the Imperial Parliament to give legislative effect to the conclusions of
+the Convention."
+
+A recommendation was added, amounting to a direction, that the
+Convention should sit with closed doors and publish nothing of its
+proceedings till their conclusion.
+
+Nothing was said to define the all-important words "substantial
+agreement." But the Prime Minister laid grave emphasis on the importance
+of a settlement for the purpose of the war. The limitation upon Ulster's
+claim was plainly conceived by him to lie in Ulster's sense of an
+Imperial necessity. "The Empire cannot afford uncured sores that sap its
+vigour. The entire strength of Great Britain and the whole-hearted
+support of Ireland are essential to victory." He appealed "to Irishmen
+of all faiths, political and religious, and especially to the patriotic
+spirit of Ulster, to help by healing."
+
+Redmond, in following him, assumed that there would be concurrence from
+all sections of Irishmen. It must be "a free assembly"--no proposal must
+be barred in advance: it must be representative of "every class, creed
+and interest"--and in recapitulating these, he added the Irish peers. In
+regard to political parties and bodies, as such, he desired a very
+limited representation. The United Irish League, "the militant official
+organization of the Irish party," should be unrepresented, and he
+advised the same in regard to other purely political organizations and
+societies. For the Irish party itself he asked a representation only
+equal in number to that given to Irish Unionists. The Cork Independents
+must have what they considered a full and adequate number; and for Sinn
+Fein he asked "a generous representation."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"So anxious am I that no wreckers, mere wreckers, should go on that
+body--I do not believe any men would go on as wreckers, but any men who
+would be regarded by their opponents as going on it as wreckers--that on
+the question of personalities, I would be very glad, if there are
+protagonists on one side or the other who during the last twenty or
+thirty years or more have been engaged in the struggle and who--there
+have been faults on both sides--have done things and said things which
+have left bitter memories, I should be very glad that such men should be
+left off. If there were any feeling that I am such a man myself, I would
+be only too willing and happy to stand down" (he was interrupted by
+cries of "No, No") "if by doing so I could promote harmony."
+
+In this there was a genuine expression of the desire which governed his
+whole conduct in the Convention, to get away from the old lines with
+their old traditional antagonisms, and refer the solution not to Irish
+politicians but to Ireland as a whole. What followed in his speech gave
+positive development to the self-denying ordinance which he had proposed
+for the party machines. He asked for a nominated element--first, to make
+sure that men obviously suitable, who none the less might not happen to
+be elected, should find a place: and secondly, to increase still further
+the Unionist representation.
+
+He added once more a plea for quick action; dilatoriness had had much to
+do, he said, with the Government's late failures in Ireland. But, if
+prompt steps were taken on the path outlined, he would, in spite of all
+that had come and gone, face the new venture with good heart. Yet even
+in his confidence there was the pathetic accent of one who feels need to
+bid defiance to despair.
+
+"Although I know I lay myself open perhaps to ridicule as too sanguine a
+prophet, I have some assured hope that the result may be blessed for
+Ireland as for the Empire. ... The life of a politician, especially of
+an Irish politician, is one long series of postponements and compromises
+and disappointments and disillusions.... Many of our cherished ideals,
+our ideals of complete, speedy and almost immediate triumph of our
+policy and of our cause, have faded, some of them almost disappeared.
+And we know that it is a serious consideration for those of us who have
+spent forty years at this work and now are growing old, if we have to
+face further postponements. For my part, I feel we must not shrink from
+compromise. If by this Convention which is now proposed we can secure
+substantial agreement amongst our people in Ireland, it will be worth
+all the heartburnings and postponements and disappointments and
+disillusions of the last thirty or forty years."
+
+The omens were not favourable to this storm-beaten courage. When he sat
+down, Sir John Lonsdale rose to reiterate on behalf of the Ulster
+Unionists that they "could not and would not be driven into a Home Rule
+Parliament"--and that they relied absolutely on the pledges that they
+should not be coerced. Mr. William O'Brien followed. After years of
+advocating settlement by conference among Irishmen, he condemned this
+proposal as coming six or seven years too late, and as defective in its
+machinery, in that it proposed a large body of men: "A dozen Irishmen of
+the right stamp" would be the proper Conference; and the proposal of
+partition should be barred out in advance. If the experiment were tried
+now and failed, the failure would "kill any reasonable hope in our time
+of reconstructing the constitutional movement upon honest lines."
+Ireland is always fruitful in Cassandras who do not lack power to assist
+in the fulfilment, of their ill-bodings, and this speech foreshadowed
+Mr. O'Brien's intention to abstain. Sir Edward Carson and Mr. Devlin
+gave the debate a more promising tone: but it was difficult for anybody
+to be sanguine.
+
+Preparation, discussion, went on in private and in public. It was soon
+indicated that Sinn Fein would take no part, on the double ground,
+first, that the Convention was not elective in any democratic sense, for
+all the representatives of local bodies had been elected before the
+war, before the rebellion, before the new movement took hold in Ireland;
+and secondly, that it was committed in advance to a settlement within
+the Empire. On the other hand, Redmond was flooded with correspondence
+concerning candidates for membership of the new body. There was also the
+question of a meeting-place. The Royal College of Surgeons offered its
+building with its theatre, possessing admirable facilities. But Trinity
+College offered the Regent House. The conveniences here were in all ways
+inferior; but Trinity was the nearest place to the old Parliament House;
+much more than that, it was the most historic institution in Ireland.
+Its political associations of the past and the present were strangely
+blended and Redmond liked it none the less for that. He decided to press
+for acceptance of this offer.
+
+Then across the current of all our thought came the news of the Battle
+of Messines. Troops had been massing for some time on the sector of line
+which the Irish Divisions had now held since the previous October; and
+the day was plainly in sight which had been expected since spring, when
+they were to try and carry positions in front of which so much blood had
+been vainly shed. On June 7th, at the clearing of light, all was in
+readiness: the Ulstermen and ours still in the centre of the attack from
+Spanbroekmolen to Wytschaete. Just before the moment fixed, men could
+see clearly: in half a minute all was blotted out. The eighteen huge
+land-mines in whose shafts our second line had been so often billeted
+were now at last exploded and the sky was full of powdered earth, with
+God knows what other fragments. In that darkness the troops went over.
+
+For once staff-work and execution harmonized perfectly; the success was
+complete, and the sacrifice small. The Irish raced for their positions,
+and no one could say who was first on the goal. News of the victory
+quickly reached London--great news for Ireland. Australians and New
+Zealanders had their full share in it, but the shoulder to shoulder
+advance of the two Irish Divisions caught everyone's imagination: it was
+Ireland's day.
+
+Then came through the message that Willie Redmond had fallen.
+
+Ever since his illness in the previous summer he had been taken away
+from his work as company commander; at his age--fifty-six--he was
+probably the oldest man in any capacity with the Division. A post was
+found for him on General Hickie's divisional staff which made him
+specially responsible for the comforts of the men, in trenches and out
+of trenches. In the battles on the Somme he entreated hard to be let
+rejoin his battalion, but General Hickie issued peremptory orders which
+did not allow him to pass the first dressing-station. Here, indeed, he
+was under terrible shell fire and saw many of his comrades struck down;
+but he was not content. For this new battle he insisted that he must be
+in the actual advance. If he were refused leave, he said he would break
+all discipline and take it. He was permitted to be with the third
+attacking wave; but he slipped forward and joined the first, on the
+right, where the line touched the Ulstermen. So it happened that when he
+fell, struck by two rifle bullets, the stretcher-bearers who helped him
+and carried him down to the dressing-station were those of an Ulster
+regiment. He was brought back to the hospital in the convent at Locre,
+familiar to all of us by many memories; for the nuns kept a restaurant
+for officers in the refectory, and he and I had dined there more than
+once with leading men of the Ulster Division. His wounds were not grave;
+but he had overtaxed himself, and in a few hours he succumbed to shock.
+It was the death that he had foreseen, that he had almost desired--a
+death that many might have envied him. He had said more than once since
+the rebellion that he thought he could best serve Ireland by dying; and
+in the sequel, so deep was the impression left by his death that it
+seemed at times as if his thought had been true.
+
+Yet one aspect of it was overlooked by many--the loss inflicted on his
+brother, the Irish leader. It was not merely that Redmond lost the sole
+near kinsman of his generation; he lost in him the closest of those
+comrades who had been allied with him in all the stages of his life's
+fight. The veterans of the old party had been vanishing rapidly from the
+scene; name succeeded name quickly on our death-roll. This death left
+Redmond lonely, and sorely stricken in his affections. But it did more.
+It deprived him of a counsellor, and perhaps the only counsellor he had
+who temperamentally shared his own point of view. More especially now in
+the war, when the leader's wisdom in giving the lead which he had given
+began to be gravely questioned even by his own supporters, it was
+invaluable for him to have backing from one who had taken the war as
+part of his life's creed--who knew no hesitancies, no reserves in his
+conviction that the right course had been followed, for the right thing
+was to do the right. Finally and chiefly, Willie Redmond was the only
+man who could break through his brother's constitutional reserve and
+could force him into discussion. In the months that were to come such a
+man was badly needed. The loss of him meant to John Redmond a loss of
+personal efficiency. Sorrow gave a strong grip to depression on a
+brooding mind which had always a proneness to melancholy, which was now
+linked with a sick body, and which lived among disappointments and grief
+and the sense of rancorous dislike in men who once thought it a
+privilege to cheer him on his passing.
+
+Add to all this that Redmond's one hope for Ireland now lay in the
+Convention, and that he collated with good reason on his soldier
+brother's influence there--as no man could fail to do who had seen the
+effect which his last speech produced upon the House of Commons.
+
+No doubt, however, part of the service which Willie Redmond rendered to
+Ireland in dying lay in the sympathy which he conciliated to his
+leader--in whom men saw, rightly, not only his nearest kinsman, but the
+representative of the principles for which the soldier-politician died.
+The sympathy was genuine and it was widespread; yet so reserved was John
+Redmond that few, I think, guessed how deeply the blow had struck home.
+Still less did they realize how much was meant by the bereavement which
+followed immediately. Pat O'Brien, who had been through all vicissitudes
+the faithful and devoted helper of his friend and leader, was suddenly
+prostrated by a stroke. He came down to the House again; he could not
+keep away from the place of his duty, where for a quarter of a century
+he had scarcely missed one division in a hundred, where he had kept
+watch for Redmond like the most trusty sheep-dog; but death was written
+over him and it came in a few days. He was the one friend, I believe,
+whom Redmond would have taken with him to Aughavanagh after Willie
+Redmond's death. Now, Aughavanagh, which had been a place of rest, was a
+place of intense loneliness. Yet to Aughavanagh Redmond had withdrawn
+himself, like a wounded creature; and from Aughavanagh he came to Dublin
+for Pat O'Brien's funeral in Glasnevin. Then, and then only in his
+lifetime people saw him publicly break down; he had to be led away from
+the grave.
+
+Meanwhile, he was beset by ceaseless correspondence concerning the
+numbers and composition of the assembly to which the British Government
+on his suggestion had decided to entrust so great a charge. But a
+startling political event indicated only too plainly how much belated
+that decision had been.
+
+Directly the proposal for a Convention had been disclosed, with its
+attempt to create a new atmosphere, it was put to the Government that
+Sinn Fein could not be expected to take part in the Convention while its
+leaders were in jail or under detention as suspects. This
+representation came from several quarters, and it was soon publicly
+pleaded by the Nationalist party; but it was, to my knowledge,
+immediately put forward by English members of Parliament, the prime
+mover being a Unionist soldier, Major J.W. Hills, M.P. As usual, the
+advantage of prompt action was urged; and as visual, the concession was
+delayed till it had lost its grace and seemed to be extracted. Sinn
+Fein's opinion in all these days was hardening against the Convention,
+which was represented as a mere trick to gain time and to conciliate
+American good will by an unreal offer.
+
+When the prisoners were released, a new personage immediately came into
+the public eye. It was certain that one of them would be nominated to
+contest the vacancy in East Clare left by Willie Redmond's death; the
+choice fell on Mr. de Valera; and the world learnt that in these months
+while the imprisoned Sinn Feiners had been discussing their plans for
+the future--for the right of association as political prisoners had been
+conceded to them--this young man had been recognized by his fellows as
+the leading spirit. Ireland as a whole knew nothing of him. He was the
+son of a Southern American and a county Limerick woman; scholarly, a
+keen Gaelic Leaguer, by profession a teacher of mathematics. In the
+rebellion he had held Boland's bakery, a large building covering the
+approaches to Dublin from Kingstown by rail; he had been the last of the
+leaders to surrender, and had earned high opinions by his conduct in
+these operations. This was the Sinn Fein candidate for East Clare--a
+county where "extreme" men had always been numerous.
+
+The view was expressed that he should have been opposed by one who took
+up the cause where Willie Redmond left it--by a soldier who was a strong
+Nationalist and strongly identified with the Parnellite tradition. It
+was decided that we should stand a better chance if constitutional
+Nationalism were represented by a Dublin lawyer with close personal ties
+to the constituency. How it would have gone had a soldier been put up,
+no man can say; but it could not have gone worse. Mr. de Valera won by a
+majority of five thousand. He was a stranger, but he stood for an ideal.
+The alternative ideal--which was John Redmond's and Willie
+Redmond's--had never been put before the electors. The election was,
+rightly, taken as a repudiation of Redmond's policy; but in it Redmond's
+policy had gone undefended.
+
+The newly elected Sinn Fein leader was very prominent in these days, and
+a good deal of his eloquence was spent in ridicule of the Convention.
+That body was certainly starting its task under the most unpromising
+auspices.
+
+
+II
+
+The first meeting was fixed for July 25. On the evening before, Redmond
+came up and there was an informal discussion between the Nationalist
+members of Parliament and the Catholic Bishops. There were four of each
+group. Five members had been allowed to the party and as many to the
+Ulstermen. Redmond was not present at the meeting when selection was
+made, but he recommended a list, consisting in addition to himself of
+Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin, and Mr. Clancy, K.C.--the latter having been
+always his most trusted adviser in all points of draftsmanship and
+constitutional law. My name was added in the place which should have
+been his brother's, as representing Irish troops.
+
+Mr. Dillon, however, thought it better not to serve, though Redmond
+pressed him very strongly to do so. He considered he could best help the
+Convention from outside its ranks. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy had, on
+different grounds, come to the same conclusion, so that we lacked the
+assistance of three commanding personalities in Irish life, though we
+were thereby freed from some dangers of personal friction. A vacant
+place was thus left in our five, and since the Ulster party had decided
+to put in only two members of Parliament, filling the other places with
+local men, it was thought well that we should take a similar
+representative, Mr. Harbison, who spoke for the county of Tyrone.
+
+Of the four representatives of the hierarchy, Archbishop Harty of Cashel
+had always been a downright outspoken supporter of the Parliamentary
+party. He had publicly denounced the rebellion both on civil and on
+moral grounds. But he had never been prominently concerned with
+political affairs as such; nor had the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr.
+MacRory, a man young for his office and not long in it. He had been
+chosen, no doubt, to guard the special interests of Catholicism in the
+north-east corner. The others were of a very different stamp; no two in
+Ireland had a better right to the name of statesmen. Dr. O'Donnell, the
+Bishop of Raphoe, had been for many years officially one of the
+treasurers of the United Irish League. Since the foundation of the
+Congested Districts Board, he had been one of its members, and served on
+the Dudley Commission which inquired into these regions. His native
+Donegal could show the traces of his influence in applying remedial
+measures to what was once its terrible poverty. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of
+Ross, came from the extreme south of the same western coast-line; a keen
+student of finance and economics, he had been a member of the Primrose
+Committee on Financial Relations, and, before that, of Lord George
+Hamilton's Commission on the Poor Law. His repute was great in his own
+order and outside his own order. In any assembly these two brains would
+have been distinguished.
+
+The question which was discussed among us chiefly on that evening
+concerned the choice of a chairman. Government had originally proposed
+to nominate this all-important officer, but having failed to solve the
+interminable difficulties, had left it to the assembly. Much trouble was
+anticipated by the public. On the whole, our conclusion pointed, but not
+decisively, to the choice which was eventually made. Redmond swept aside
+peremptorily the suggestion of himself.
+
+Next day we assembled--some ninety persons. The main bulk consisted of
+local representatives--thirty-one chairmen of County Councils, one only
+having declined to serve. Two of these, Mr. O'Dowd and Mr. Fitzgibbon,
+were members of our party. There were eight representatives of the Urban
+Councils, over and above the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork and
+the Mayor of Derry. Labour had seven representatives, one of whom, Mr.
+Lundon, representing the Agricultural Labourers' Union of the South, was
+an Irish member of Parliament. One was a railway operative from Dublin;
+one a Catholic Trade-Unionist leader from Derry; the remaining four came
+from Belfast. Organized labour in Dublin and the Southern towns had
+endorsed Sinn Féin's attitude and declined to recognize the Convention.
+
+The Southern Unionist Group was led by Lord Midleton; with him were
+Lords Mayo and Oranmore, representing the Irish peers. The Irish
+Unionist Alliance had sent Mr. Stewart, a great land-agent, and Mr.
+Andrew Jameson (whose name, as someone said, was "a household word
+written in letters of gold throughout Ireland"). The Chambers of
+Commerce had their representatives from Dublin, Belfast and Cork.
+
+In the Ulster group, Mr. Barrie, M.P., acted as leader, Lord Londonderry
+as secretary. Of the rest, Sir George Clark, chairman of Workman and
+Clark's great shipbuilding yard, had been known to us in Parliament. A
+Scot by birth, with a life of thirty years spent in Belfast, during
+which time he had seen his business grow from two hundred hands to ten
+thousand, he knew nothing of Ireland but Belfast, and had no trace of
+Irish feeling. In this he stood alone; but unhappily no man carried more
+weight in Belfast--with the possible exception of one whom few of us
+outside Ulster knew before we came to that body. Mr. Alexander McDowell
+was a solicitor by profession, the adviser of policy to all the business
+men of Belfast. From the first day of our meeting he stood out by sheer
+weight of brain and personality. He was to some of us the surprise of
+that assembly, and made us realize how little part we had in Ulster when
+the existence of such a man could be an unknown factor to us.
+
+Mr. Pollock, President of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, was also new
+to us, and was destined to play a prominent part in our affairs. With
+the Catholic prelates sat the two Archbishops of the Church of
+Ireland--Dr. Crozier and Dr. Bernard--to both of whom the democratic
+constitution of their Church had given great experience in management of
+business and discussion. Dr. MacDermott, Moderator of the Presbyterian
+General Assembly, was the official head of his Church for the year only
+and had not equal knowledge of administration. An orator, with a touch
+of the enthusiast in his temperament, he was a simple and sympathetic
+figure; vehement in his political faith, yet responsive to all the human
+charities and deeply a lover of his country. There was no better
+representative there of Ulster, of the Ulster difficulty--at once so
+separate from and so akin to the rest of Ireland.
+
+The Government nominees included, as was only natural, the most
+personally distinguished group. First of them should be named the
+Provost of Trinity, Dr. Mahaffy, under whose aegis we assembled--a great
+scholar and a great Irishman. He brought with him an element of
+independent unregimented political thought--often freakish in
+expression, but based on a vast knowledge of men and countries. In a
+more practical sense, Lord MacDonnell and Lord Dunraven were our chief
+political theorists, devisers by temperament of constitutional
+machinery. Lord MacDonnell's repute as an administrator, Lord Dunraven's
+as a leading figure in the Land Conference, gave weight to whatever came
+from them. Lord Granard, who sat with them, was a Catholic peer who had
+commanded a battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in the Tenth Division
+and had held offices in Mr. Asquith's Government. He had now the
+brilliant idea of reopening for the period of the Convention one of the
+most beautiful eighteenth-century dwellings, Ely House, and making it a
+centre of hospitality and a meeting-place for friendly outside
+intercourse. Few more useful assistances were rendered to our purpose,
+and certainly none more pleasant.
+
+Lord Desart, a distinguished lawyer, acted closely with Lord Midleton.
+Sir Bertram Windle, President of University College, was another of
+Government's choices--a man of science who was also very much a man of
+affairs. Another, far less of a debater, far more of a power, was Mr.
+William Martin Murphy, Chairman of the Dublin Tramways, a powerful
+employer of labour who had headed the fight against Larkin in 1913, and
+had been mainly responsible for the character of the employers' victory.
+He was the owner of the most widely circulated Irish paper, the _Irish
+Independent_--which stood in journalism for what Mr. Healy represented
+in Parliament--an envenomed Nationalist opposition to the Parliamentary
+party.
+
+Mr. Edward Lysaght, the son of a great manufacturer in South Wales,
+combined like his father an aptitude for literature and for business; he
+wrote books, he was concerned in a publishing venture, but he was
+chiefly interested in his farm in county Clare--where he had voted for
+de Valera. He had been chosen deliberately as a link with Sinn Fein. It
+stamped an aspect of the Convention that he was the youngest man
+there--for he would not have been noticeably young in the House of
+Commons. We were a middle-aged assembly. Another link, though not so
+explicit, with Republican Ireland was Mr. George Russell, "A.E.," poet,
+writer on co-operative economics, a mystic, with all a mystic's
+shrewdness, an orator with much personal magnetism. Lastly, there was
+Sir Horace Plunkett, perhaps the only member of the Convention except
+Redmond whose name would have occurred to every Irishman as
+indispensably necessary.
+
+Two other personages should be noted. Mr. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh,
+Chairman of the Carlow County Council, was by tradition and training a
+strong Unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old
+Irish princely families. He had been elected to the Vice-Chairmanship of
+his County Council while still a Unionist; later, he adhered to Lord
+Dunraven's proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way
+house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member
+of our party; by temperament deeply conservative, he was in no way
+separated by that from many of the ablest Nationalists, lay and
+ecclesiastic. As a speaker he had few equals in the Convention; no man
+there, indeed, except Redmond, could throw equal passion into the plea
+of urgency for a settlement, for I think no other man felt it with such
+earnestness.
+
+Captain Doran, Chairman of the Louth Council, was on his way back to
+France when the summons to the Convention stopped him. A Methodist, he
+was divided by religion from his neighbours in County Louth: but that
+did not stop them from putting this prosperous and capable farmer,
+working his land on the most modern methods, into the Chair of their
+County Council. Before the war, when the Larne gun-running took place,
+he decided that matters looked serious, called his friends together and
+formed a company of Volunteers, who might be needed to protect
+themselves or to protect other Nationalists across the adjacent Ulster
+border. After the war had broken out and the Home Rule Act was passed,
+and Redmond had launched his appeal, this country farmer, then aged
+fifty, made his way to Mallow and asked General Parsons to accept him as
+a recruit. He was accepted, and very shortly given a commission in the
+Dublin Fusiliers. Out of his local Volunteers he took seventy-five into
+the Army with him. He was with the Sixteenth Division from its landing
+in France till after the day of Messines, commanding his company. All
+this gave him an authority in an assembly where all voices were in
+support of the war, and more particularly in an appeal to Ulster; and
+with this advantage went an unusual gift of frank and eloquent speech,
+linked with a fine idealism.
+
+These were the main personal elements in the group that came together on
+July 25th--Mr. Duke, the Chief Secretary, acting as temporary Chairman
+and Sir Francis Hopwood (soon to become Lord Southborough) having been
+brought over as Secretary. Mr. Duke having addressed us with an earnest
+suavity, we were told to select a Chairman: and on the motion of the
+Primate, Archbishop Crozier, this embarrassing task was delegated to a
+committee of ten, rapidly told off. We adjourned for lunch, and on
+reassembling found that a unanimous recommendation named Sir Horace
+Plunkett. The Ulstermen had expressed a willingness to accept Redmond.
+This he refused to discuss; but he was put into the Chair of the
+selecting committee. There was a recommendation also that Sir Francis
+Hopwood should be Secretary to the Convention. Both these proposals were
+welcomed, and we dispersed feeling that we had done a good day's work.
+
+There was, however, one set-off to it. When the Selection Committee had
+done its work, its members went off singly, and outside the gate of
+College a small group of ardent patriots were waiting, who mobbed
+Redmond on the way to his hotel. They were young, no doubt; but the
+Republican party claimed specially the youth of Ireland; and these lads
+expressed with a simple eloquence very much what was said by older and
+more articulate voices, uttering the same thought in print. It is worth
+while to illustrate here the attitude taken towards Redmond by much of
+Nationalist Ireland, for it profoundly influenced Redmond's attitude and
+action in the Convention. I take, not casual and partisan journalism,
+but a passage from a book published by a distinguished Irish writer who
+had never publicly attached himself to any party. Mr. James Stephens was
+in Dublin during the insurrection; he wrote a book about his own
+personal observation of it, which as a record of observation is
+admirable. But when Mr. Stephens comes to emit opinions, here is what he
+has to say:
+
+"Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly.
+It happened because the leader of the Irish party misrepresented his
+people in the English House of Parliament. On the day of the declaration
+of war between England and Germany he took the Irish case, weighty with
+eight centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the
+window. He pledged Ireland to a particular course of action, and he had
+no authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would
+be met. The ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional
+nature betrayed him and us and England. He swore Ireland to loyalty as
+if he had Ireland in his pocket and could answer for her. Ireland has
+never been disloyal to England, not even at this epoch, _because she has
+never been loyal to England_, and the profession of her National faith
+has been unwavering, has been known to every English person alive, and
+has been clamant to all the world beside.
+
+"Is it that he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated
+Ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality
+(if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this
+country. He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have
+gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received
+politically whatever England could have safely given him. But, alas!
+these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment. They were
+not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to
+Ireland or to England, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so
+he pledged his country's credit so deeply that he did not leave her even
+one National rag to cover herself with.
+
+"After a lie, truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and
+serene goddess we knew or hoped for--it is a disease, it is a moral
+syphilis, and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been
+purged. Mr. Redmond told the lie, and he is answerable to England for
+the violence she had to be guilty of, and to Ireland for the desolation
+to which we have had to submit. Without his lie there had been no
+Insurrection, without it there had been at this moment, and for a year
+past, an end to the 'Irish question.' Ireland must in ages gone have
+been guilty of abominable crimes, or she could not at this juncture have
+been afflicted with a John Redmond."
+
+Politicians everywhere need to grow tough skins; but Redmond, though he
+was a veteran in politics, had no special gift that way. It was not
+pleasant for the Nationalist leader, when an assembly of Irishmen were
+called together to attempt the framing of a Constitution, to find
+himself the object, and the sole object, of public insult; it was not
+pleasant for him to feel that he might at any time be subjected to a
+renewal of this experience in the streets of Ireland's capital, where he
+had been acclaimed as a hero so few years ago. It was not pleasant for
+him to feel that whenever he took up a book or paper dealing with
+Ireland he was liable to come upon some outburst such as the one which I
+have quoted. These things were pin-pricks, yet pin-pricks administered
+in public; and the mere effort to endure such things without wincing
+saps a man's vitality. Behind them lay the definite repudiation of his
+policy in election after election--for Kilkenny City followed the
+example of Clare and replaced Pat O'Brien by a Sinn Feiner. He was
+repudiated in the eye of the world, and repudiated with every
+circumstance of contumely. Plainly in the Convention he could no longer
+claim to speak for Ireland; that limited gravely his power to serve.
+
+I think, however, that deep in his heart a resentment, all the more
+rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard
+against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in
+the Convention he had sought to pledge Ireland without due mandate or
+had committed anyone but himself. All that was personal in his
+resources--his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence--all
+this he put unreservedly at the Convention's service: but he abstained,
+and I think not only out of policy but as the result of silent anger,
+from making the least use of that authority which he still possessed and
+which he might easily have augmented. If in the result he took too
+little upon him, lest anyone should ever say he had taken too much, and
+if because he left too much to others Ireland was the loser, Ireland
+must bear not the loss only but the blame.
+
+Many even of those who most agreed with his action had, under the
+influence and events of these years and of public comments on these
+events, lost confidence in him. Some weeks after the Convention
+assembled, a very able priest said to me that he regarded Redmond as "a
+worn-out man." The genuineness of his regret was proved by the delight
+with which he heard what I could tell him. Never in my life did I find
+so much cause for admiration of Redmond as in the early stages--which
+were in many ways the most important--of our meetings. Never at any time
+did I know him exert so successfully his charm of public manner. At the
+second day's meeting, when the new Chairman took up his place and
+function, there were several small points to be settled, each capable of
+creating friction; and it has to be admitted that in the technical
+aspect of his duty Sir Horace Plunkett did not shine: business quickly
+became involved. Fortunately he was of a temper to welcome help, and it
+was quickly to hand. Archbishop Crozier showed himself to be
+accomplished, resourceful, and most tactful on all points of procedure:
+and Redmond then for the first time did with extraordinary skill what he
+had to do at many stages later. By a series of questions to the Chair he
+suggested rather than recommended a way of clearing the involved issue;
+and all this was done with a precision of phrase which was none the less
+exact because it was easy, and with a dignity which was none the less
+impressive because it had no pretence to effect. His mastery both of the
+form and substance of procedure was conspicuous. One of the ablest among
+the Southern Unionists said to me in these days: "He is superb: he does
+not seem able to put a word wrong."
+
+I think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this,
+that within the Convention he was happy. There was a note in it that I
+never felt in the House of Commons, even when he was at his best. There
+he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar
+faces. Here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in
+his life in an assembly in no way sectional. For from the first it was
+plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of
+normal, ordinary Irish life: farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord,
+tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer--all were there in pleasantly familiar
+types. The atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it
+resembled rather some casual assemblage where all sorts of men had met
+by accident and conversed without prejudice. Everybody met somebody whom
+he had known in some quite different relation of life and with whom he
+had never looked to be associated in any such task as the framing of a
+Constitution. It was all oddly haphazard, full of interest and
+surprises; all of us were a little out of our bearings, but much
+disposed to reconnoitre in the spirit of friendly advance.
+
+After the first day of Sir Horace Plunkett's chairmanship there was an
+adjournment of something like a fortnight to give the Chairman and
+secretariat time for preparation: and in this interval a plan of action
+was formed. The object in view was to avoid the danger of an immediate
+break and to give play to the reconciling influences. It was decided to
+begin by a prolonged process of general discussion, in which men could
+express their minds freely without the necessity of coming to an
+operative decision on any of the controversial points, until the value
+of each could be assessed in relation to the possibility of a general
+agreement.
+
+The plan adopted was to discuss, without division taken, the schemes
+which had been submitted by members of the Convention and by others.
+Members would propose and expound their own projects: for the exposition
+of the others some member must make himself responsible.
+
+At this "presentation stage" and at all stages, Redmond absolutely
+declined to put forward a plan in his own name. This was not only from
+temperamental reasons: there was an official obstacle. He was an
+individual member of the Convention: but he was Chairman of the Irish
+party, pledged not to bind it without its consent. He felt, no doubt,
+that any detailed proposal from him would be taken as binding the party,
+whom he could not consult without bringing them into the secrets of the
+Convention.
+
+But this attitude of self-abnegation was pushed very far by him, and
+perhaps too far. In his early utterances he deprecated all official
+recognition of sections. Yet from the moment when committees came to be
+appointed this recognition was claimed; and from the first the Ulster
+group maintained a compact organization. They had their own chairman,
+Mr. Barrie, and their secretary; they secured a committee-room for their
+own purposes; they voted solidly as one man. All this, though we did not
+know it at first, was dictated by the conditions of their attendance.
+They were pledged to act simply as delegates, who must submit every
+question of importance to an Advisory Committee in Belfast--behind which
+again was the Ulster Unionist Council. They had therefore no freedom of
+action and were of necessity extremely guarded in speech.
+
+The Southern Unionists, including the representatives of the Irish
+peers, were also organized as a group; but they came to the Convention
+with much fuller powers. They felt themselves bound to consider, and in
+certain conditions to consult, those whom they represented; but they
+were free to originate suggestions, and individually each man expressed
+his own view. But they too had their meeting-place and their frequent
+consultations.
+
+The handful of Labour men also met and discussed action, though they
+were not organized as a group and did not feel pledged to a joint
+course. Each, according to his own lights, represented the interests of
+Labour. Still, they met.
+
+The only group which had no common centre of reunion was that of the
+Nationalists--a majority of the whole assembly. This included the
+representatives of the Irish party and the County and Urban Councillors,
+all of whom had been returned as its supporters. It included also the
+four representatives of the hierarchy, every one of whom had been either
+actually or potentially a part of Nationalist Conventions, and of whom
+three had been most prominent supporters of the general organization.
+
+But a difficulty existed in the presence of other personages who were in
+general support of us, but who outside the Convention belonged to a
+different category. Lord Dunraven was a Home Ruler, but had been no
+supporter of the Irish party. Lord MacDonnell stood much nearer to us,
+but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician.
+Mr. Lysaght had voted against us in Clare. Mr. Russell had very often
+attacked the party on aspects of its general action. Above all, there
+was Mr. W.M. Murphy, who, like Mr. Healy, had been at one time a member
+of the Irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support
+of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all
+forces together to discredit and weaken its influence.
+
+All of these five men were Government nominees, as were also Lord
+Granard and Sir Bertram Windle, who in different ways gave Redmond
+complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call
+together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national
+organization which would have excluded all these and included the
+Bishops;[10] but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do
+this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still
+more of partisan machinery. His conclusion was to do nothing; and it was
+a conclusion to which he was prone at all times when he did not see his
+way clear. This temperamental disinclination to take any action which
+might create difficulties was in these days at its height with him.
+Since the spring his usually perfect health had been failing; he
+suffered from the physical inertia which accompanies the growth of a
+fatal disease; and sorrow upon sorrow, rebuff upon rebuff, had weakened
+the resilience of his mind. It was not that he lacked courage or
+confidence in his own judgment; but he was bound as a statesman to make
+allowance for the estimate which others, his followers, would put upon
+that judgment when he declared it. Sensitive by nature, he was deeply
+aware of failure which had resulted from the most disparaging of
+causes--not flat rejection, but belated, half-hearted and blundering
+adoption, of whatever course he had proposed. He overrated, I am sure,
+the extent to which his personal position had been depreciated in the
+minds of those who were there. It was true, as the event was to prove,
+that he could no longer count on unquestioning support of any policy
+simply on the ground that he advocated it; but any opinion which he
+presented would have been commended not only by the cogency of his
+argument but by an old esteem for his wisdom, and, above and beyond
+this, by a personal feeling Men would have inclined to his side not for
+the argument's sake only, but for his sake.
+
+There was felt, too, precisely at the moment when it mattered most, the
+defect in his quality as leader. He lacked the personal touch. It was
+not that he would not, but that he could not, put himself into contact
+with the individual minds of men. He owed it, I think, to the rank and
+file to give them more of his guidance than they actually received. He
+was a genial presence when they met; but of confidential discussion upon
+details I am sure that nothing passed. Had he called the group together,
+had he spoken his mind to them collectively, in confidence, things would
+in all ways have been better. But there was ingrained in him a sort of
+shyness, a repugnance to force his view on others by argument, an
+indisposition to controversy, which was his limitation; and all this was
+at this time accentuated by the hurt sense that there would be always in
+men's minds a memory, not of the hundred times when his wisdom had amply
+justified itself, but of recent occasions when he had advised them and
+the result was not what he foretold.
+
+To sum up, then, this criticism--what he said and did publicly in the
+Convention could hardly by stretch of imagination have been bettered.
+But outside its sessions he did not handle his team. On the balance,
+probably, he thought it better to leave them to their own devices; but
+his temperament weighed in that decision. As a result, the County
+Councillors and other local representatives used to hold meetings of
+their own. They were shrewd and capable men; but in the matters with
+which we had to deal the most skilled direction was necessary; and there
+was never a man more capable of giving them guidance out of a lifetime's
+experience than was Redmond, nor one from whom they would have more
+willingly accepted instruction.
+
+Discussion in the Convention itself was not of great value for the
+education of opinion, because men naturally were reluctant to get up and
+state precisely their individual difficulties, which in a confidential
+interchange of views might have been shown to proceed from some defect
+in comprehension. The chief value in the debates lay in what they
+revealed rather than what they imparted. One fact was salient. No
+Nationalist was prepared to recommend acceptance of the Home Rule Act as
+it stood, though some of its most vehement assailants adopted great
+parts of its framework. Broadly speaking, Nationalists wanted for
+Ireland the powers which were possessed by a self-governing Dominion,
+but were content to leave all control of defence to the Imperial
+authority and did not press any demand for a local militia. On the other
+hand, there was strong insistence on the right of an Irish Parliament to
+have complete power of taxation within its jurisdiction.
+
+It was manifest that the financial clauses of the existing Act would no
+longer apply. They were framed in view of a situation which found
+Ireland contributing ten millions in taxation and costing twelve to
+administer. Now, less than half the taxation paid the cost of all Irish
+services and the balance went towards the war.
+
+It was also evident that Nationalists were prepared to make concessions
+to the minority quite inconsistent with the current democratic view of
+what a Constitution should be. The Bishop of Raphoe, for instance,
+expressed willingness to have the Irish peers as an Upper House. Lord
+Midleton, however, for the Southern Unionists, insisted that those whom
+he spoke for must have a voice in the House of Commons--however they got
+it; and there was general desire to give it them, even by methods which
+no one could justify for general application.
+
+In short, it became increasingly clear as the debates proceeded that we
+could come to an arrangement with Unionists if Lord Midleton represented
+Unionism. But he did not. Ulster was there; and the Ulster men made it
+plain that their business was to hear suggestions, not to put them
+forward. Two facts, however, emerged about Ulster's attitude. The first
+was that in coming to the Convention the Ulstermen had expected to
+negotiate on the basis of taking the Home Rule Act as the maximum
+Nationalist demand. The only compromise which they had contemplated was
+a mean term between the provisions of that Act and Ulster's demand for a
+continuance of the legislative Union so far as Ulster was concerned. The
+second was that Belfast regarded as ruinous to its interests any
+possibility of a tariff war with Great Britain, and believed that if
+Ireland were given the power to fix its own customs duties the dominant
+farming interest would seek to find revenue by new taxation on imports.
+Hence, the proposal to give Ireland full fiscal powers could not be
+acceptable to Ulster. Here lay the main rock in our course.
+
+As the discussion proceeded, one category of proposals was summarily
+dealt with--those which contemplated the setting up of some provincial
+authority intermediate between the central Parliament, which all
+postulated, and the existing local bodies in the counties. This policy
+did not lack advocates. But the County Councillors were solid against
+it: evidently their private meeting discussed and decided against an
+expedient which they held would detract from the dignity of the central
+Parliament and from the dignity of the County Councils. Those who
+defended it as a plan which might meet Ulster's difficulty got no
+backing from Ulster; that group said neither for nor against it. In the
+rest of the assembly there was a strong feeling against anything that
+looked like partition or might in public be called partition. Several of
+us had thought in advance that this was the most likely path to the
+solution; and looking back, I think it ought to have been much more
+fully explored. But encouragement was lacking.
+
+Another anticipation proved illusory. We all realized that in the
+circumstances Ireland could come to a financial arrangement with Great
+Britain on easier terms than at any time in her history; that to settle
+at once would be highly profitable; and more particularly, that we could
+probably secure the completion of land purchase as part of the bargain.
+It was thought that this argument would appeal to the commercial sense
+of Ulster. We were met by a resolute reiteration that Ulster considered
+it Ulster's duty and Ireland's duty to take a full share, equally with
+the rest of the United Kingdom, in all the consequences of the war--even
+if it cost them their last shilling; and Ulster speakers denounced our
+argument as a bribe. Some Nationalists were inclined to discount these
+protestations, yet I see no reason to doubt their sincerity. At all
+events, no one disputed that it was to Ireland's interest financially
+that a settlement should be made.
+
+It is quite unnecessary to summarize here in any detail the course of
+these general discussions in full Convention, which began on August
+21st. One thing, however, resulted from them on which too much emphasis
+cannot be laid. In the process of "exploring each other's minds," as the
+phrase went, we came to know and to like one another. Later in the year,
+a friend of mine, high placed in the Ulster Division, but not an
+Ulsterman by upbringing or sympathy, came home from France. He told me
+that the main impression on the minds of Ulster delegates had been made
+by the Nationalist County Councillors. They had expected noisy
+demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them
+with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than
+too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of
+dissent. What Willie Redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming
+true: Irishmen brought into contact with one another in the Convention,
+as other Irishmen had been brought into contact in the trenches, and no
+longer kept apart by those unhappy severances which run through ordinary
+Irish life, came under the influence of that fundamental fellowship,
+deeper than all divergence of politics or creed, which draws our people
+into a sense of a common bond.
+
+The desire to bring delegates together in friendly social intercourse
+had shown itself in many quarters. The Viceregal Lodge pressed
+invitations on us, and Redmond, though in the circumstances he himself
+would go to no entertainment anywhere, expressed his wish that
+Nationalists should alter their traditional attitude and accept what was
+offered in so friendly a spirit. But the first place where we met as a
+body with informal ease was at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord
+Mayor--a popular figure in our assembly.
+
+Next day the Lord Mayor of Belfast rose at the adjournment to express
+all our thanks, and to insist that there should be a session in Belfast,
+where he could return the compliment. Immediately, there came another
+proposal for a similar visit to the South of Ireland. We went to Belfast
+at the beginning of September, and the attitude of the Ulster members,
+which had till then been somewhat guarded and aloof, changed into that
+of the traditional Irish hospitality. They showed us their great linen
+mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in
+which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries,
+works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any
+cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design
+combining lightness and strength. Perhaps the most impressive sight of
+all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards. Endless lines of
+empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of some ten
+thousand artisans, who streamed past where we stood assembled; and as
+the crowds swept along, all these eyes, curious, but not unfriendly,
+scrutinized us, and one word was in all their mouths as they came
+up--"Which is Redmond? Where's John Redmond?"
+
+A fortnight later Cork completed what Belfast had begun; and, perhaps
+because Cork is less strenuous, the whole atmosphere there was even
+friendlier. It had almost the quality of a holiday excursion, for we
+assisted at the ancient ceremony by which the Lord Mayor of Cork asserts
+his jurisdiction over the harbour waters--proceeding outside the
+protecting headlands and flinging from him a ceremonial dart outwards to
+the sea. This day, however, we accomplished the ceremony well within the
+limits; we passed the narrow gateway in the chain of mines, but outside
+that, submarines were a very real menace, and the Admiralty cut short
+our steamer's voyage. We were none the less festive on board.
+
+It was not all mere holiday in Cork. One speech in particular at this
+meeting impressed the whole Convention. A Southern delegate illustrated
+from his personal knowledge how cumbrous and uneconomic were the
+dealings of a government at Westminster with the meat supply from
+Ireland; and a mass of complicated and important trade detail was
+skilfully linked to the larger issue of war interest and Imperial
+interest; there was genuine eloquence as well as commercial shrewdness
+in this discourse. A short speech, too, from one of the Ulster County
+Councillors indicated by its tone, what was in my opinion the general
+sentiment, that as a result of these preliminary discussions almost
+everybody in the assembly expected and desired an effective agreement.
+
+At least for the purposes of this book, and perhaps many purposes, the
+trend of our debates can be best summarized by reproducing Redmond's
+main contribution to them. He intervened on the first day when Mr.
+Murphy's scheme was proposed, on August 21st, but only with a few
+welcoming words, and to emphasize his view that we were all there to
+accept whatever commanded most support. But at Belfast on September 5th
+he spoke fully; and I do not think his speech would have been materially
+different had he delivered it three weeks later in Cork. What I print
+here is based on the unusually full notes made by him, so full that they
+admit of being treated like a press telegram, and read clearly when
+small and obvious words are added. The manuscript is scored with
+underlining, single, double and treble, to guide the voice in reading
+from it; it has interest as illustrating the technical devices which a
+great orator employed for a special occasion; and for this speech he
+spared no effort. I thought, then as always, that he was less impressive
+and less effective in so fully prepared an oration than when he was
+putting his thought into the form which immediately came to him. But as
+a document it represents beyond doubt his considered opinion and his
+most deliberate advice.
+
+Dealing briefly at first with the contention that the system of the
+Union had been a success and should not be touched, he outlined the
+familiar arguments. But, as he said, the existence of the Convention was
+the final answer. The head of a Coalition Ministry had declared, without
+dissent from any of his Unionist colleagues, that Dublin Castle had
+hopelessly broken down. The Prime Minister of another Coalition, mainly
+Unionist in its composition, had set up this assembly, charging it to
+find another and better system of government.
+
+Beneficent legislation had been quoted. Yes, but how was it attained?
+
+"In any constitutionally governed country, once public opinion is
+converted to some great reform, it naturally passes, surely and easily,
+though perhaps slowly, into law. In Ireland, after Irish public opinion
+has made up its mind, the reformer has to convert the public opinion of
+another country which is profoundly ignorant or apathetic, and unhappily
+it is uncontrovertible that scarcely a single piece of beneficent
+legislation on land, or anything else, has been passed since the Union
+except by long, violent, semi-revolutionary agitation.
+
+"Are we to go on for ever upon this path? Are we to go back into the
+region of perpetual and violent agitation in order to get the reforms we
+need? Are we never to be allowed to have peace in our country?"
+
+He passed then to the complaint that Ulster's special case had not been
+sufficiently considered.
+
+"The man who would hope to settle this great problem without special
+consideration of the special case of Ulster would indeed be a fool. Only
+for the special case of Ulster we should not be here at all. Our chief
+business is to endeavour to satisfy that special case.
+
+"For myself, I am one of those Nationalists to whom Mr. Barrie referred,
+who believe that the co-operation of Ulstermen is necessary for a
+prosperous and free Ireland, and there are no lengths consistent with
+common sense and reason to which I would not go to satisfy their fears
+and doubts and objections.
+
+"The special case of Ulster as put before us was this: 'We are contented
+under the Union, we have prospered under the Union. Therefore from our
+particular standpoint we have no reason to ask for a change.' But they
+declare themselves not only Ulstermen but Irishmen. They admit that the
+rest of Ireland is not prosperous as they are, and is not contented;
+and, that being so, they have come here in a spirit of true patriotism
+to see what is proposed as a remedy; and, as I understand it, they only
+stipulate that in any scheme of reform their rights and interests and
+sentiments shall be safeguarded and respected. That is a reasonable and
+patriotic attitude, and I wish most heartily and most sincerely to
+respond to it.
+
+"Now let me say what are the main objections to these schemes which have
+emerged from the debate. Some may be regarded as more particularly
+affecting Ulster, others as more particularly affecting the Southern
+Unionists, but all of them taken together make up what I may call the
+Unionist objection.
+
+"The Archbishop of Dublin grouped these objections under three heads:
+
+1. Imperial Security.
+
+2. Fiscal Security.
+
+3. Security for Minorities.
+
+"On the question of Imperial Security, objection is taken to what is
+called an 'Independent' Parliament.
+
+"It is supposed that what is called Dominion Home Rule implies an
+'Independent' Parliament. This is a complete delusion. There is only one
+Sovereign and Independent Parliament in the Empire--the Imperial
+Parliament; its supremacy is indefeasible and inalienable. Every other
+Parliament in the Empire is subordinate, and an Irish Parliament must be
+subordinate.
+
+"The Imperial Parliament has created many Parliaments and given to them
+power to deal in general as they wish with local affairs, but it never
+parted with its own overriding authority--it has no power to do so--and
+in several of the colonies it has exercised that overriding authority
+from time to time.
+
+"Gladstone spoke of the Irish Parliament which he proposed to set up as
+'practically independent in the exercise of its statutory functions.'
+But the overriding authority of the Imperial Parliament would always be
+there in the background to arrest injustice or oppression, just as it is
+in regard to every Dominion Parliament in the Empire to-day.
+
+"That position was specifically laid down and accepted by Parnell in
+1886.
+
+"Lord Midleton demands that the rights and authority of the Crown shall
+be preserved and safeguarded. There is no difference whatever between us
+on this, and no difficulty can arise upon it.
+
+"As to the control of Army and Navy, no one suggests any interference
+with the Imperial authority over the Army and the Navy. I include in
+that such naval control of harbours as is necessary for security.
+
+"Captain Gwynn has proposed that Ireland should have power to raise a
+force for home defence. In other words, to pass a Territorial Act for
+Ireland. My policy about the Volunteers is known: I proposed at the
+beginning of the war that the Government should utilize the existing
+Volunteer forces; and had this proposal been acted on in 1914 there
+would have been no rebellion in 1916. If I understand Captain Gwynn, he
+did not suggest that Irish Territorials should be under an Irish War
+Office and an Irish Minister for War, but that in his opinion a system
+of Irish Territorials was desirable, and inasmuch as the English
+Territorial Acts are not suitable to us, the Irish Parliament should be
+given the power to raise under Imperial authority a force for itself and
+on its own lines.
+
+"If this is his view, I agree with it. But this is a matter on which no
+one would think of breaking off.
+
+"Speaking generally, I think the Archbishop of Dublin and those who
+agree with him may take it for granted that upon all those questions
+which he grouped under the heading of Imperial Security there would be
+little difficulty in arriving at an agreement with, at any rate, men
+like myself.
+
+"Now let me deal with the second group of subjects put forward by the
+Archbishop of Dublin under the heading of Fiscal Security--or a
+reasonable prospect of national prosperity.
+
+"The first objection is to what is called fiscal autonomy, although,
+after listening most carefully to his speeches, it seems to me that the
+real objection is not so much an objection to fiscal autonomy as
+establishing the full power of the Irish Parliament over the collection
+and imposition of Irish taxes, as an objection to giving that Parliament
+power to set up a tariff against Great Britain."
+
+He referred then at length to the Report of the Primrose Committee on
+Irish Finance, dated October 1911.[11] That Committee had for its
+chairman a great English Civil Servant; three of its members were famous
+English financiers; another was the Professor of Political Economy at
+Oxford. Of the two names associated closely with Ireland, one was Lord
+Pirrie, whose fortune had been made in Belfast, and the only Irish
+Nationalist was the Bishop of Ross. They had reported unanimously for
+giving to Ireland full fiscal powers. "We tried hard," Redmond said, "to
+get the principle of their Report adopted in framing the Bill of 1912."
+Government insisted on adhering to the plan of "contract finance" which
+their own non-partisan committee of experts had explicitly condemned.
+
+He quoted several passages from the weighty argument by which the
+Committee had justified its conclusions, especially those dealing with
+the contention that the power would be used to set up a tariff against
+British goods.
+
+"Ireland is not a nation of fools.
+
+"If in framing a new Constitution you go on the assumption that every
+power you confer will be abused, it would be far better to desist from
+your task altogether, and instead of increasing the powers of a people
+dead to all sense of responsibility and manifestly unfit for political
+freedom, you had better disestablish all existing forms of
+constitutional government and advocate the government of Ireland as a
+Crown Colony. But none of us so distrust our people.
+
+"Dr. O'Donnell has proposed a solution of the difficulty about imposing
+a tariff against England by means of a Conference between the two
+nations. Other suggestions will be made. Protection may be found for
+Ulster by giving to them disproportionate representation. It may be
+found in the power of the Senate, it may be found in the power to
+suspend. If we are agreed somewhat on the general lines of the Primrose
+Report, the outstanding difficulty will be capable of adjustment.
+
+"Sir Crawford McCullagh rightly pointed out the terrible burden of war
+taxation, which is at present over twenty millions, and he said we
+cannot go on on those lines, and we must get back to pre-war burdens or
+the country will be ruined. How are we to get back?
+
+"If nothing is done by us, and the war goes on, as it may, for some
+years, we may easily be paying thirty, forty, or fifty millions, and
+generations to come will have to bear a crushing load. The income tax is
+certain to be raised, and excess profits also, and no part of Ireland
+will suffer more than Ulster, and especially Belfast.
+
+"The highest interest of Ulster, therefore, is a speedy settlement
+whereby the increase of war taxation will cease and Ireland's
+contribution to Imperial purposes will either disappear or, to put it at
+the very lowest, be limited and stereotyped.
+
+"Mr. Knight raised the question of land purchase. I agree with every
+word he said, but what is the difficulty? The difficulty is in providing
+the additional money needed at a low rate of interest. As part of a
+settlement I feel quite sure we could obtain the completion of land
+purchase on satisfactory terms. Indeed, I have the highest authority for
+the statement that this question would be regarded as an essential
+portion of a settlement, and that a most generous arrangement would be
+made. But if there is no settlement, do you imagine the Treasury will
+do anything to help us? No. I fear the British Government will be more
+occupied in endeavouring to deal with the state of open anarchy in
+Ireland than in making great financial concessions on land purchase. Mr.
+Knight, if he wants purchase completed, had better help us to an
+agreement.
+
+"The third group of objections mentioned by the Archbishop of Dublin
+deals with Security for Minorities.
+
+"On this, it is impossible for the Convention to break down, because we
+are all in favour of the object in view. It is a mere question of the
+best machinery to carry out our unanimous desire and intention.
+
+"Ulster may clearly claim a representation out of proportion to her
+numbers, not only, I admit, in the Senate, but in the lower chamber.
+Safeguards of the most stringent character would be accepted, at any
+rate by me, in the machinery of the Constitution to prevent the
+possibility of Ulster's interest, Ulster's prosperity and Ulster's
+sentiments being injured or over-ridden.
+
+"For Southern Unionists, the case is unanswerable. They _must_ get
+proper representation in both Houses.
+
+"Some suggestions have been made: proportional representation; Mr.
+Murphy's proposal of a special representation for property; special
+representation for creeds, and finally a nominated element in the House
+of Commons. I have an open mind on them all. It may be none of these
+will be found wholly satisfactory. But where there is a will there is a
+way. We are all agreed it must be done, and therefore it can and will be
+done.
+
+"In none of these objections, and they are the chief ones that have
+emerged on Imperial security, fiscal security, and security of
+minorities, is there in my mind any difficulty in coming to an
+agreement, if we are really animated by the desire every speaker has
+professed to answer the appeal of the Empire in this hour of her dire
+extremity by removing one of her greatest weaknesses and dangers.
+
+"We were told by Lord Midleton to play for safety. What is safety for
+us? What is safety for the Empire? I strongly say the only safety is a
+settlement of this question.
+
+"What will be the certain effect of a breakdown? No one could fail to
+have been impressed by the serious and solemn note upon which the
+Archbishop of Dublin concluded his speech. He reminded you this was not
+a question of Ulster and the rest of Ireland, not of Catholic and
+Protestant, or Unionist and Nationalist: it was a question of the
+necessity for all men of good will, all men of responsibility, all men
+who know that the foundation of freedom is the maintenance of order, to
+join hands to protect their common country from anarchy and chaos.
+
+"The Archbishop spoke of Mr. Lysaght's speech as a threat. No one here
+will be moved by threats, but let us not be mad enough to shut our eyes
+to the facts. Is there a man in this room who can contemplate without
+horror the immediate future of Ireland if this Convention fails? For my
+part, I see clearly a future following on our failure in which on one
+side there will be an angered, if you like, a maddened people, with no
+responsible control, and on the other, Government ruling by the point of
+the bayonet. Between these two forces there will be no place for a
+Constitutional party or for men like myself.
+
+"That would be the effect in Ireland. What would be the effect
+throughout the Empire?
+
+"I have close relations with statesmen of all parties in all the
+Dominions, and I am informed that twenty-five per cent, of their troops
+are of Irish birth or of Irish parents, and that they have practically
+joined because they believed the Irish problem was as good as settled.
+
+"What has happened about Ireland has caused untold difficulties in every
+Dominion. Mr. Holman, the Prime Minister of New South Wales, said that
+conscription was defeated by the Irish vote. Mr. Hughes said the same.
+Two hundred thousand troops have been lost to the Empire by the feeling
+of disgust at the failure to settle the Irish question. It has been the
+same in Canada. Everywhere a breakdown will be regarded with dismay.
+
+"What will be the effect in America? The position of America is grave
+and dangerous. I have close relations with many Americans of high
+position and influence, and they all tell me the same. This is a secret
+session, and I can repeat what they say. There is little or no
+enthusiasm for the war. Mind, I am speaking of Americans, not Irish
+Americans. The apathy is largely due to distrust of England. They
+distrust her posing as the champion of small nations while here at her
+doors the Irish question is unsettled. Lord Midleton says the Americans
+are uninformed. Perhaps so as to details. Perhaps they only see the
+broad effect. But how does that help us? The fact remains. Ireland is
+the only, or the chief, cause of American apathy to-day. This is of
+vital importance. Could we hope to win the war if America dropped out?
+Russia has gone. The President of the United States has many pacifist
+men around him. Their movement is strong. Germany is abstaining from
+outrages that would raise American feeling. I say, the danger of peace
+proposals which we could not accept being offered to America and
+accepted by her is a real and a very serious one.
+
+"Hence it is that the Government, the diplomatic service, and all
+connected with our foreign affairs are feverishly anxious as to the
+result of our deliberations. If we break down in despair and
+helplessness, God only knows how terrible and far-reaching may be the
+consequence.
+
+"Far better for us and for the Empire never to have met than to have met
+and failed of an agreement.
+
+"Finally, what would be the effect of a breakdown at the front?
+
+"We are called upon on all sides of this ancient quarrel to make what
+people call sacrifices--sacrifices of inherited predilections, of
+old-world ideas, and of ancient shibboleths, of perhaps ingrained
+prejudice. I would be ashamed to speak of the surrender of such things
+as sacrifices, when I remember the kind of sacrifices our brave boys
+have made and are making this very hour while we are safe at home
+talking. I cannot trust myself to speak upon this matter. Only the other
+day, once again the Ulster Division and the Sixteenth Irish Division,
+shoulder to shoulder, have fought and died for Ireland. The full story
+is not yet known, but it is full of tragedy, of heroism and of glory.
+Surely they deserve some encouragement. No set of men living would be
+prouder and happier than they if we can send them the news of a
+settlement of this question which will relieve them from the daily shame
+they feel, every time they meet their Allies, in the consciousness that
+their country, Ireland, for which they are facing death, is distracted
+and disunited and a source of reproach.
+
+"No, we must come to a settlement. We must rise to the occasion--if only
+to save ourselves from a lifelong remorse for wrecking this venture--for
+what the historian of the future would describe as a crime against the
+Empire in her hour of deadliest peril, and a crime against the peace and
+happiness of our own beloved and long-suffering country."
+
+One result of this speech was seen at once in an utterance from Mr.
+Andrew Jameson, a leading figure among the Southern Unionists. He said
+at once that Redmond had convinced him that all the difficulties as to
+maintaining the Imperial connection and providing safeguards for
+minorities could and would be met. The fiscal difficulty remained. He
+pressed the Ulster group to come to our assistance and depart from their
+attitude of silence. This speech went further towards our desire than
+any Unionist had previously gone.
+
+In a later debate Mr. Pollock outlined two essentials of the Ulster
+demand. The United Kingdom must remain a fiscal unit; and Ireland must
+be represented at Westminster. If these points were conceded, agreement,
+he thought, should be possible.
+
+On the whole, as discussion grew franker and more business-like,
+relations improved. There were small passages at arms, but these only
+served to show how strong was the general desire for harmony. One of my
+colleagues said that he did not know what to make of a political
+assembly where everyone applauded when you got up, and applauded when
+you sat down, and never interrupted you. Another said that the
+Convention was the only society in Ireland from which one always came
+away cheered up: and this was so generally felt that an Ulster speaker
+reminded us that the atmosphere of our proceedings was pleasant but
+exceptional. He warned us to remember that, even if we agreed, either
+side might be repudiated. Yet there was a marked feeling that the
+Convention, and the tone which prevailed in the Convention, had done
+good in the country. This was admitted by the Grand Master of the Orange
+Order, Colonel Wallace, in a speech which led to an important
+illustration of the mutual process of education, for it raised with
+great frankness the issue of religious differences and alluded specially
+to the recent Papal decrees over which so much controversy had raged.
+The Bishop of Raphoe rose to reply and expounded, as an ex-professor of
+Canon Law, the true bearing of these documents. His speech was a
+masterpiece; its candour and its lucidity commended itself to all
+hearers, but most of all to the Ulstermen, who applauded at once Lord
+Oranmore's comment that the _odium theologicum_ had been replaced by
+_divina caritas_; and at a very late stage in our proceedings, Mr.
+Barrie referred back to this speech of the Bishop's as one of the
+things which they would never forget.
+
+The Primate, who in this month of September was one of the hopeful
+hearts ("My confidence has grown daily," he said), used words which met
+with widespread response: "We can never leave this hall and speak of men
+whom we have met here as we have spoken of them in the past." There was
+good will in the air--good will to each other and to the enterprise. At
+the close of the proceedings in Cork the Lord Mayor of Belfast moved a
+vote of thanks to the citizens through their Lord Mayor, and he closed
+on a note of hope--anticipating "something in store for Ireland."
+
+Yet already these anticipations were overcast. During this week, while
+all seemed going so well, one of the endless unhappy and preventible
+things happened. It was from Redmond that I first heard the news. One of
+the Sinn Fein leaders who had been rearrested on suspicion after the
+amnesty took part in a hunger-strike as a protest against being
+subjected to the conditions imposed on a convicted felon. He was
+forcibly fed and died under the process, owing to heart-failure. Redmond
+told me with fury how he had urged again and again on the Chief
+Secretary the possibility of some such calamity, and had urged that
+these men should receive the treatment proper in any case to political
+prisoners, but above all to men who had been neither convicted nor
+tried.
+
+The result was immediately seen in some hostile demonstrations in Cork,
+chiefly against Mr. Devlin and Redmond. But this was only the beginning.
+On the following Sunday the body of the dead man, Thomas Ashe, was
+carried through the streets of Dublin at the head of a vast procession,
+in which large bodies of Volunteers, openly defying Government's
+proclamation, marched in uniform; and he was buried with military
+honours and volleys fired over his grave. With all this breach of the
+law Government dared not interfere. They had put themselves in the
+wrong; whether they prevented the demonstration or permitted it,
+mischief was bound to follow. A new incitement was given to the
+enthusiasm for Sinn Fein, a new martyr was provided, and new hostility
+was raised against the Convention, for whose success Government was
+notoriously anxious. On the other hand, Ulster Unionist opinion was
+violently offended; they were scandalized by the disregard for law and
+the impotence of constitutional authority. This attitude, however open
+to comments based on their own recent history, did not render them any
+easier to deal with. Above all, the Ashe incident emphasized the
+presence in Ireland of a great force over which Redmond had no control
+and which had no representative in the Convention. How, men asked, even
+if a bargain could be made with Constitutional Nationalists, should that
+covenant be carried into effect?
+
+
+III
+
+The Cork visit marks the close of the first stage in the history of the
+Convention. At the opening of our session there it was decided to
+appoint a Grand Committee of twenty, whose task should be, "if possible,
+to prepare a scheme for submission to the Convention, which would meet
+the views and difficulties expressed by the different speeches during
+the course of the debate." The Convention itself, after its
+deliberations of that week, would adjourn until the Committee was in a
+position to report. This second stage, purely of committee work, was to
+last much longer than anyone anticipated: the Convention did not
+reassemble till the week before Christmas. If that length of adjournment
+had been foreseen, the Committee would never have been appointed.
+
+Mr. Lysaght in his first address to the Convention had pressed upon us
+the view that Sinn Féin could be won. But he warned us also (with such
+emphasis that some speakers afterwards resented it as a threat) that if
+the Convention produced no result, or an unacceptable result, or
+provoked suspicion by delay, the result would be a revolution. Already
+impatience was growing. We could publish no account of our proceedings:
+but it became known inevitably that we had not as yet reached one
+operative conclusion in our task of Constitution building.
+
+At Cork, Sir Horace Plunkett made an encouraging speech at the public
+luncheon; he announced the appointment of our Committee, which certainly
+looked like business. But only when we got to detail did men fully
+realize the difficulties and the embarrassing nature of the position.
+
+The Ashe affair had done more harm than we knew. When the Primate was
+making the hopeful speech from which a few words have already been
+quoted, he spoke also of our experience as having been a process of
+mutual education, which we needed to extend beyond our own assembly. He
+promised his help in this, and it was felt that Ulstermen generally were
+on their honour to report well of what they commended in our presence.
+They were, it seems, at least as good as their word; the Committee
+behind them was favourably impressed, and when we went to Cork--so I
+have been informed--the question of giving the delegates full powers to
+negotiate was under discussion. But this mood was dissipated by the
+angry temper in all sections which arose out of the imprisonments, the
+hunger-strikes, the penalties imposed, and the successive concessions to
+violent resistance.
+
+To this was added a new cause of quarrel. The Franchise Bill was now
+coming before the House of Commons; and under the provisions agreed to
+by the Speaker's Conference, extension of the franchise was to be
+applied in Ireland, but there was to be no redistribution. This proposal
+was not unreasonable, since the Home Rule Act was now a statute and
+under it new and properly distributed constituencies were scheduled;
+while over and above this the Convention was in existence to occupy
+itself with the matter.
+
+On the other hand, the existing distribution of seats was hard on
+Unionist Ulster: the great mass of population in and about Belfast was
+under-represented. Ulstermen said that while Nationalists professed
+great desire to give favour to minorities, in reality they persisted in
+keeping their political opponents at an unfair disadvantage. There was
+no more question of enlarging the delegates' authority in Convention:
+the Advisory Committee hardened their attitude, and it was our task to
+convince a body which could not hear our arguments at first hand.
+Decisions lay with Ulstermen in Belfast, not in the Convention--that is
+to say, not subject to the daily, hourly, prompting to remember that
+they were not only Ulstermen but Irishmen, which arose from friendly
+intercourse with their fellow-delegates.
+
+The Grand Committee of twenty, representing all groups, met on October
+11th. Sir Horace Plunkett had in advance begged Redmond to undertake the
+presentation of a scheme which would serve as a basis for discussion.
+Redmond declined, on the ground that the initiative should come from
+someone who was not there as a politician; but he admitted that the onus
+of making a proposal was on Home Rulers. Dr. O'Donnell, though an
+office-bearer in the United Irish League, was present as a
+representative of the hierarchy; he was charged with the task. He had
+been throughout a strong advocate of claiming for Ireland all the powers
+possessed by any of the Dominions, with limitations on the military
+side; he had also been forward in his desire to give wholly exceptional
+rights of representation to minorities.
+
+But when we got into Committee one man immediately took the lead. Sir
+Alexander McDowell[12] had not spoken in any debate; there is reason to
+believe that he was glad not to commit himself in advance before the
+moment when his special gift might come into play. All his life he had
+been carrying through agreements between conflicting interests: he was a
+great mediator and negotiator. Now, he advocated what was, in
+strictness, an irregularity. A task had been delegated to us: he asked
+us to delegate it again to a smaller group. The whole case, he said, had
+been fully opened up; further debate would be no use; we all knew all
+the arguments. He deprecated formal procedure; it was plainly a family
+quarrel, and we should treat it in that spirit. Honestly, he said, he
+should be sorry if the Convention failed. Ulster had no fault to find
+with the Union; but they were living next door to a house already in
+flames.
+
+That was the general tone, but it would be difficult to convey the
+impression of experience and authority which his manner left: and
+Redmond supported him. It was plain that the two men would understand
+each other. In the upshot their view prevailed; Redmond, Mr. Barrie and
+Lord Midleton were instructed to suggest names, and after an interval
+they came back with a list of nine. Lord Midleton was for the Southern
+Unionists; Mr. Barrie, Lord Londonderry and Sir Alexander McDowell for
+the Northern; Redmond, Mr. Devlin and Bishop O'Donnell represented the
+parliamentary Nationalists, and to them were added Mr. W.M. Murphy and
+Mr. George Russell.
+
+This left eleven of us unemployed, and some days later we were formed
+into three sub-committees, the first dealing with the question of
+Electoral Reform and the composition of an Irish Parliament; the second
+with Land Purchase, and the third with a possible Territorial Force and
+the Police. But the marrow of the business rested with the original
+sub-committee of nine.
+
+They, however, could not get rapidly to work; other affairs pulled them
+in different directions. Redmond was forced to go to Westminster, where
+the Franchise Bill was coming on; moreover, the Irish party felt that
+it must raise the question of Irish administration.
+
+As our leader, he was obliged to speak on both matters. His reply to the
+Ulster amendment proposing to extend redistribution to Ireland was that
+this departed from the compromise reached at the Speaker's Conference,
+and moreover ignored the existence of the Convention. He spoke with
+studied brevity and avoidance of party spirit: but the debate became a
+wrangle. Mr. Barrie brought back into it some of the Convention's
+friendlier atmosphere; but his argument was that in the interests of the
+Convention this concession should be made.
+
+The second debate, on October 23rd, was inevitably contentious: it
+deplored the policy being pursued by the Irish Executive and the Irish
+military authorities "at a time when the highest interests of Ireland
+and the Empire demand the creation of an atmosphere favourable to the
+Convention." Redmond had an easy task in convicting the Government's
+action of incoherence and of blundering provocation--but to do this was
+of no advantage to his main purpose, which he served as best he could by
+a side-wind, eulogizing the temper of the Convention and specially the
+"sincere desire for a reasonable settlement" shown by the Ulster
+delegates.
+
+Still, at the best, it was impossible for him not to feel that the
+reaction of a debate which could not be kept in the tone on which he
+started it must be unfavourable to the meetings of the Nine which were
+about to take place. He was to go in to negotiate a settlement for his
+country while the voices of faction were yelping at his heels all over
+Ireland, and all the forces of reconciliation which he had brought into
+play were neutralized and sterilized.
+
+A debate of these days gave him a happier occasion to intervene than the
+domestic bickerings in which he had been forced to take part; yet even
+in this the note of sadness predominated. On October 29th, when a vote
+of thanks was proposed to the Navy, Army and Mercantile Marine, he
+joined his voice to that of other leaders of parties, to emphasize, as
+he said, that they spoke from an absolutely unanimous House of Commons.
+He recalled the exploits of Irish troops and dwelt again on the presence
+of a large Irish element in the Canadian and Anzac Divisions. But his
+reference was chiefly to those Nationalist Irish Brigades, who had
+remained true, he said, to the old motto of the Brigade of Fontenoy,
+_Semper et ubique fidelis_. These men had known in the midst of their
+privations and sufferings a new and poignant feeling of anguish: they
+had seen "a section at any rate of their countrymen" repudiate the view
+that in serving as they served they were fighting for Ireland, for her
+happiness, for her prosperity and her liberty.
+
+"I wish it were possible for me to speak a word to every one of those
+men. If my words could reach them, I would say to every one of them that
+they need have no misgiving, that they were right from the first, that
+time will vindicate them, that time will show that while fighting for
+liberty and civilization in Europe they are also fighting for
+civilization and liberty in their own land. I would like to say to every
+one of them, in addition, that even at this moment, when ephemeral
+causes have confused and disturbed Irish opinion, they are regarded with
+feelings of the deepest pride and gratitude by the great bulk of the
+Irish race and by all that is best in every creed and class in Ireland."
+
+The Irish Divisions had once and again been engaged shoulder to
+shoulder, but this time with very different fortune, in the third battle
+of Ypres; yet, win or lose, they won or lost together. In that same
+fighting Redmond's own son had earned special honour; the Distinguished
+Service Order was bestowed on him for holding up a broken line with his
+company of the Irish Guards. At a happier time this news would have been
+received with enthusiasm all over Ireland; now, the most one could say
+was that it delighted the Convention.
+
+It would be quite wrong, however, to regard Redmond's attitude in these
+days as unhopeful. The first meetings of the Nine were fruitful of much
+agreement--conditional at all points on general ratification. But the
+true spirit of compromise was there. So far as concerned the provision
+to give minorities more than their numerical weight, it was agreed that
+there should be two Houses, with powers of joint session, and with
+control over money bills conceded to the Upper House. In the Lower House
+Unionists should (somehow) get forty per cent, of the representation: so
+that in the joint session the influences would be equally balanced.
+
+The hitch came over finance. Nationalists wanted complete powers of
+taxation, but would agree to a treaty establishing Free Trade between
+the two countries for a long period. Ulster wanted a common fiscal
+control for Great Britain and Ireland. By November 1st a complete
+deadlock had been reached.
+
+On that date the Grand Committee met to take stock informally of the
+position, especially in regard to the procedure of the more detailed
+sub-committees, and to face the fact that a grave misfortune had
+befallen us. Sir Alexander McDowell had been prevented by illness from
+attending any of the meetings. He had no further part in the
+Convention's work, and died before it ended.
+
+Redmond in a confidential talk spoke of his absence as lamentable. The
+two had arranged--on the Belfast man's proposal--to meet for private
+interviews before the Nine came together. Neither had control of the
+forces for which he spoke; but both stood out, by everyone's consent,
+from the rest of the assembly. It is impossible to say how much they
+might have achieved had they come to an understanding; but assuredly no
+other representative of the North spoke with the same self-confidence or
+the same weight of personality as Sir Alexander McDowell. My own
+feeling about him--if it be worth while to record a personal
+impression--was that he was a man with the instinct for carrying big
+things through--that the problem tempted him, as a task which called for
+the exertion of powers which he was conscious of possessing. In losing
+him we lost certainly the strongest will in his group, perhaps the
+strongest in the Convention; and it was a will for settlement. It was,
+too, a will less hampered by regard for public opinion than that of any
+popularly elected representative man can be. He had, I think, also
+eminently the persuasive gift which is not only inclined to give and
+take but can impart that disposition to others.
+
+Mr. Pollock, who replaced him, was an able man, but singularly lacking
+in this quality. He held his own views clearly and strongly, but his
+method of exposition accentuated differences: it had always a note of
+asperity, though this was certainly not deliberate. One of the pleasant
+memories which remains with me is of a day when debate grew acrimonious
+and hot words were used. Mr. Pollock refused to reply to some phrases
+which might have been regarded as taunts, because, he said, "I have made
+friendships here which I never expected to make, and I value them too
+much to risk the loss of them." That friendly temper, combined with his
+ability, made him a valuable member of this Convention: but for the
+critical work of bringing men's minds together, of sifting the essential
+from the unessential, he was a bad exchange for Sir Alexander McDowell.
+
+Redmond said to me that he had found Mr. Barrie much more conciliatory
+than in the earlier and public stages. He was delighted with Lord
+Midleton, who was, he said, "showing an Irish spirit which I never
+expected";--standing up for the claims of an Irish Parliament if there
+was to be one. In the discussion, however, one man, Bishop O'Donnell,
+had been "head and shoulders above everyone else."
+
+Argument had ranged about the question of customs and excise. This was
+the dividing line. But when at last a deadlock was definitely reached,
+the Ulster position was stated in a letter which refused to concede to
+an Irish Parliament the control of either direct or indirect taxation.
+It was to be a Parliament with no taxing power at all.
+
+On the other hand, in the corresponding document from the Nationalist
+side, the importance of immediate and full fiscal control had been put
+very high.
+
+"Self-government does not exist," it said, "where those nominally
+entrusted with affairs of government have not control of fiscal and
+economic policy. No nation with self-respect could accept the idea that
+while its citizens were regarded as capable of creating wealth they were
+regarded as incompetent to regulate the manner in which taxation of that
+wealth should be arranged, and that another country should have the
+power of levying and collecting taxes, the taxed country being placed in
+the position of a person of infirm mind whose affairs are regulated by
+trustees. No finality could be looked for in such an arrangement, not
+even a temporary satisfaction."
+
+The genesis of this passage should be told, for it had importance in the
+history of the Convention; and also it conveys an idea of the limits to
+which Redmond carried self-effacement. It is important because it acted
+on Ulster like a red rag shown to a bull. Obviously, if this were the
+Nationalist view, then the Home Rule Act could not be said to give
+self-government--for under its system of contract finance Ireland
+certainly had not control of her fiscal and economic policy. A measure
+accepted with enthusiasm in 1912 was now regarded as impossible of
+giving "even a temporary satisfaction."
+
+What had happened was this. The Chairman in his tireless efforts to
+bring about agreement had addressed two sets of questions, to the
+Nationalists and to the Ulstermen respectively, by answering which he
+hoped they might clear the air. The direct answers for the Nationalists
+were drafted by Mr. Russell, but were shown to Redmond, Mr. Devlin and
+the Bishop of Raphoe. It was, however, suggested that as an addendum a
+summary should be added. Redmond did not ask to see this addition, and
+it was not shown to him. It led off with the paragraph which has been
+quoted. The fact that he allowed anything in any stage of such a
+negotiation to go out in his name without his own revision marks the
+loosening of grip--a tired man.
+
+His exertions for the past years, the past ten years at least, had been
+tremendous: they had been redoubled from 1912 to 1916. Towards the end,
+one resource had been failing him--the chief of all. A leader when he is
+well followed gives and takes; there is interchange of energy. For more
+than a year now Redmond had lacked the moral support, the almost
+physical stimulus, which comes from the ready response of followers.
+Labour at no time came easy to him, there was much inertia in his
+temperament; and the part which he had laid out for himself in the
+Convention as merely an individual member did not impose on him the same
+unremitting vigilance as if he acted as leader. Yet, the leadership was
+his; if he did not exercise it, no one else could; and this incident
+shows that his abnegation of leadership was not a mere phrase.
+
+On November 22nd the Grand Committee reassembled to hear the report from
+the Nine. Lord Southborough, who had presided at all their meetings,
+detailed the conclusions which had been reached or the point on which
+they had broken down.
+
+Then followed a discussion lasting some three days, in which Ulstermen
+and Nationalists reaffirmed their positions. Archbishop Bernard, the
+Primate, and Lord MacDonnell all attempted mediation. Finally, Lord
+Midleton, who described the position as "a stone wall on each side,"
+announced that he and his group would put before the Grand Committee
+certain proposals as a _via media_. These in effect conceded to an Irish
+Parliament all that Nationalists claimed, subject only to the
+reservation that customs must be fixed by the Imperial Parliament and
+the produce of them retained as Ireland's contribution to Imperial
+services.
+
+At this point our work was interrupted by the reemergence of the
+redistribution question. Redmond and the other Irish members were
+obliged to go to London and assist for two days at a debate in the worst
+traditions of the House of Commons. The change of atmosphere was
+extraordinary--and the accusations of bad faith were not limited to what
+passed at Westminster. One virulent speech declared that the Convention
+had no prospects, never had any, and was never intended to have any.
+This was accompanied by an attack on the action of the Ulster
+group--based, of course, on hearsay. Those of us who felt that at any
+rate the Convention offered a better hope for Ireland than any which now
+could be based on action at Westminster pleaded for the acceptance of a
+proposal which Redmond put forward as a compromise--that the proposed
+Irish clauses should be dropped from the main Bill and the Irish matter
+dealt with in a separate statute. It was so agreed at last, and a
+conference between Irish members, with the Speaker presiding, was set
+up, and quickly did its work. But if all this had been agreed to in
+October or earlier, much friction would have been saved and a cause of
+quarrel with the Ulster that was not in the Convention might have been
+avoided. Still, peace was achieved, and the proposal to cut down Irish
+representation was once more defeated.
+
+Grand Committee met for another session, but was chiefly concerned with
+getting ready for the reassembling of Convention--fixed for Tuesday,
+December 18th. It was decided that a group meeting of Nationalists for
+informal discussion should be held on the Monday night--the first
+occasion on which this had been done.
+
+Ill-luck, however, seemed to dog us. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of Ross, who
+was much closer in his point of view to Redmond than any of the other
+Bishops, was gravely ill. This was foreseen. But on the Monday a heavy
+snowstorm fell; Redmond, shut up in his hills at Aughavanagh, could not
+reach Dublin. The roads were not open till the Thursday, and then he
+thought it too late to come. He was in truth already too ill to face any
+unusual exertion.
+
+The Convention had been summoned, not to receive a final report from the
+Grand Committee, but to face a new situation. An offer had been put
+forward by one group which altered the whole complexion of the
+controversy. Grand Committee had abstained from deciding whether to
+counsel acceptance or rejection. But for the first time an influential
+body of Irish Unionists had agreed, not as individuals but as
+representatives, to accept Home Rule, in a wider measure than had been
+proffered by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 or by the Act of 1914.
+Limitations which were imposed in all these had been struck out by Lord
+Midleton's proposals.
+
+On the other hand, it was certain that the Ulster group would reject the
+scheme. Conversation among Nationalists made it plain that if Ulster
+would agree with Lord Midleton we should all join them. For the sake of
+an agreement reached between all sections of Irishmen, but for nothing
+less conclusive, Dr. O'Donnell and Mr. Russell were content to waive the
+claim to full fiscal independence. Such an agreement, they held, would
+be accepted by Parliament in its integrity. But if Ulster stood out,
+there would be no "substantial agreement," and the terms which
+Nationalists and Southern Unionists might combine to propose would be
+treated as a bargaining offer, certain to be chipped down by Government
+towards conformity with the Ulster demand. In the result there would be
+an uprising of opinion in Ireland against a measure so framed; the
+fiasco of July, 1916, would repeat itself.
+
+Against this, and prompting us to acceptance, was the view very strongly
+held by Redmond, that Government urgently needed a settlement for the
+sake of the war, and would use to the utmost any leverage which helped
+them to this end. An agreement with Lord Midleton would mean a Home Rule
+proposal proceeding from a leading Unionist statesman who spoke for the
+interest in Ireland, which, if any, had reason to fear Nationalist
+government. This would mean necessarily a profound change in the
+attitude of the House of Lords and of all those social influences whose
+power we had felt so painfully. Government could undoubtedly, if it
+chose, carry a measure giving effect to this compact.
+
+Further, weighing greatly with the instincts of the rank and file was
+the motive which prompted Irish Nationalists to welcome the advance made
+by those whom Lord Midleton represented. The Southern Unionists were the
+old landowning and professional class, friendly in all ways of
+intercourse, but politically severed and sundered from the mass of the
+population. Now, they came forward with an offer to help in attaining
+our desire--quite frankly, against their own declared conviction that
+the Union was the best plan, but with an equally frank recognition that
+the majority was the majority and was honest in its intent. The
+personality of the men reinforced the effect of this: Lord Oranmore, for
+instance, whom most of them had only known by anti-Home Rule speeches in
+the House of Lords, revealed himself as the friendliest of Irishmen,
+with the Irish love for a witty phrase.
+
+This temperamental attitude was of help to Lord Midleton when on
+December 18th he expounded the position of himself and his friends in a
+very powerful argument, the more persuasive because the good will in his
+audience softened his habitual touch of contentiousness. It had seemed
+to them, he said, that both in the Nationalist and Northern Unionist
+camp there was a tendency to consider dispositions out of doors and to
+conciliate certain antagonisms without considering whether they excited
+others. He and his friends had determined to fix their minds solely on
+the Convention itself, and to pursue the purpose for which they were
+summoned of endeavouring after agreement within that body. They were
+Unionists; but they had asked themselves what could be removed from the
+present system without disturbing the essence of Union; and in that
+effort they would go to the extremest limit in their power, without
+thought of conciliating opinions outside, and without any attempt to
+bargain.
+
+On one point only he indicated that their scheme was tentative. Defence
+was by consent of all left to the Imperial Parliament. This implied, he
+held, an adequate contribution, and the yield of customs to be collected
+by the Imperial Parliament seemed roughly to meet the case, for the
+period of the war. But this was not absolutely a hard-and-fast proposal.
+In any case, after the war, the amount should be the subject of inquiry
+by a joint commission.
+
+Apart from this, the offer was their last word. It conceded to Ireland
+the control of all purely Irish services. This included the fixation of
+excise, because excise on commodities produced in Ireland did not touch
+the treaty-making power. Customs touched that power, and therefore
+customs, like defence, must be left to the Imperial Parliament. But, he
+argued, Irish Nationalists were not asked to give up anything which had
+been conceded to them by any previous Home Rule proposal.
+
+To all Unionists he said: These proposals keep the power of the Crown
+over all Imperial services undiminished; they keep representation at
+Westminster--a corollary from leaving the Imperial Parliament powers
+over Irish taxation; and by accepting the suggestions already agreed
+to, they give a generous representation to Unionists in an Irish
+Parliament. This special representation of minorities was, he thought,
+sufficient to give a guarantee of "sane legislation" while it lasted;
+and he suggested that the period should be fifteen years. These
+concessions, in his opinion, sufficiently protected Southern Unionists.
+To Ulster he said, "We share every danger threatening you--we have many
+dangers you need not fear. Yet, we have no sinister anticipations. Are
+you still determined to stand out?"
+
+On the other hand, when so much of the full demand was conceded, were
+Nationalists insistent, he asked, on demanding what they had never asked
+in the discussions upon any Home Rule Bill? Nationalist leaders had now
+the chance of leading a combination of all sane elements in the
+landowning and land-cultivating classes. No Irish leader had ever before
+been able to present such an appeal to Unionist opinion as would come
+from the man who represented a Convention Party.
+
+It was a speech which Redmond, if present, must have replied to, and
+could not have replied to without indicating profound sympathy--for he
+was in agreement with its main lines; and his expression of opinion upon
+it must have influenced strongly the views of the rank and file at the
+moment when they were most open to suggestion.
+
+In his absence, men's minds were greatly affected by the fear that if we
+adopted these proposals, our decision would be exposed to attack from a
+combination of three forces--Sinn Féin, which would at least officially
+condemn anything less than complete separation, and would furiously
+assail a proposal that denied full taxing powers; the Roman Catholic
+Church, which would take its lead from Bishop O'Donnell, who set out in
+an able memorandum the reasons why Ireland must have full control of
+taxation; and finally, the powerful newspaper whose proprietor, Mr.
+Murphy, at once gave signs of his hostility by putting on the paper an
+amendment to Lord Midleton's resolution which amounted to a direct
+negative.
+
+The reassembly of the Convention was fixed for Wednesday, January 2nd.
+Redmond came to Dublin on the Monday. He told me that he was inclined to
+move that while we thanked Lord Midleton for his substantial
+contribution towards our purpose, we could not accept his proposal,
+unless it opened the way to a settlement. What he meant by this was not
+merely that if Ulster agreed, we should accept; for that would certainly
+open the way. But he had also in his mind the possibility of a guarantee
+from Government that an arrangement come to, as this might be, by
+four-fifths of the Convention, and repudiated only by the pledge-bound
+Ulster block, would be regarded as substantial agreement, and taken as a
+basis for legislation. In that case, also, the way would be open; but he
+had no written assurance of such an understanding, though I gathered
+that he was urging the Government to give it. We were, however, told on
+good authority in these days that if the Southern Unionists' proposal
+was accepted by the Nationalists and other elements outside of Ulster,
+the Prime Minister would use his whole influence with his colleagues to
+secure acceptance of the compact and immediate legislation upon it. This
+would mean, we were also assured, that the whole thing would be done
+before Easter.
+
+On January 2nd the resumed debate for the first time brought the
+Convention face to face with concrete proposals for a settlement. In
+tone and in substance it would have done credit to any Parliament that
+ever sat. I shall not try to summarize the arguments, but simply to note
+certain outstanding facts.
+
+Lord Midleton modified his original proposal that collection of customs
+should be an Imperial service throughout. He agreed that collection
+might be done by the Irish Civil Service. Moreover, he admitted that
+Ireland must have full means of checking the account for these taxes,
+great part of which must necessarily be collected at English ports,
+since tea, tobacco and the other dutiable articles were seldom shipped
+direct to Ireland.
+
+But he made it plain that the essential of his proposal was the
+maintenance of a common customs system, leaving the fixation of customs
+to the Imperial Parliament for Great Britain and Ireland. If this was
+denied, as it would be by the acceptance of Mr. Murphy's amendment, all
+Unionists would be driven once more into the same lobby; all chance of
+uniting elements heretofore divided would disappear.
+
+This was the fact against which we were brought up. Insistence on the
+full Nationalist demand as it had been outlined in the Convention meant
+the refusal of a new and powerful alliance which now offered itself, and
+the destruction of anything which could be called an agreement.
+
+In the close, Lord Midleton reinforced his appeal by a solid material
+argument. The sub-committee presided over by Lord MacDonnell had reached
+unanimous conclusions embodying proposals for the completion of land
+purchase within a very brief period. Landlords, agents, tenants,
+representatives for Ulster as well as from the South and West, were
+parties to this plan. Lord Midleton now looked back on the past as one
+who had been in the fight since Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill.
+Every fresh settlement had been wrecked, he said, by standing for the
+last shred of the demand. In 1885, if Gladstone had abandoned the
+identity of democratic franchise for both countries and had made to the
+Irish minority such concessions as this Convention was willing to make,
+he would have carried the Liberal Unionist element with him. Then, as
+now, a great land purchase scheme depended on the solution of the main
+problem. To-day land purchase stood or fell with the Convention.
+
+He was backed by Lord Dunraven--who waived his preference for his own
+original proposal--and by Lord Desart, in most able argument: the latter
+declaring that the proposal to give Ireland a separate customs system
+could never be carried in England. But the speech of the day came from
+Mr. Kavanagh, who, speaking as a Nationalist who had been a Unionist,
+ended a most moving appeal for agreement with a declaration that he at
+all events would vote for the compromise. There was no mistaking the
+effect produced by the earnestness of this speaker, who knew as much of
+Ireland and was as well fitted to judge of its true interests as any man
+in the room. That effect was felt, I think, in the tone of a private
+meeting of Nationalists held the same night. Redmond, with the art of
+which he was a master, indicated support for the proposal without
+forcing a conclusion. He dwelt on the fact that if we did not agree we
+not only lost our chance of immediate and complete land purchase but
+left ourselves subjected to the entire burden of war taxation. Other
+speakers pointed out that we ought not to let ourselves be lured into
+driving the Southern Unionists and the Ulstermen together against us.
+Mr. Clancy said in his downright manner that he would not as yet express
+his view publicly: but that he was not going to reject this offer for
+the sake of fixing taxes on tea and tobacco, and that when the right
+time came, he would say so. The strongest arguments used against this
+view were that in surrendering control of customs we lost our management
+of the taxes which pressed upon the poor; and further, that even if we
+agreed, no one knew what would result. We had no guarantee that the
+compact would be expressed in legislation. But on the whole the tone
+showed a disposition to accept, and especially to support Redmond--who
+had spoken of his political career as a thing ended. Next day the debate
+in Convention continued. Archbishop Bernard, speaking as a Unionist,
+said that the proposal was a venture beset with risks, but the greatest
+danger of all was to do nothing. It would be a grave responsibility for
+Ulster to wreck the chance of a settlement. Lord Oranmore dwelt on the
+composition of the proposed Legislature Power was to be entrusted to a
+very different Parliament from that which they had feared. He and his
+like were to get what they desired--an opportunity of taking part in
+the government of the country. It looked to him as if the only possible
+Irish Government under this scheme must be Unionist in its complexion.
+
+Perhaps there was an echo of this in Redmond's speech, by far the
+greatest he made in the Convention, when at last he intervened on
+January 4th--the Friday which ended that session.
+
+He dealt at once with Mr. Barrie's often repeated view that the proper
+object of our endeavours was to find a compromise between the Act of
+1914 and the proposal for partition put forward by Ulster. On that basis
+the Convention could never have been brought together. The Prime
+Minister's letter of May 16th which proposed the Convention suggested
+that Irishmen should meet "for the purpose of drafting a Constitution
+for their own country." On May 22nd Mr. Lloyd George had said, "We
+propose that Ireland should try her own hand at hammering out an
+instrument of government for her people." The only limitation was that
+it should be a Constitution "for the future government of Ireland within
+the Empire."
+
+Then he turned to the argument that all the sacrifices were asked from
+Unionists. Let us weigh them, he said. What sacrifices had been made by
+the Irish Nationalists, since this chain of events began?--Then followed
+a passage which I recapitulate, not necessarily in full, but in phrases
+which he actually used, and I noted down:
+
+"Personal loss I set aside. My position--our position--before the war
+was that we possessed the confidence of nearly the entire country. I
+took a risk--we took it--with eyes open. I have--we have--not merely
+taken the risk but made the sacrifice. If the choice were to be made
+to-morrow, I would do it all over again.
+
+"I have had my surfeit of public life. My modest ambition would be to
+serve in some quite humble capacity under the first Unionist Prime
+Minister of Ireland."
+
+As to other sacrifices, in the way of concessions, he recited the list
+of what had been agreed to--proposals so strangely undemocratic--the
+nomination of members of Parliament, the disproportionate powers given
+to a minority. "Shall we not be denounced for making them?" he asked.
+
+On the other hand, what sacrifices had been made by the Southern
+Unionists? These were the men who had had the hardest battle to fight in
+the struggle over Home Rule. They were not, like Ulster Unionists,
+"entrenched in a ring-fence," but the scattered few, who had suffered
+most and who might naturally have entertained most bitterness. Yet Lord
+Midleton's speech had been instinct with an admirable spirit. The speech
+of the Archbishop of Dublin had touched him deeply.
+
+"Between these men and us there never again can be the differences of
+the past. They have put behind them all bitter memories. They have
+agreed to the framework of a Bill better than any offered to us in 1886,
+1893 or 1914."
+
+As for us Nationalists--he emphasized that each man came here free,
+untrammelled.
+
+"I speak only for myself. But even if I stand alone, I will not allow
+myself, because I cannot get the full measure of my demand, to be drawn
+to reject the proffered hand of friendship held out to us. In my opinion
+we should be political fools if we did not endeavour to cement an
+alliance with these men."
+
+As concerned the Labour men, Mr. Whitley, who had always been a
+Unionist, had declared willingness to agree. But the Ulster
+Unionists--what sacrifice had they made?
+
+"The last thing I desire is to attack Mr. Barrie and his friends. But
+they are not free agents. I was shocked when I heard that a section here
+openly avowed the need to refer back to some outside body. If we had
+been told we were going into a body which would consist of two orders of
+members, it would have been difficult to get us here."
+
+On the essential point Ulster had made no concession. What did Mr.
+Barrie say in his formal document? 'We are satisfied that for Ireland
+and for Great Britain a common system of finances with one Exchequer is
+a fundamental necessity.' If they denied the taxing power to Ireland,
+any proposal on these lines must give Ireland less than any proposal for
+Home Rule ever put forward. This was Ulster's original position and they
+had not budged an inch.
+
+"This is their response to the Empire's S.O.S. Is it worthy of Ulster's
+Imperial loyalty? I don't believe it is their last word."
+
+Lord Londonderry, however, in replying, did not add any ground of hope.
+The last speech of the day announced that of six trade unionists five
+would support the compromise.
+
+Redmond that evening put on the notice paper a motion adopting Lord
+Midleton's proposals provided that they "be adopted by His Majesty's
+Government as a settlement of the Irish question and legislative effect
+be given to them forthwith."
+
+On the day before this motion was tabled, a party was given at Lord
+Granard's house which everybody attended, and which marked the most
+festive moment of our comradeship. When we separated on the Friday most
+men were absolutely confident of an agreement covering four-fifths of
+the Convention.
+
+Unhappily, the motion could not come under consideration for a period of
+ten days. In the following week Lord Midleton thought it necessary to
+attend the House of Lords. It was settled that we should spend the
+interval discussing the land purchase report, for which his presence was
+not essential. Redmond, whose health was still bad, did not come up to
+Dublin. All this gave time for agitation, and agitation was at work.
+
+Still, during that week there was no sign of any change in tone. Members
+of the local bodies who had gone to their homes at the week's end came
+back just as much inclined to settle as before.
+
+I met Redmond on the night of Monday, January 14th. He had seen no one
+in these ten days. He told me that he was still uncertain what would
+happen, but asked me to get one of the leading County Councillors to
+second his motion. Next morning I came in half an hour before the
+meeting to find the man I wanted. When I met him he was full of
+excitement, and said, "Something has gone wrong; the men are all saying
+they must vote against Redmond." Then it was evident that propaganda had
+been busy to some purpose.
+
+When Redmond came in to his place, I said, "It's all right. Martin
+McDonogh will second your motion." He answered with a characteristic
+brusqueness, "He needn't trouble. I'm not going to move it; Devlin and
+the Bishops are voting against me."
+
+He rose immediately the Chairman was in his place.
+
+"The amendment which I have on the paper," he said, "embodies the
+deliberate advice I give to the Convention.
+
+"I consulted no one--and could not do so, being ill. It stands on record
+on my sole responsibility.
+
+"Since entering the building I have heard that some very important
+Nationalist representatives are against this course--the Catholic
+bishops, Mr. Devlin--and others. I must face the situation--at which I
+am surprised; and I regret it.
+
+"If I proceeded I should probably carry my point on a division, but the
+Nationalists would be divided. Such a division could not carry out the
+objects I have in view.
+
+"Therefore, I must avoid pressing my motion. But I leave it standing on
+the paper. The others will give their advice. I feel that I can be of no
+further service to the Convention and will therefore not move."[13]
+
+There was a pause of consternation. The Chairman intervened and the
+debate proceeded, and was carried on through the week. During its course
+a letter to the Chairman from the Bishop of Ross was circulated to us,
+most dexterous in exposition, most affecting in the tone of its
+conclusion. It can be read in the Report of the Convention and it cannot
+with justice be quoted except at full length--so admirable is the
+linking of argument. It need only be said here that it was an appeal "to
+my fellow-Nationalists who have already made great concessions" to
+yield, for the sake of a settlement, this further point, and that the
+appeal was signed "from my sick-bed, not far removed from my death-bed."
+That eloquent voice and subtle brain could ill be spared from our
+assembly: but the letter came too late. It is plain that the writer had
+no inkling of what would happen till it was actually taking place.
+
+No one can overstate the effect of this episode. Redmond's personal
+ascendancy in the Convention had become very great. I am certain there
+was not a man there but would have said, "If there is to be an Irish
+Parliament, Redmond must be Prime Minister, and his personality will
+give that Parliament its best possible chance." The Ulstermen had more
+than once expressed their view that if Home Rule were sure to mean
+Redmond's rule, their objections to it would be materially lessened.
+Now, they saw Redmond thrown over, and by a combination in which the
+clerical influence, so much distrusted by them, was paramount.
+
+
+IV
+
+A new stage in the history of the Convention now opens. In the interval
+between the meeting which began by Redmond's withdrawal of his amendment
+and that of the following week, Sir Horace Plunkett went to London and
+laid the situation before the Prime Minister. Redmond had also written
+to Mr. Lloyd George stating that no progress could be made unless
+Government would declare its intentions as to legislation. The Chairman
+came back with the following letter in his pocket:
+
+     10 DOWNING STREET,
+
+     WHITEHALL, S.W. 1,
+
+     _January_ 21, 1918.
+
+     DEAR SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
+
+     In our conversation on Saturday you told me that the situation in
+     the Convention has now reached a very critical stage. The issues
+     are so grave that I feel the Convention should not come to a
+     definite break without the Government having an opportunity of full
+     consultation with the leaders of the different sections. If, and
+     when, therefore, a point is reached at which the Convention finds
+     that it can make no further progress towards an agreed settlement,
+     I would ask that representatives should be sent to confer with the
+     Cabinet. The Government are agreed and determined that a solution
+     must be found. But they are firmly convinced that the best hope of
+     a settlement lies within the Convention, and they are prepared to
+     do anything in their power to assist the Convention finally to
+     reach a basis of agreement which would enable a new Irish
+     Constitution to come into operation with the consent of all
+     parties.
+
+     Yours sincerely,
+
+     D. LLOYD GEORGE.
+
+Before acting on this, Sir Horace Plunkett allowed the debate to
+continue during two days. Since no movement towards agreement manifested
+itself, but only evidence of widespread and various divergence, he laid
+the Prime Minister's invitation before the Convention. There was
+considerable difference of opinion before a decision was reached for
+acceptance. Groups separated to select their representatives on the
+delegation.
+
+It was agreed in private conference that only one view should be
+presented from the Nationalist side, and that the view of what was at
+this point clearly the majority. Redmond, in agreeing to act as a
+delegate, agreed to set aside his own judgment and to press the claim
+for full fiscal responsibility--which, like other Nationalists, he
+regarded as in the abstract Ireland's right. But illness prevented him
+from attending when at last the delegates were received by the Prime
+Minister on February 13th.
+
+On the 5th he had asked a question in Parliament--the last he was to ask
+there. It concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of
+aircraft in Dublin--one of the things for which he was pressing in his
+ceaseless effort to bring Ireland some industrial advantage from the
+war. I saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the House,
+and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by Sinn Féiners, in
+which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the
+aerodromes near Dublin which he had helped to establish. But the main
+thing he had to say concerned the course of the Convention. Everything,
+in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but
+ruin and chaos.
+
+He spoke of his health. A bout of sickness which had prostrated him at
+Christmas in Dublin had left him uneasy. He was at the time, I thought,
+unduly alarmed about himself, and I believed that the continuance of
+this frame of mind was simply characteristic of a man who had very
+little experience of ill-health. I left him with profound compassion for
+his trouble of spirit, but without any serious apprehension for his
+state of body.
+
+The Convention reassembled on February 26th to consider the result of
+the delegation, which was summed up in a letter from Mr. Lloyd George.
+This well-known document begins with a definite pledge of action. On
+receiving the report of the Convention the Government would give it
+immediate attention and would "proceed with the least possible delay to
+submit legislative proposals to Parliament."--The date of this pledge
+was February 25, 1918.--Mr. Lloyd George pressed, however, for a
+settlement "in and through the Convention"; and he declared his
+conviction that "In view of previous attempts at settlement and of the
+deliberations of the Convention itself, the only hope of agreement lies
+in a solution which on the one side provides for the unity of Ireland by
+a single Legislature, with adequate safeguards for the interests of
+Ulster and of the Southern Unionists, and, on the other, secures the
+well-being of the Empire and the fundamental unity of the United
+Kingdom."
+
+Ireland's strong claim to some control of indirect taxation was
+admitted; but it was laid down that till two years after the war the
+fixation and collection of customs and excise should be left to the
+Imperial Parliament: and that at the end of the war a Royal Commission
+should report on Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenditure and
+should submit proposals as to the fiscal relations of the two countries.
+
+For the war period, Ireland was to contribute "an agreed proportion of
+the Imperial expenditure," but was to receive the full proceeds of Irish
+revenue from customs and excise, less the agreed contribution. The
+police and postal services were to be reserved also as war services.
+
+These provisions were laid down as essentials. A suggestion was made of
+an Ulster Committee within the Irish Parliament, having power to modify
+or veto measures, whether of legislation or administration, in their
+application to Ulster.
+
+Lastly, Government expressed their willingness to accept and finance
+the Convention's scheme for land purchase and to give a large grant for
+urban housing.
+
+The question now before the Convention was whether it should or should
+not accept this offer, which differed from the Midleton proposals in
+that it withheld the control of excise as well as of customs, and that
+it retained control of police and Post Office for the war period. It
+also adumbrated an Ulster Committee, which had been an unpopular
+suggestion when put forward in the presentation stages. On the other
+hand, it offered great material inducements in the proposed expenditure
+for land purchase and for housing. Some of the County Councillors who
+had been most vehement in their opposition to the Midleton compromise
+were now disposed to think this too good an offer to let go, but
+believed it could be obtained without their taking the responsibility of
+voting for it. It was necessary to point out that the Irish party could
+not lower a standard of national demand set up by the Nationalists in
+the Convention, and that if they did so they would be hooted out of
+existence.
+
+The main argument of those who advised against acceptance was that
+Ministers had pledged themselves to act in any case. Let them. We could
+best help by enunciating our own programme. Then they would know the
+real facts of the Irish situation. If a majority of the Convention
+accepted the proposals of the Prime Minister's letter, there was no
+pledge that the Bill would be on those lines. We needed to keep a
+bargaining margin in what we put forward. It was even suggested that the
+Government proposals would be more likely to attract support in Ireland
+if put forward as a generous offer from a largely Unionist Government
+than if published as a compromise to which Nationalists had
+condescended.
+
+Our reply was that the essential thing was to make a beginning with
+self-government, and that by refusing to accept the Government's offer,
+on which alone we could combine with an influential Unionist section, we
+gravely increased the difficulties in the way of carrying Home Rule. If,
+as we held, the main need was to unite Ireland, the last thing on which
+we should insist was the concession of complete financial powers. When
+the lack of those powers began to prove itself injurious to Ireland's
+material interests, Ireland would certainly become united in a demand
+for the concession of them; and the history of the British Empire since
+the loss of America showed that every such demand had been granted to a
+self-governing State.
+
+At this moment interest centred on the discussion in private councils of
+Nationalists. The debates in full Convention were animated, but somewhat
+unreal by comparison. Lord Midleton's motion had been dropped, by
+consent, for a series of resolutions tabled by Lord MacDonnell which
+were in substance an acceptance of Government's proposal.
+
+But neither in the private councils nor in the public debates had we
+Redmond's presence. His illness had grown serious; an operation was
+necessary; it passed over hopefully, and on Tuesday, March 5th, when the
+debate resumed, Mr. Clancy had a telegram saying that he was practically
+out of danger.
+
+It was plain in these days that we were nearing a most critical
+decision, and Nationalist opinion was profoundly uneasy. Many men were
+drifting back to Redmond's view, and recoiled from the prospect of
+dividing the Convention once more into its original component
+parts--Nationalists on the one side, Unionists on the other. It was
+proposed that on the Wednesday Nationalists should meet and, if
+possible, concert joint action; if not, determine definitely each to go
+our own ways; for a painful part of the situation was that all of us had
+been used to act together, and none now felt himself free of some
+obligation. This had to be cleared up When we came down to Trinity
+College that morning, the news met us that Redmond was dead.
+
+The Convention adjourned its work, although time pressed most seriously,
+till after the interment. Ireland is a country where a public man can
+always count on a good funeral. The body was brought to Kingstown, and
+thence by special train to Wexford, where he had expressed the wish to
+be laid, in the burying-place of his own people and in the town with
+which he had been most closely associated. Hundreds of men came from
+distant parts to mark their sorrow and respect: what remained of him was
+carried in long and imposing procession through the streets. Over the
+grave Mr. Dillon, who had been chosen to succeed him in the chair of the
+Irish party, spoke eloquent and fitting words. Some day, no doubt, a
+monument to his memory will be set up in the streets of Wexford, where
+his great uncle's statue stands, and where will be placed the memorial
+to his gallant brother, subscribed for from all parts of the kingdom and
+from all Irish regiments in the Army.
+
+But I say without hesitation that the first and most striking endeavour
+to put in lasting shape a tribute to John Redmond was made in the
+Convention, not by great men, but by the ordinary rank and file of Irish
+Nationalists, who went back from the graveside to the work which his
+death had interrupted.
+
+Those who had been inclined before to accept his advice--still standing
+on our minutes--were now more than ever determined to follow it. That
+advice was not to refuse the hand of friendship which offered itself
+from men who by alliance with us could take away from the Home Rule
+demand all sectarian character: who could bring for the first time a
+great and representative body of Irish landlord opinion and Irish
+Protestant opinion into line with the opinion of Irish tenants and Irish
+Catholics. In order to act upon this advice men needed to face a
+powerful combination of forces and much threatened unpopularity: they
+had to encounter the hostility of an able and vindictively conducted
+newspaper; they had to separate themselves politically from the united
+voice of their own hierarchy; they had to break away from the politician
+who for many years now had equalled Redmond in his influence in Ireland
+and surpassed him in popularity. All of them were representative of
+constituents, all were living among those whom they represented; not a
+man of them but knew he would worsen his personal and political position
+by what he did. Yet, for that is the true way to state it, they stood to
+their dead leader's policy.
+
+It needs not to follow out in any detail the steps by which we reached
+the end of our labours. In the upshot, the Ulster group of nineteen
+dissented from everything and joined in a report which renewed the
+demand for partition. The Primate and the Provost signed a separate note
+declaring that a Federal Scheme based on the Swiss or Canadian system
+offered the only solution which could avoid the alternative choice
+between the coercion of Ulster and the partition of Ireland. The
+remaining members, sixty-six in all, accepted one common scheme.[14]
+Their number included ten Southern Unionists, five Labour
+representatives (three of whom were Protestant artisans from Belfast),
+with Lords Granard, MacDonnell and Dunraven, Sir Bertram Windle and the
+representatives of the Dublin and Cork Chambers of Commerce.
+
+The scheme on which we concurred recommended the immediate establishment
+of self-government by an Irish Ministry responsible to a Parliament
+consisting of two Houses, composed on highly artificial lines. For a
+period of fifteen years Southern Unionists were to be represented by
+nominated members, while Ulster was to have extra members elected by
+special constituencies representing commercial and agricultural
+interests. The Parliament was to have full control of internal
+legislation, administration and direct taxation. The fixation of customs
+and excise was to be from Westminster, but the proceeds of these taxes
+to be paid into the Irish Exchequer. There was to be a contribution to
+the cost of Imperial defences, and representation at Westminster, but a
+representation of the Irish Parliament rather than of the
+constituencies. All of this was agreed to at our last meeting, and
+nothing could have been more pleasant than the atmosphere of good will
+which prevailed. But this was after a critical division--the most
+critical in which I have ever voted--in which those of us Nationalists
+who were for accepting the Government proposals voted with the Southern
+Unionists and those who were against with the Ulster group. The
+combination of Ulstermen and extreme Nationalists was thirty-four
+strong; those who adopted Redmond's policy and Lord Midleton's were
+thirty-eight. We had in our lobby sixteen of the Nationalist County and
+Urban Councillors; they had eleven.
+
+If that vote had gone otherwise, we were told plainly that the Southern
+Unionists would be no parties to the rest of the compromise. They were
+willing to recommend self-government only if the Convention recommended
+the reservation of customs to the Imperial Parliament. This point had
+become in their minds important even more as a symbol of the close union
+between the two kingdoms than by reason of the economic advantages which
+they attributed to it.
+
+Once the sticking-point was passed, the divided Nationalists recombined,
+and we were all at one in our mutual felicitations on the harmony which
+prevailed at the close. But as one of our rank and file said in my ear,
+"If we had not given the vote we did, where would be all this talk of
+harmony? And mind you now, it was not easy to give it."
+
+He was right, and within six months it cost him the chairmanship of his
+County Council. Others paid the same penalty, I am sure, without
+grudging it, for most of us were prouder of that action than of any
+other in our political lives. It may be well to set down the names of
+the local representatives and Labour men who voted as Redmond would have
+advised on that first crucial division.
+
+They were: W. Broderick, Youghal Urban Council; J.J. Coen, Westmeath
+County Council; D. Condren, Wicklow County Council; J. Dooly, Kings
+County County Council; Captain Doran, Louth County Council; T. Fallon,
+Leitrim County Council; J. Fitzgibbon, Roscommon County Council; Captain
+Gwynn, Irish Party; T. Halligan, Meath County Council; W. Kavanagh,
+Carlow County Council; J. McCarron, Labour; M. McDonogh, Galway Urban
+Council; J. McDonnell, Galway County Council; C. McKay, Labour; J.
+Murphy, Labour; J. O'Dowd, Sligo County Council; C.P. O'Neill, Pembroke
+Urban Council; Dr. O'Sullivan, Mayor of Waterford; T. Power, Waterford
+County Council; Sir S.B. Quin, Mayor of Limerick; D. Reilly, Cavan
+County Council; M. Slattery, Tipperary (S. Riding); H.T. Whitley,
+Labour.[15]
+
+In so far as we were led by anyone, Mr. Clancy, fulfilling in public
+what he had privately spoken, was our leader and spokesman.
+
+We were along with the Southern Unionists and our natural allies, Lords
+Granard and MacDonnell and Sir Bertram Windle. Archbishop Bernard and
+Dr. Mahaffy voted with us in that pinch, so that both the late Provost
+of Trinity and the present one did their part to secure an agreement.
+
+In the other list, the Archbishop of Armagh and the Moderator were
+grouped with the Archbishop of Cashel and the Bishops of Raphoe and Down
+and Connor; the Lord Mayor of Cork and Lord Mayor of Belfast were
+together; Mr. Devlin was with Mr. Barrie. This list represented no unity
+except a common refusal to agree to any compromise. Those who voted in
+it followed one or other of two trains of cogent reasoning; but the
+reasonings led to opposite conclusions. These men were beyond doubt as
+honest in their convictions as those who went the other way; but they
+took the easier course, whether they were Nationalist or Unionist: they
+swam with the tide.
+
+The troubles which Nationalists brought on themselves by supporting Lord
+Midleton were answered by the troubles which his group met for
+supporting Nationalist demands. The men who refused to make the
+compromise possible have the laugh of us. Neither section of us who
+voted for agreement achieved anything by facing the risk of
+unpopularity. We had followed Redmond's policy and we shared Redmond's
+fate. We had done our best to help the British Government and that
+Government itself defeated us.
+
+By the Prime Minister's letter Government was pledged to legislate for
+the better government of Ireland, not upon condition of our reaching
+substantial agreement, but in any event. Yet the letter emphasized the
+"urgent importance of getting a settlement in and through the
+Convention." We had secured a report for a scheme in which sixty-six out
+of eighty-seven concurred in the broad lines; and of the twenty-one
+dissentients, nineteen were a group sent to the assembly with a pledge
+which they construed as giving them a special position, in that no
+legislation affecting them was to be passed without their concurrence.
+The agreement which we had reached enabled the Government, when it
+undertook legislation, to quote Unionist authority on the one hand and
+Nationalist authority on the other for many wise provisions which
+otherwise a Coalition Ministry might have found it most difficult to
+propose.
+
+But no legislation followed. Once more an Irish issue became involved in
+the wheels of the English political machine.
+
+We have ourselves in part to thank for it. We might in January have
+taken Redmond's advice, and Lord Midleton's declared view that
+legislation would follow might have proved correct. Yet, what use are
+might-have-beens? History is concerned with what happened, and our work
+in the Convention dragged itself on till the great German offensive had
+been launched and the Allied line pushed back to the very gates of
+Paris, and Government was at its wits' end for men. It is hard to blame
+a Ministry for what harm was done in the frantic rush to cope with
+perhaps the most critical instant in all history; but what was done
+produced infinite mischief and no good result. Immediately after the
+Convention's report (signed upon April 8th) had been received,
+Government proposed to apply conscription to Ireland.
+
+It is said, and it is not difficult to believe, that without making this
+proposal they dare not have come upon the British people with so extreme
+demands for compulsory service as were made. But by making it Ministers
+tore up and scattered in fragments whatever results the Convention had
+to show for its labours, and by legislating for conscription in Ireland
+they gained not one man. The proposal, as Redmond had always told them,
+proved impossible to carry out.
+
+I do not believe that if Redmond had lived this would ever have
+happened. His record in the war gave him an authority in Parliament
+which no other Irishman could possibly claim. It would have been
+impossible for Mr. Lloyd George to take such a step without giving him
+notice; and once that notice came, Redmond could have insisted upon the
+significance of the report of the Convention's sub-committee on
+questions of defence. This committee consisted of two civilians and
+three soldiers. Lord Desart, a Unionist, was in the chair; Mr. Powell,
+K.C., a Unionist (afterwards Irish Solicitor-General and now a judge),
+was the other civilian; the soldiers were the Duke of Abercorn, an
+Ulster Covenanter, with Captain Doran and myself, Nationalists from the
+Sixteenth Division. We found unanimously that if an Irish Parliament
+existed, whatever might be the claims of the Imperial authority, it
+would be impracticable to impose conscription without the Irish
+Parliament's consent. This unanimous finding was bound to influence the
+view of any Ministry, no matter how hard pressed. But, as debate
+revealed, Mr. Lloyd George had never heard of it.
+
+I believe that Redmond could have persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to adopt in
+April the course on which--but after the harm was done--he fell back in
+June, when Lord French asked for a large, but limited, number of
+recruits to refill the Irish Divisions within a specified time--at the
+end of which time, failing the production of the volunteers, other
+measures must be taken. Here, however, we are back in the region of
+speculation. Conscription was proposed and anarchy let loose in Ireland.
+Redmond's words, "Better for us never to have met than to have met and
+failed," stand as the final sentence on this notable episode in Irish
+history.
+
+That is the Convention's epitaph as, I think, he would have written it.
+How shall we write his own?
+
+No attempt has been made in this book, and none shall be made, to
+represent him as a hero. But there are certain attributes which malice
+itself can scarcely deny him. All his ideals were generous. His love of
+country, the master-motive in his life, had nothing in it exclusive or
+tribal or partisan. His was a policy forward-looking and constructive;
+without narrowness or jealousy, it aimed to bring the destinies of
+Ireland into the hands of Irishmen, not greatly caring what Irishmen
+they were--indeed, if they were in a real measure responsible to
+Ireland, not caring at all. In this spirit he grasped masterfully at the
+chance which the war offered; in this spirit, he went out to meet his
+fellow-countrymen in the Irish Convention.
+
+And not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous. His love of
+Ireland was free from all attendant hates. His resentment was never on
+private grounds, and it was without rancour. He spent his whole life in
+opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after
+thirty years spent in criticism. His experience of political life and of
+English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his
+instinct was always to perceive the best in men. The friend who knew him
+best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and
+long ago, said this of him: "He was always an optimist." The speaker did
+not mean--he could not have meant--that in those last months Redmond was
+sanguine. He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where
+suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives
+and with his own love of Ireland.
+
+If he went wrong at any time, he went wrong by too generous a judgment
+of other men, too open-handed a policy. Perhaps, too, he may have
+erred--it was his characteristic defect--in not pressing his policy upon
+others with more vehemence. He had not the temperament which, when once
+possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and
+spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into
+effect. There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the
+ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he
+had none--none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during
+which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely
+devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always
+underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer,
+more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more
+for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more
+love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch
+with the mass of his following.
+
+The way of life to which he was committed was in its essence distasteful
+to him. I do not believe that history shows an example of a statesman
+who served his country more absolutely from a sense of duty.
+
+All this might be admitted without conceding greatness to him. But he
+was a great man, unlike others, cast in a mould of his own. Without the
+least affectation of unconventionality, and indeed under a formal
+appearance, he was profoundly unconventional. His tastes, whether in
+literature, in art, in the choice of society, in the choice of his way
+of life, were utterly his own, unaffected by any standard but that which
+he himself established. Without subtlety of interpretation, his
+judgments cut deep into the heart of things. You could not hear him
+speak, could not be in his presence, without feeling the weight of his
+personality.
+
+A statesman, if ever there was one, he was never given the opportunity
+of proving himself in administration; he can be judged only by his gifts
+in counsel and by his power of guiding action. As a counsellor, he was
+supreme. He had that faculty for anticipating the future, that broad,
+far-reaching vision of the chain of events which can proceed only from
+long, deep and constant thought, and which is truly admirable when
+united, as it was in him, to a sovereign contempt for this or that
+momentary outcry. In these qualities of insight and foresight I have
+only seen one man approach him, the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
+to whose credit stands the greatest work of Imperial reconciliation
+accomplished in our day. But Redmond had supremely what the wise old
+Scotsman lacked--the gift of persuasive speech, to win acceptance for
+his wisdom and his vision.
+
+He could persuade, but he could not compel. His was not the magnetism
+which constrains allegiance almost in despite of reason--the power which
+was possessed by his first and only leader, Parnell. Redmond's appeal
+was to men's judgment and convictions, not to those instincts which lie
+deepest and most potent in the heart of man. That was the limitation to
+his greatness. He could lead only by convincing men that he was right.
+
+If in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed
+to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in
+his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but
+by those who desired the same end. Yet admit that he failed and that he
+fell from power. No man holds power for ever, and during seventeen
+continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far
+more than all the personal ascendancy of a Prime Minister in one of the
+oversea Dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which
+control of administration and patronage bestows. He left his people
+improved in their material circumstances to an almost incredible degree,
+as compared with their state when he began his work.
+
+Yet Ireland counts his life a failure, and he most assuredly accepted
+that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for
+Ireland's, because he had not won through to the goal. His action upon
+the war was his life's supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it
+had failed to achieve its end. By that action let us judge him, for all
+else is trivial in comparison beside it.
+
+It is said by his critics that he bargained badly. If reply were made
+that he believed the Allied cause to be right and desired to lead his
+country according to his conception of justice, we should be answered
+that he was in charge of his country's interests, not of her morals; and
+he would have admitted an element of truth in this. Yet, as in the Boer
+War he had led his countrymen to support what he conceived to be the
+right cause, even with certain injury to their own, so now assuredly he
+would not have acted as he did, had he not been convinced that Ireland's
+honour was to be served as well as her advantage.
+
+But when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had
+to bargain with. No one in August 1914 anticipated the course of the
+war. No one foresaw the need for the last man available. It was more
+than a year before Great Britain could even equip the men who pressed
+themselves forward for service. All that he really had in his hand to
+give or to withhold was the value of Ireland's moral support. Could he
+by waiting his time have made a better bargain?
+
+When that critical hour came, Redmond knew in his, bones the weight of
+Ireland's history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly
+tend to assert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong
+counter-emotion. He knew that if Ireland said nothing and did nothing at
+the crisis, things would be said of Ireland which would rapidly engender
+rising passion; and with the growth of that passion all possibility, not
+of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries
+would be gone. In plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only
+chance for action would have been in heading an Ireland hostile to
+England. In this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset,
+he could only have done this by denying all that he believed. But apart
+from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be
+served. Ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of.
+How could he hope for an Ulster united to Ireland, if Ulster were
+divided from Ireland on the war?
+
+Everything depended on an instant and almost desperate move. He might
+have left the sole offer of service from Ireland to lie with Sir Edward
+Carson. What he did actually was to offer instantly all that the
+Ulstermen had offered, and more, for he proposed active union in Ireland
+itself. It was a bold stroke, but it was guided by an ideal perpetually
+present with him--the essential unity of Ireland. To set Irishmen
+working together at such a crisis in the common name of Ireland was an
+object for which he was willing to jeopardize the whole organization
+which stood behind him, at a moment when he could speak of full right
+for three-fourths of his countrymen. And, when he is called a failure,
+let it be remembered that in this he did not fail.
+
+This fight is not yet ended, the long battle is not lost. Had Ireland
+from the first stood aloof, had she been drawn at the war's opening into
+the temper which she displayed in its closing stages, then indeed we
+might despair of any hopeful issue, any genuine peace between these two
+neighbouring islands, and, what matters infinitely more, between the
+strong yet divergent strains that make up Ireland itself.
+
+But as the mists of passion clear and deeds rather than words come into
+sharp light, it will be seen and realized that for a thousand Irishmen
+who risked their lives to defeat Redmond's effort there were fifty
+thousand who at his summons took on themselves far greater hardships and
+faced dangers far more terrible. By them we take our stand--we who
+followed Redmond, who believed and still believe in his wisdom. We wish
+no word of his last years unspoken, no act undone by that great and
+generous-hearted Irishman in the supreme period of his life. In his
+defeat and ours, we accept no defeat; we shall endeavour to keep our
+will set, as his was, for a final triumph which can mean humiliation for
+no Irish heart. Tangled as are the threads of all his policy, he leaves
+the task far nearer to accomplishment than he found it; and if in the
+end freedom and prosperity come to a united Ireland, they will be found
+to proceed--however deeply overlaid by years and by events may be the
+chain of causation--from the action which John Redmond took in August
+1914, and upon which his brother, with a legion like him, set the seal
+of his blood.
+
+To have served long and faithfully without reward--to have given all of
+life to one high purpose--to have faced a great crisis greatly--these
+are claims enough for Redmond that the allegiance of his comrades and
+followers may be justified when it is judged. The grave has closed over
+him, and the rest is for us to do, that a coping-stone may be set on his
+life's labours, and that reparation final and conclusive, for what he
+suffered undeservedly, may yet be offered to the dead.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 10: When ultimately we did meet, these were the elements which
+assembled.]
+
+[Footnote 11: His notes here are only references to quotations. I
+supplement on this page by my own notes.--S.G.]
+
+[Footnote 12: He was knighted for his work in connection with the war.]
+
+[Footnote 13: These are my notes, jotted as he spoke.--S.G.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Subject to the publication of a Report signed by Bishop
+O'Donnell, and these in agreement with him reaffirmed their view.]
+
+[Footnote 15: The following, though unavoidably absent at the critical
+moment, joined with us: M.K. Barry, Cork County Council; J. Butler,
+Kilkenny County Council; Patrick Dempsey, Belfast; M. Governey, Carlow
+Urban Council; M.J. Minch, Kildare County Council.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Agar-Robartes, Mr., 68-69
+Ancient Order of Hibernians, 259
+Army--
+  Irish Brigades raised for the War--
+    Sixteenth Division,
+      staffing of, 174, 187-188;
+      development of opinions in, 188;
+      10th Division made up from, 194-195;
+      proceeds to France, 200-201;
+      in action, 230, 241;
+      Messines, 264-265;
+      Ypres, 306
+    Tenth Division, 195
+    Tyneside Battalions, 190
+    Ulster Division, 201;
+      on the Somme, 240;
+      Messines, 264-265;
+      Ypres, 306
+  Irish Nationalist attitude to, 140-141
+  Irish recruiting--
+    Redmond's efforts, 154-155, 158, 176-179, 185, 191-192, 199, 202,
+                       207, 211;
+    efforts handicapped by Government, 163, 175-6, 177, 190-191, 206;
+    letter to Birrell, 160;
+    Sinn Féin propaganda against, 219
+  Irish Regulars' achievements, 150;
+    in Gallipoli, 195 ff.
+  Ulster sympathies of, 83, 99, 104 ff.;
+    the Curragh incident, 105-109
+Ashe, Thomas, 300-2
+Asquith, H.H.,
+  struggle of, with House of Lords, 43-46, 50;
+  on indivisibility of Ireland, 69, 72;
+  Ladybank speech, (Oct., 1913), 85
+  War Minister, 109
+  response to Redmond's National Defence offer, 138, 143
+  on Ulster preparations for resisting Home Rule, 148
+  fails Redmond, 153, 167
+  recruiting speech in Dublin, 155-157
+  the Coalition, 192
+  Redmond's letter to, against conscription, 208-209
+  the Rebellion, 226
+  reports on his visit to Ireland, 232
+  breaks faith with Redmond, 239-240
+  displaced, 244
+  estimate of, 87, 93
+  mentioned, 30, 34, 41, 73, 138, 139
+Aughavanagh, 37-39, 267
+
+
+Balfour, A.J., 55-56
+Balfour, G., 23
+Barrie, Mr., 271, 304, 308, 321
+Beatty, Admiral, 158
+Bernard, Dr., Abp. of Dublin, 272, 310, 318
+  three points of, 291 ff.
+Biggar, Joseph, 6
+Birrell, A., Redmond's letter to, on the Volunteers, 160
+  on Kitchener's attitude to Irish National Volunteers, 162
+  _Appreciation_ of Redmond quoted, 162, 184
+  the Rebellion, 219-220
+  mentioned, 31, 69, 139, 198
+Blake, E., 24
+Brade, Sir R., 203
+Budget of 1909-10, 42, 47
+Butler, Sir W., 5
+Butt, Isaac, 6
+
+Campbell, Sir James, 219
+Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 34, 337
+Carson, Sir E.,
+  the Covenant demonstrations, 72;
+  moves exclusion of Ulster, 75;
+  on Ulster and the Army, 105;
+  on possibility of persuading Ulster, 114;
+  the Speaker's Conference, 121;
+  attitude to Home Rule enactment, 148-149;
+  joins the Coalition, 192-193;
+  interpretation of exclusion proposals, 234;
+  refuses joint platform at Newry, 200;
+  kills Volunteer Bill, 208;
+  on conscription for Ireland, 210, 211;
+  final victory against Redmond, 240;
+  temperamental attitude to Home Rule, 96-97;
+  quoted, 67, 71, 80-81, 83, 100;
+  appeal on Ulster's claim, 97-98;
+  mentioned, 89, 229, 260, 263
+Casement, Sir Roger, 116, 221, 223;
+  quoted, 115, 118
+Castletown, Lord, 24
+Cecil, Lord Hugh, 50
+Cecil, Lord Robert, 115
+Chamberlain, Austen, 102
+Churchill, Winston,
+  Belfast speech of (1912), 62, 67;
+  devolution proposal, 71;
+  Bradford speech (1914), 103-104;
+  the Larne gun-running, 113;
+  mentioned, 77, 84
+Citizen Army, the, 180, 183;
+  the Rebellion, 218
+Clark, Sir George, 271-272
+Clarke, ----, execution of, 224
+Clancy, J.J., 269, 318, 332
+Coalition formed, 192-193
+Coercion, 8-9, 16, 82
+Colthurst, Capt., 228, 231
+Commons, House of,
+  Parnell's obstruction in, 6 ff.;
+  payment of members, 52;
+  scene after passing Home Rule Bill, 152;
+  disgust of, at Redmond's defeat, 240;
+  Redmond's estimate of, 12;
+  his familiarity with, 111
+Congested Districts Board, 28
+Connolly, James, 183;
+  the Rebellion, 218, 224
+Conscription,
+  Redmond's opposition to, 208 ff., 242, 247-248;
+  application of, to Ireland, 334
+Convention, _see_ Irish Convention
+Craig, Capt., 51, 70, 105;
+  quoted, 95
+Crooks, Will, 152
+Crozier, Dr., Abp. of Armagh, 198, 272, 279, 300, 302, 310, 330
+Curragh incident, 105-109
+Curzon, Col., 187
+
+Dalton, Miss (Mrs. John Redmond), 14, 20
+Davitt, Michael, 8, 19
+Davitt (young), 116
+de Robeck, Admiral, despatch of, 195-196
+de Valera, E., 268, 269
+Desart, Lord, 273, 318
+Devlin, J.,
+  in Redmond's "inner cabinet," 25, 36;
+  his supporters' disappointment on compromise, 109;
+  recruiting successes of, 177, 179;
+  indispensable in Ireland, 183;
+  carries Belfast Convention for exclusion proposals, 235;
+  on the Irish Convention, 269, 304, 310, 322;
+  estimate of, 21;
+  Redmond's estimate of, 235;
+  mentioned, 48, 84, 155, 263
+Devolution, 28, 71
+Dillon, John,
+  relations with Redmond, 25, 36;
+  on coercion, 82;
+  an Irish Volunteer movement, 115;
+  speech on suppression of the Rebellion, 231;
+  declines to serve on the Irish Convention, 269;
+  mentioned, 16, 100, 109, 121, 129, 155
+Doran, Capt., 274-275
+Doyle, Sir A. Conan, cited, 131-132
+Dublin strike (1913), 90, 273
+Duke, Sir. H.E., 240, 275
+Dunraven, Lord, 27, 28, 77;
+  on the Convention, 273, 282, 317-318, 330
+
+
+Ewart, Sir S., 108
+
+
+Field, William, 24
+Financial Relations Commission, 24, 75
+Fingall, Lord, 174
+Forster, W.E., 79
+Franchise Bill (1917), 302, 304-305, 311
+French, Sir John, 107, 108
+Friend, General, 198
+
+
+Gallipoli, Irish troops in, 195 ff.
+General Elections--
+  1906, 43
+  1910 (Jan.), 43-44
+  1910 (Dec.), 49
+  1918, 231
+George V, King, 121
+George, D. Lloyd,
+  non-Irish preoccupations of, 41-42;
+  Conciliation mission after the Rebellion, 232;
+  agreement with the Irish, 234;
+  agreement thrown over, 239;
+  Redmond's hopes from, as Premier, 244-245;
+  on Irish distrust, 246;
+  supports the "two nations" theory, 255;
+  the Convention, 260;
+  letter to Plunkett, 324;
+  conference with Convention representatives, 325;
+  proposals to the Convention, 326 ff.;
+  quoted on Ulster, 73
+Gladstone, W.E., 11, 17, 42, 130, 317;
+  breach with Parnell, 18-19;
+  retirement, 23
+Gladstone, W.G.C., 66
+Gough, Gen., quoted, 105 ff.
+Government, delays of, 185, 236-237, 244, 247;
+  general attitude to Redmond, _see under_ Redmond
+Granard, Lord, 273, 282
+Grey, Earl, 78
+Grey, Lord (Sir Edward), Ulster proposals of, 85, 86;
+  speech on outbreak of War, 128-130;
+  quoted, 66;
+  mentioned, 30, 108
+
+
+Harbison, Mr., 270
+Harty, Abp. of Cashel, 270
+Hayden, Mr., 38, 130-131
+Hazleton, Mr., 14
+Healy, T.M., returned for Wexford, 7-8;
+  attacks on Redmond and Nationalist Party, 34, 273;
+  opposition to county option, 100, 111-112;
+  declines to serve on Convention, 269;
+  quoted, 256;
+  mentioned, 15, 16, 47, 49
+Hickie, Maj.-Gen, W.B., 201, 265
+Hulk, Maj.-Gen., 268
+Hobson, Bulmer, quoted, 115,159
+Home Rule Bill (1912), demonstrations for and against, 62;
+  National Convention, 65, 66;
+  Ulster's attitude, 65, 67 ff.;
+  exclusion proposals, 68, 78, 84, 99;
+  devolution proposals, 71;
+  Unionist converts, 73;
+  in Committee, 68, 74;
+  financial arrangements under, 74-75;
+  Report stage, 75;
+  Third Reading, 77;
+  in the Lords, 77 ff.;
+  third Introduction (1914), 99;
+  inadequate private discussion of, by Irish Party, 100-101;
+  the Amending Bill, 121, 126;
+  the Speaker's Conference, 121 ff.;
+  amending Bill postponed, 126;
+  operation of, to be deferred, 148-149;
+  Royal assent, 151;
+  Asquith's move towards securing immediate operation of,
+                               after the Rebellion, 232;
+  O'Connor's demand for, 249
+Hopwood, Sir Francis, 275
+
+
+Industrial depression in Ireland under the War, 184
+_Irish at the Front, The_, quoted, 201
+Irish Brigades, _see under_ Army
+Irish Convention--
+  Committee of Nine, 304, 307, 310
+  Financial considerations, 285, 286, 293-295, 307, 309;
+    Lord Midleton's proposals, 312-323;
+    Lloyd George's proposals, 326-332
+  First meeting of, 271
+  Fraternization between representatives, 286-287
+  Grand Committee of Twenty, 301, 303, 307, 311
+  Inception of, 258, 260
+  Intermediate Authority proposal, 285-286
+  Land Purchase Sub-Committee, 304, 317
+  Personnel of, 271 ff.
+  Preliminaries, 269
+  Procedure adopted, 280
+  Reports presented by, 330
+  Sinn Féin attitude to, 263-264, 267-268
+  Spirit of, 279-280
+  Ulster representatives, attitude of, 321;
+    attitude to Redmond, 323;
+    Report presented by, 330
+Irish Council Bill (1907), 31 ff., 78
+_Irish Independent_, 273, 330
+Irish Party, discipline of, 12-13;
+  personnel of, 59;
+  Redmond's relations with, 59-61
+Irish relations with England most cordial (1916), 213
+Irish suspicion, 189-90
+Irish Volunteers, Redmond's policy repudiated by, 155-156;
+  collisions with National Volunteers, 180;
+  Rebellion of 1916, 218 ff.
+  (_See also_ National Volunteers)
+
+
+Jameson, Andrew, 271, 298
+Judge, M.J., cited, 132
+
+
+Kavanagh, W.M., 274, 318
+Kelley, Dr., Bp. of Ross, 270, 293, 310, 323
+Kenny, Dr., 38
+Ker, S.P., quoted, 202
+Kettle, Prof., T.M., 14, 93;
+  recruiting work of, 186;
+  killed in action, 241;
+  estimate of, 185
+Kitchener, Earl,
+  attitude of, to Irish Volunteers, 138-140, 153, 160, 162, 175, 181;
+  Redmond's interview with, on recruiting, 198-199, 205;
+  letter on Irish recruiting, 199;
+  estimate of, 138
+Knight, Mr., 294-295
+
+
+Labour Party, 44, 87, 108
+Land Act (1909), 41
+Land League, 8
+Land Purchase, 17, 27-28
+Lang, Dr., Abp. of York, on Ulster, 78-80
+Lansdowne, Marquis of, 29, 236, 238
+Larkin, James, 90, 183, 273
+Larne Gun-running, 112-114
+Law, A. Bonar,
+  speeches of, on Ulster, 65, 70;
+  Ulster policy, 77, 83, 87, 99, 163;
+  protest against enactment of Home Rule, 149;
+  quoted on Major Willie Redmond, 245;
+  estimate of, 56;
+  mentioned, 132, 178
+Liberal Party, 13, 29
+Lincolnshire, Marquis of,
+  Volunteer Bill of, 205, 208
+Liquor trade in Ireland, 42
+Local Government Act (1897), 24
+Long, W., quoted, 216
+Longford Election, 257, 259
+Lonsdale, Sir John, 263
+Lords, House of,
+  Veto controversy, 42 ff., 50, 52, 57;
+  Conference, 48
+Loreburn, Lord, 84
+Lynch, Arthur, 129
+Lysaght, Edward, 273, 282, 296, 301-302
+
+
+McCarthy, Justin, 13;
+  quoted, 26
+McCullagh, Sir C., 284
+MacDermott, Dr., 272
+MacDonagh, 201;
+  the Rebellion, 218, 224
+MacDonnell, Sir Anthony,
+  devolution scheme of, 28-29;
+  supports Home Rule Bill, 78;
+  in the Convention, 273, 282, 310, 317
+McDowell, Sir Alexander, 272, 303-304, 307-308
+MacNeill, Prof.,
+  promotes Nationalist arming, 93;
+  volunteer following of, 180;
+  the Rebellion, 219;
+  cited, 164, 180-181;
+  mentioned, 64, 116
+MacRory, Dr., Bp. of Down and Connor, 270
+MacSweeney, Capt., 153
+Mahaffy, Dr., Provost of Trinity, 272, 330
+Maxwell, Sir John, 225-226
+Meath, Lord, 158, 169
+Midleton, Lord, 271, 273, 285, 296, 304, 308;
+  Customs proposals, 310 ff.
+Mooney, J.J., 21, 38
+Moore, Lt.-Col. M., 159-160, 203
+Murphy, W.M., 273, 282, 295, 304, 315, 317
+
+
+Nathan, Sir M., 220
+National Volunteers,
+  establishment of, 91-92, 94-95, 99;
+  Redmond's adhesion to, 114;
+  formidable character of, 114-115;
+  committee difficulties, 117 ff.;
+  Bachelor's Walk affair, 123-125;
+  Redmond's offer of, for National Defence, 134 ff., 203 ff.;
+  general response, 136-138;
+  demand for recognition, 153, 159-161, 202-203;
+  refused, 153, 162, 167, 181, 203, 207-208, 222;
+  secession of Irish Volunteers from, 155;
+  Asquith's pledge regarding, 157;
+  Review of, in Phoenix Park, 204;
+  Bulmer Hobson's _History_ of, quoted, 115, 159
+O'Brien, Patrick, 38, 267
+O'Brien, William, attacks by,
+  on Redmond and National Party, 34;
+  opposition to Budget (1909), 42, 47;
+  to Home Rule Bill (1912), 74;
+  to county option, 100, 111-112;
+  to the Convention, 263;
+  declines to serve, 269
+O'Cathasaigh, Mr., cited, 91
+O'Connor, "Long John," 38
+O'Connor, T.P.,
+  Canadian tour 1910, 48;
+  recruiting successes of, 190;
+  motion for immediate Horns Rule, 249;
+  cited, 203;
+  mentioned, 25, 100, 130-131
+O'Donnell, Dr., Bp. of Raphoe, 270, 284, 294, 303, 304,
+  308, 310, 312, 330;
+  speech on Papal Decrees, 299-300
+Oranmore, Lord, 313, 319
+
+
+Paget, Gen. Sir Arthur, 105ff.
+Parliament, _see_ Commons _and_ Lords
+Parnell, C.S., 6-13, 17-19, 92;
+  property of, 7, 37;
+  power of, 58;
+  anecdote of Willie Redmond and House of Commons, 249
+Parnellites, 19-21, 23-25;
+  fusion of, with anti-Parnellites, 25
+Parsons, Lt.-Gen. Sir L., 170ff., 200-201, 204-205
+Pearse, Patrick, speech of, in Dublin, 63-64;
+  Limerick speech, quoted, 94;
+  secedes from National Volunteers, 118;
+  the Rebellion, 218, 222-223;
+  execution, 224
+_Phoenix_ Park murders, 14
+Pigott, 18
+Pirrie, Lord, 293
+Plunket, Count, 248
+Plunkett, Lord (Sir Horace),
+  Conference scheme of (1895), 23;
+  the Convention, 274, 302, 309;
+  as Chairman, 279;
+  Lloyd George's letter to, 324
+Poe, Col. Sir Hutcheson, 145
+Pollock, Mr., 272, 299, 308
+Primate, the, _see_ Crozier
+Primrose, Neil, 68-69
+Primrose Committee, 270, 293-294
+Protestant Ascendency, 86, 96, 101
+
+
+Raymond Le Gros, 2-3
+Rebellion, Redmond's attitude to, 3
+Rebellion of 1916, 218-219, 221, 227;
+  denounced by Redmond, 223-224;
+  suppression of, 224-229;
+  Government's fomentation of _disaffection_, 227-229;
+  comparison with South African Rebellion (1914), 225
+Recruiting, _see under_ Army
+Redmond, John Edward, 4
+Redmond, John--
+  Ancestry and family of, 2-4
+  Career--
+    education, 5;
+    clerkship in the House, 6;
+    returned for New Ross, 8;
+    Parliamentary _debut_, 9-11;
+    Australian and American mission, 14;
+    marriage, 14;
+    second American mission, 17;
+    imprisoned (1888), 17;
+    chosen leader of Parnellites, 19;
+    returned for Waterford, 19;
+    attitude to Roman Catholic Church, 20:
+    widowed, 20;
+    second marriage, 21-22;
+    work with Plunkett, 23-24;
+    on Commission on Financial Relations, 24;
+    Chairman of United Irish Party, 25, 58;
+    his inner cabinet, 25, 58, 100;
+    attitude to Irish Council Bill, 31-33;
+    campaign for Home Rule (1907), 34-35;
+    House of Lords controversy, 45-46, 57;
+    "Dollar Dictator," 48;
+    the Nottingham Meeting (1912), 73;
+    Home Rule campaign (1912) following Carson, 84;
+    on proposed exclusion of Ulster, 85-86;
+    attitude to National Volunteers, 92;
+    speeches on the Ulster position, 98, 99, 102, 109-111;
+    the Ulster gun-running, 114;
+    relations with National Volunteers thereafter, 114 ff.;
+    the Speaker's Conference, 121-122;
+    speech on outbreak of War, 132 ff.;
+    offers the Volunteers for national defence, 134ff;
+    Recruiting manifesto, 151;
+    refuses office in Coalition Government, 192;
+    interview with Kitchener on recruiting, 198, 205;
+    Conference at Viceregal Lodge, 198-199;
+    visits Irish troops at the Front, 201-202;
+    opposes Conscription for Ireland, 208 ff.
+    letter to Asquith, 208
+    Rebellion of 1916, 219 ff.
+    Government breach of faith, 238-240;
+    moves vote of censure, 243;
+    criticizes Lloyd George, 245;
+    renewed opposition to conscription, 248;
+    the Smuts dinner, 257;
+    the Convention, 258, 261-263;
+    death of his brother, 256;
+    death of Pat O'Brien, 267;
+    in the Convention, 278-279;
+    relations with Nationalist representatives, 283-284;
+    speech in Belfast, 289 ff.;
+    at Westminster, 304;
+    speech on vote of thanks to the Forces, 305-306;
+    Meetings of Committee of Nine, 307 ff.;
+    ill-health, 257, 282, 312, 322;
+    attitude to Lord Midleton's proposals, 316, 318-321;
+    tables motion conditionally accepting, 321;
+    withdraws owing to Nationalist opposition, 322-323;
+    illness, 325;
+    operation, 328;
+    death, 329
+  Characteristics--
+    Ambition, lack of, 40, 336
+    Caution, 282
+    Courtesy, 26, 35
+    Eloquence, 41, 88
+    Lucidity, 41, 53, 59
+    Moderation, 3, 11
+    Modesty, 36, 336
+    Optimism, 74
+    Peaceable temperament and tolerance, 21, 25, 26, 35, 88
+    Rest, love of, 38
+    Reticence, 37
+    Romantic strain, 37
+    Self-abnegation, 278, 280
+    Sensitiveness, 243, 282
+    Tact, 88
+    Trustworthiness, 194
+  Comparison of,
+    with Campbell-Bannerman, 337;
+    with Parnell, 338;
+    position compared, with that of Botha, 158, 172, 184, 212, 224
+  Estimate of, 335;
+    Birrell's estimate, 194;
+    Healy's tribute, 256;
+    estimate as leader, 59-61, 283, 310, 338;
+    estimate of his work, 338-341
+  Government slighting of, and disregard of his advice, 153, 163, 167,
+                           175-176, 190-191, 220, 226, 229, 238-239;
+    instances of bad faith, 153, 239-240, 246;
+    recruiting efforts handicapped, 163, 175-176, 177, 190-191, 206
+  House of Commons life of, 111
+  Imperialism of, 15
+  Irishmen, attitude towards, 27, 63
+  Military sympathies of, 107-108
+  Oratorical style of, 5
+  Recruiting efforts of, _see under_ Army
+  Status of, in Ireland, 171-172
+  Social isolation of, 13
+  Stephens' attack on, 276-277
+  War policy of, 132, 216
+Redmond, Major "Willie,"
+  Australian mission and marriage, 14;
+  imprisoned (1888), 17;
+  returned for East Clare, 20;
+  War service, 182-3, 185, 213-214, 230;
+  position in his regiment, 188-189;
+  speeches in the House quoted, 215-216, 245;
+  advises resignation of Parliamentary party, 259;
+  last speech in the House, 249-254;
+  killed in action, 51, 265;
+  estimate of, 249;
+  mentioned, 4, 13, 19, 38, 118, 128
+Redmond, Major William Archer, 4, 185;
+  on the Somme, 240;
+  wins D.S.O., 306;
+  returned as Nationalist in 1918 election, 231
+Redmond, William Archer, 4, 5, 7
+Richardson, Gen., 163
+Roberts, Lord, 176
+Roman Catholic Church, 49, 187
+Russell, George ("A.E."),
+  in the Convention, 274, 282, 304, 310, 312
+
+
+Sclater, Sir Henry, 204-205
+Selborne, Lord, 236
+Seely, Col., 108-109
+Sexton, Th., 16, 24
+Shaw, Mr., 6
+Sheehy-Skeffington, Mr., 228, 231
+Sinn Féin--
+  Convention ignored by, 263-264, 267-268
+  Demonstration by, at funeral of Thomas Ashe, 300
+  Electoral successes of, 231, 257, 268, 278
+  Growth of, from May 1916, 232
+  Propaganda, suspicion fostered by, 189
+  Rebellion of 1916, _see that heading_
+Smith, F.E., quoted, 95
+South African War, 24
+Stephens, James, quoted, 276-277
+
+
+Taylor, Capt., J.S., 27
+Tennant, H.J., 198, 206
+Thomas, J.H., 108
+_Times_ forgeries, 18
+
+
+Ulster--
+  Administrative autonomy proposal, 85, 86
+  Arms importation by, 81, 94;
+  Larne gun-running, 112-114
+  Asquith's moratorium concession to, 149
+  Belfast Convention (1916), 235
+  Churchill's speech (1912), 62
+  Convention, the (1917), representatives at, 271-272, 285;
+    their attitude and procedure, 281, 299
+  County option proposals, 77, 85, 99 ff.;
+    difficulties of the scheme, 101
+  Covenant, the, 72;
+    military covenanters, 83
+  Exclusion proposals, 68, 78, 84, 233-234;
+    embodied in the Bill, 99;
+    time limit discussions, 101-103;
+    Council of 1916 accepts exclusion proposals, 235
+  Favouritism applied to, 95, 120, 123, 125, 164, 169, 170, 174
+  Friendly relations with Nationalists, 51
+  Home Rule, resistance to, 65, 67 ff.;
+    Parliamentary majority for, 77;
+    distribution of Home Rulers, 101
+  Inseparability of, 69, 76-77, 84
+  Lloyd George's scheme, 234
+  Protestant ascendency, 86, 96, 101
+  Provisional Government formed, 80, 83
+Rebellion preparations of, 148
+  Redmond's efforts to conciliate, 76-77, 109-110, 114
+  War, attitude on outbreak of, 130
+    mistrustful of Irish Volunteers, 142
+United Irish League, 58, 259, 261
+University Act (1908), 41
+
+
+Vatican Decrees, 49
+
+
+Wallace, Col., 299
+Walsh, Abp., 257
+War--
+  Outbreak, 126 ff.
+  Redmond's policy regarding, 132, 216;
+    Nationalist criticism of, 276-277 (_see also_ Army, recruiting)
+  Ulster's attitude, 130, 142
+Ward, Col. John, 108
+Waterford, 19
+Wexford, 3
+_What the Irish Regiments have done_ quoted, 202
+White, Capt., J.R., 90-91
+Whitley, H.T., 320
+Wicklow surroundings, 37-39
+Wimborne, Lord, 198, 199, 205
+Windle, Sir B., 282, 330
+Wyndham, G., 27-29
+
+
+
+
+              Shall a man understand,
+    He shall know bitterness because his kind,
+    Being perplexed of mind,
+    Hold issues even that are nothing mated.
+    And he shall give
+    Counsel out of his wisdom that none shall hear
+    And steadfast in vain persuasion must he live,
+    And unabated
+    Shall his temptation be.
+
+    JOHN DRINKWATER, in _Abraham Lincoln_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's John Redmond's Last Years, by Stephen Gwynn
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Redmond's Last Years, by Stephen Gwynn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: John Redmond's Last Years
+
+Author: Stephen Gwynn
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2004 [EBook #14374]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
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+
+
+<h1>JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS</h1>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>STEPHEN GWYNN</h2>
+<br />
+
+<h5>LONDON</h5>
+
+<h5>EDWARD ARNOLD</h5>
+
+<h5>1919</h5>
+
+<h6>[All rights reserved]</h6>
+
+<br />
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<br />
+<a name="Frontispiece"></a>
+<center>
+<img src="images/image01.png" width="408" height="572" alt="Frontispiece: John Redmond" title="" />
+</center>
+
+<h4><i>John Redmond, 1918.</i></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Aged 61.</i></h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+<br />
+
+<p>In writing this book, I have had access to my late leader's papers for
+the period beginning with the war. These were placed at my disposal by
+his son, Major William Archer Redmond, D.S.O., M.P. I had also the
+consent of Mrs. Redmond to my undertaking the task. But for the book and
+for the opinions expressed in it I am solely responsible. No condition
+having been imposed upon me, it seemed best, for many reasons, that it
+should be written, as it has been written, without consultation.</p>
+
+<p>A writer in whom such a trust has been placed may well be at a loss how
+to express his gratitude, but can never convey the measure of his
+anxiety. From those who cherish Redmond's memory, and especially from
+those who were nearest to him in comradeship and affection, I must only
+crave the indulgence which should be accorded to sincere effort.
+Differences of interpretation there will be in any review of past
+events, and others can claim with justice that on many points they were
+better situated for full understanding than was I. Yet for the period
+which is specially studied, if there is failure in comprehension it
+cannot be excused by lack of opportunity to be thoroughly informed.</p>
+
+<p>To readers at large I would say this&mdash;that if any sentence in these
+pages be uncandid or ungenerous, it is most unworthy to be found in the
+record of such a man.</p>
+
+<p>S.G.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='right'>CHAPTER</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td align='left'>INTRODUCTORY</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td align='left'>REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td align='left'>THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td align='left'>THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td align='left'>WAR IN EUROPE</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td align='left'>THE RAISING OF THE IRISH BRIGADES</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td align='left'>THE REBELLION AND ITS SEQUEL</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='right'><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td align='left'>THE CONVENTION AND THE END</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><a href="#INDEX">INDEX</a></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_343">343</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align='left'><a href="#Frontispiece">PORTRAIT OF JOHN REDMOND</a></td><td align='right'><i><a href="#Frontispiece">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Page_1"></a>JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="CHAPTER_I"></a><h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTORY</h3>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>The time has not yet come to write the biography of John Redmond. Not
+until the history of the pledge-bound Irish Parliamentary party can be
+treated freely, fully and impartially as a chapter closed and ended will
+it be possible to record in detail the life of a man who was associated
+with it almost from its beginning and who from the opening of this
+century guided it with almost growing authority to the statutory
+accomplishment of its desperate task; who knew, in it and for it, all
+vicissitudes of fortune and who gave to it without stint or reservation
+his whole life's energy from earliest manhood to the grave.</p>
+
+<p>But when the war came, unforeseen, shifting all political balances,
+transmuting the greatest political issues, especially those of which the
+Irish question is a type, it imposed upon men and upon nations, but
+above all on the leaders of nations, swift and momentous decisions.
+Because that critical hour presented to Redmond's vision a great
+opportunity which he must either seize single-handed or let it for ever
+pass by; because he rose to the height of the occasion with the courage
+which counts upon and commands success; because he sought by his own
+motion to swing the whole mass and weight<a name="Page_2"></a> of a nation's feeling into a
+new direction&mdash;for all these reasons his last years were different in
+kind from any that had gone before; and as such they admit of and demand
+separate study. Intelligent comprehension of what he aimed at, what he
+achieved, and what forces defeated him in these last years of his life
+is urgently needed, not for the sake of his memory, but for Ireland's
+sake; because until his policy is understood there is little chance that
+Irishmen should attain what he aspired to win for Ireland&mdash;the strength
+and dignity of a free and united nation.</p>
+
+<p>It is of Redmond's policy for Ireland in relation to the war, and to the
+events which in Ireland arose out of the war, that this book is mainly
+designed to treat. Yet to make that policy intelligible some history is
+needed of the startling series of political developments which the war
+interrupted but did not terminate&mdash;and which, though still recent, are
+blurred in public memory by all that has intervened. Further back still,
+a brief review of his early career must be given, not only to set the
+man's figure in relation to his environment, but to show that this final
+phase was in reality no new departure, no break with his past, but a
+true though a divergent evolution from all that had gone before.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Ireland, although so small in extent and population, is none the less a
+country of many and locally varying racial strains; and John Redmond
+sprang from one of the most typical. He was a Wexfordman; that is to
+say, he came from the part of Ireland where if you cross the Channel
+there is least difference between the land you leave and the land you
+sail to; where the sea-divided peoples have been always to some extent
+assimilated. Here in the twelfth century the first Norman-Welsh invaders
+came across. The leader of their first party, Raymond Le Gros, landed at
+a point between Wexford and Waterford; the town of Wexford <a name="Page_3"></a>was his
+first capture; and where he began his conquest he settled. From this
+stock the Redmond name and line descend.</p>
+
+<p>Thus John Redmond came from an invading strain in which Norman and Celt
+were already blended; and he grew up in a country thickly settled with
+men whose ancestors came along with his from across the water. Till a
+century ago the barony of Forth retained a dialect of its own which was
+in effect such English as men spoke before Chaucer began to write; and
+even to-day in any Wexford fair or market you will see among the strong,
+well-nourished, prosperous farmers many faces and figures which an
+artist might easily assimilate to an athletic example of the traditional
+John Bull. Redmond himself, hawk-faced and thick-bodied, might have been
+taken for no bad reincarnation of Raymond Le Gros. To this extent he was
+less of a Celt than many of his countrymen; but he was assuredly none
+the less Irish because he was a Wexfordman. The county of his birth was
+the county which had made the greatest resistance to English power in
+Ireland since Sarsfield and his &quot;Wild Geese&quot; crossed to Flanders. Born
+in 1857, he grew up in a country-side full of memories of events then
+only some sixty years old; he knew and spoke with many men who had been
+out with pike or fowling-piece in 1798. Rebel was to him from boyhood up
+a name of honour; and this was not only a phase of boyish enthusiasm. In
+his mature manhood, speaking as leader of the Irish party, he told the
+House of Commons plainly that in his deliberate judgment Ireland's
+situation justified an appeal to arms, and that if rebellion offered a
+reasonable prospect of gaining freedom for a united Ireland he would
+counsel rebellion on the instant.</p>
+
+<p>But if he was always and admittedly a potential rebel, no man was ever
+less a revolutionary. As much a constitutionalist as Hampden or
+Washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. The tradition
+of <a name="Page_4"></a>parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations.
+Two years after his birth his great-uncle, John Edward Redmond, from
+whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as Liberal member
+for the borough of Wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place,
+commemorating good service rendered. Much of the rich flat land which
+lies along the railway from Wexford to Rosslare Harbour was reclaimed by
+this Redmond's enterprise from tidal slob. On his death in 1872 the seat
+passed to his nephew William Archer Redmond, whose two sons were John
+and William Redmond, with whom this book deals. Thus the present Major
+William Archer Redmond, M.P., represents four continuous generations of
+the same family sent to Westminster among the representatives of
+Nationalist Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Not often is a family type so strongly marked as among the men of this
+stock. But the portraits show that while the late Major &quot;Willie&quot; Redmond
+closely resembled his father, in John Redmond and John Redmond's son
+there were reproduced the more dominant and massive features of the
+first of the parliamentary line.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up then, John Redmond and his brother came of a long strain of
+Catholic gentry who were linked by continuous historic association of
+over seven centuries to a certain district in South Leinster, and who
+retained leadership among their own people. The tradition of military
+service was strong, too, in this family. Their father's cousin, son to
+the original John Edward Redmond, was a professional soldier; and their
+mother was the daughter of General Hoey. They were brought up in an
+old-fashioned country house, Ballytrent, on the Wexford coast, and the
+habits of outdoor country life and sport which furnished the chief
+pleasure of their lives were formed in boyhood. Their upbringing
+differed from that of boys in thousands of similar country houses
+throughout Ireland only in one circumstance; they were Catholics, <a name="Page_5"></a>and
+even so lately as in their boyhood Catholic land-owners were
+comparatively few.</p>
+
+<p>John Redmond was four years older than his younger brother, born in
+1861. He got his schooling under the Jesuits at Clongowes in early days,
+before the system of Government endowment by examination results had
+given incentive to cramming. According to his own account he did little
+work and nobody pressed him to exertion. But the Jesuits are skilful
+teachers, and they left a mark on his mind. It is scarcely chance that
+the two speakers of all I have heard who had the best delivery were
+pupils of theirs&mdash;Redmond and Sir William Butler. They taught him to
+write, they taught him to speak and to declaim, they encouraged his
+natural love of literature. His taste was formed in those days and it
+was curiously old-fashioned. His diction in a prepared oration might
+have come from the days of Grattan: and he maintained the old-fashioned
+habit of quotation. No poetry written later than Byron, Moore and
+Shelley made much appeal to him, save the Irish political ballads. But
+scarcely any English speaker quoted Shakespeare in public so often or so
+aptly as this Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>From Clongowes he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he matriculated
+in October 1874 at the age of seventeen. His academic studies seem to
+have been half-hearted. At the end of a year his name was taken off the
+College books by his father, but was replaced. At the close of his
+second year of study, in July 1876, it was removed again and for good.</p>
+
+<p>But apart from what he learnt at school, his real education was an
+apprenticeship; he was trained in the House of Commons for the work of
+Parliament. He was a boy of fifteen, of an age to be keenly interested,
+when the representation of Wexford passed from his great-uncle to his
+father. Probably the reason why he was removed from Trinity College was
+the desire of Mr. William Redmond to have his son with him in London.
+Certainly<a name="Page_6"></a> John Redmond was there during the session of 1876, for on the
+introduction of Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill he recalled a
+finely apposite Shakespearean quotation which he had heard Butt use in a
+Home Rule debate of that year. In May 1880 his father procured him a
+clerkship in the House. The post to which he was assigned was that of
+attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his
+nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members'
+Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and
+intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the
+Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and
+listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical
+strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point
+of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr,
+Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority&mdash;and watched too the
+inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new
+parliamentary force which had come into being.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond himself described thus (in a lecture delivered at New York in
+1896) the policy which came to be known as &quot;The New Departure&quot;:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;Mr. Parnell found that the British Parliament insisted upon
+     turning a deaf ear to Ireland's claim for justice. He resolved to
+     adopt the simple yet masterly device of preventing Parliament doing
+     any work at all until it consented to hear.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In the task of systematic and continuous obstruction Parnell at once
+found a ready helper, Mr. Joseph Biggar. But Parnell, Biggar and those
+who from 1876 to 1880 acted generally or frequently with them were only
+members of the body led by Butt; though they were, indeed, ultimately in
+more or less open revolt against Butt's leadership. When Butt died, and
+was at least nominally replaced by Mr. Shaw, the growth of Parnell's
+ascen<a name="Page_7"></a>dancy became more marked. In the general election of 1880 sixty
+Home Rulers were returned to Parliament; and at a meeting attended by
+over forty, twenty-three declared for Parnell as their leader. A
+question almost of ceremonial observance immediately defined the issue.
+Liberals were in power, and Government was more friendly to Ireland's
+claims than was the Opposition. Mr. Shaw and his adherents were for
+marking support of the Government by sitting on the Government side of
+the Chamber. Parnell insisted that the Irish party should be independent
+of all English attachments and permanently in opposition till Ireland
+received its rights. With that view he and his friends took up their
+station on the Speaker's left below the gangway, where they held it
+continuously for thirty-nine years.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. William Redmond was no supporter of the new policy. As the little
+group which Parnell headed grew more and more insistent in their
+obstruction, the member for Wexford spoke less and less. His
+interventions were rare and dignified. In the debate on the Address in
+the new Parliament of 1880 he acted as a lieutenant to Mr. Shaw. Yet he
+was on very friendly terms with Parnell&mdash;almost a neighbour of his, for
+the Parnell property, lying about the Vale of Ovoca, touched the border
+of Wexford.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. William Redmond's career in that Parliament was soon ended. In
+November 1880 he died, and, normally, his son, whose qualifications and
+ambitions were known, would have succeeded him. But collision between
+Government and the Parnellite party was already beginning. Mr. T.M.
+Healy, then Parnell's secretary, had been arrested for a speech in
+denunciation of some eviction proceedings. This was the first arrest of
+a prominent man under Mr. Forster's rule as Chief Secretary, and
+Parnell, with whom in those days the decision rested, decided that Mr.
+Healy should immediately be put forward for the vacant seat. In later
+days he was <a name="Page_8"></a>to remind Mr. Healy how he had done this, &quot;rebuking and
+restraining the prior right of my friend, Jack Redmond.&quot; Redmond had not
+long to wait, however. Another vacancy occurred in another Wexford seat,
+the ancient borough of New Ross, and he was returned without opposition
+at a crucial moment in the parliamentary struggle.</p>
+
+<p>That struggle was not only parliamentary. From the famine year of 1879
+onwards a fierce agitation had begun, whose purpose was to secure the
+land of Ireland to the people who worked it. Davitt was to the land what
+Parnell was to the parliamentary campaign: but it was Parnell's genius
+which fused the two movements.</p>
+
+<p>To meet the growing power of the Land League, Mr. Forster demanded a
+Coercion Bill, and after long struggles in the Cabinet he prevailed.
+Against this Bill it was obvious that all means of parliamentary
+resistance would be used to the uttermost.</p>
+
+<p>They were still of a primitive simplicity. In the days before Parnell
+the House of Commons had carried on its business under a system of rules
+which worked perfectly well because there was a general disposition in
+the assembly to get business done. A beginning of the new order was made
+when a group of ex-military men attempted to defeat the measure for
+abolishing purchase of commissions in the Army by a series of dilatory
+motions. This, however, was an isolated occurrence. Any English member
+who set himself to thwart the desire of the House for a conclusion by
+using means which the general body considered unfair would have been
+reduced to quiescence by a demonstration that he was considered a
+nuisance. His voice would have been drowned in a buzz of conversation or
+by less civil interruptions. This implied, however, a willingness to be
+influenced by social considerations, and, more than that, a loyalty to
+the traditions and purposes of the House. Parnell felt no such
+willingness and acknowledged no such loyalty.</p><a name="Page_9"></a>
+
+<p>&quot;His object,&quot; said Redmond in the address already quoted, &quot;was to injure
+it so long as it refused to listen to the just claims of his country.&quot;
+The House, realizing Parnell's intention, visited upon him and his
+associates all the penalties by which it was wont to enforce its wishes:
+but the penalties had no sting. All the displays of anger, disapproval,
+contempt, all the vocabulary of denunciation in debate and in the Press,
+all the studied forms of insult, all the marks of social displeasure,
+only served to convince the Irishmen that they were producing their
+effect. Still, the House continued to act on the assumption that it
+could vindicate its traditions in the old traditional way: it was
+determined to change none of the rules which had stood for so many
+generations: it would maintain its liberties and put down in its own way
+those who had the impertinence to abuse them. The breaking-point came
+exactly at the moment when Redmond was elected.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday, Jan. 24th, 1881, Mr. Forster introduced his Coercion Bill. It
+was open, of course, to any member to speak once, and once only, on the
+main motion. But every member had an indefinite right to move the
+adjournment of the debate, and on each such motion every member could
+speak again. The debate was carried all through that week. It was
+resumed on Monday, 31st. The declaration of Redmond's election was fixed
+for Tuesday, February 1st, in New Ross&mdash;there being no contest. A
+telegram summoned him to come instantly after the declaration to London.
+He took the train at noon, travelled to Dublin and crossed the Channel.
+At Holyhead about midnight another telegram told him that the debate was
+still proceeding. He reached Euston on the Wednesday morning, drove
+straight to the House, and there, standing at the bar, saw what he thus
+described:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;It was thus, travel-stained and weary, that I first presented
+     myself as a member of the British Parliament. The House was still
+     sitting, it had been sitting without <a name="Page_10"></a>a break for over forty hours,
+     and I shall never forget the appearance the Chamber presented. The
+     floor was littered with paper. A few dishevelled and weary Irishmen
+     were on one side of the House, about a hundred infuriated
+     Englishmen upon the other; some of them still in evening dress, and
+     wearing what were once white shirts of the night before last. Mr.
+     Parnell was upon his legs, with pale cheeks and drawn face, his
+     hands clenched behind his back, facing without flinching a
+     continuous roar of interruption. It was now about eight o'clock.
+     Half of Mr. Parnell's followers were out of the Chamber snatching a
+     few moments' sleep in chairs in the Library or Smoke Room. Those
+     who remained had each a specified period of time allotted him to
+     speak, and they were wearily waiting their turn. As they caught
+     sight of me standing at the bar of the House of Commons there was a
+     cheer of welcome. I was unable to come to their aid, however, as
+     under the rules of the House I could not take my seat until the
+     commencement of a new sitting. My very presence, however, brought,
+     I think, a sense of encouragement and approaching relief to them;
+     and I stood there at the bar with my travelling coat still upon me,
+     gazing alternately with indignation and admiration at the amazing
+     scene presented to my gaze.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;This, then, was the great Parliament of England! Of intelligent
+     debate there was none. It was one unbroken scene of turbulence and
+     disorder. The few Irishmen remained quiet, too much amused,
+     perhaps, or too much exhausted to retaliate. It was the
+     English&mdash;the members of the first assembly of gentlemen in Europe,
+     as they love to style it&mdash;who howled and roared, and almost foamed
+     at the mouth with rage at the calm and pale-featured young man who
+     stood patiently facing them and endeavouring to make himself
+     heard.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>An hour later the closure was applied, for the first time in
+Parliament's history. The records of Hansard spoil a story which Redmond
+was fond of telling&mdash;that he took his oath and his seat, made his maiden
+speech and was suspended all in the same evening. In point of fact he
+took his seat that Wednesday afternoon, when the House sat for a few
+hours only and adjourned again.<a name="Page_11"></a> Next day news came in that Davitt had
+been arrested in Ireland. Mr. Dillon, in the process of endeavouring to
+extract an explanation from the Government, was named and suspended.
+When the Prime Minister after this rose to speak, Mr. Parnell moved:
+&quot;That Mr. Gladstone be not heard.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Speaker, ruling that Mr. Gladstone was in possession of the House,
+refused to put the motion. Mr. Parnell, insisting that his motion should
+be put, came into collision with the authority of the Chair and was
+formally &quot;named.&quot; Mr. Gladstone then moved his suspension and a division
+was called&mdash;whereupon, under the rules which then existed, all members
+were bound to leave the Chamber. On this occasion the Irish members
+remained seated, as a protest, and after the division the Speaker
+solemnly reported this breach of order to the House. For their refusal
+to obey the Irish members present were suspended from the service of the
+House, and as a body they refused to leave unless removed by physical
+force. Accordingly, man by man was ordered to leave and each in turn
+rose up with a brief phrase of refusal, after which the Sergeant-at-Arms
+with an officer approached and laid a hand on the recusant's shoulder.
+Redmond, when his turn came, said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As I regard the whole of these proceedings as unmitigated despotism, I
+beg respectfully to decline to withdraw.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was his maiden speech. Having delivered it, &quot;Mr. Redmond,&quot; says
+Hansard, &quot;was by desire of Mr. Speaker removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms
+from the House.&quot; It was a strange beginning for one of the greatest
+parliamentarians of our epoch&mdash;and one of the greatest conservatives.
+The whole bent of his mind was towards moderation in all things.
+Temperamentally, he hated all forms of extravagant eccentricity; he
+loved the old if only because it was old; he had the keenest sense not
+only of decorum but of the essential dignity <a name="Page_12"></a>which is the best guardian
+of order. Yet here he was committed to a policy which aimed deliberately
+at outraging all the established decencies&mdash;at disregarding
+ostentatiously all the usages by which an assembly of gentlemen had
+regulated their proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>What is more, it was an assembly which Redmond found temperamentally
+congenial to him&mdash;an assembly which, apart from its relation to Ireland,
+he thoroughly admired and liked. In 1896, when Irish members were
+fiercely in opposition to the Government, he concluded his description
+of Parliament with these words:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;In the main, the House of Commons is, I believe, dominated by a
+     rough-and-ready sense of manliness and fair-play. Of course, I am
+     not speaking of it as a governing body. In that character it has
+     been towards Ireland always ignorant and nearly always unfair. I am
+     treating it simply as an assembly of men, and I say of it, it is a
+     body where sooner or later every man finds his proper level, where
+     mediocrity and insincerity will never permanently succeed, and
+     where ability and honesty of purpose will never permanently fail.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That was no mean tribute, coming from one who held himself aloof from
+all the personal advantages belonging to the society whose rules he did
+not recognize. The opinion to which the Irish members of Parnell's
+following were amenable was not made at Westminster; it did not exist
+there&mdash;except, and that in its most rigid form, amongst themselves.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth while to recall for English readers&mdash;and perhaps not for
+them only&mdash;what membership of Parnell's party involved. In the first
+place, there was a self-denying ordinance by which the man elected to it
+bound himself to accept no post of any kind under Government. All the
+chances which election to Parliament opens to most men&mdash;and especially
+to men of the legal profession&mdash;were at once set aside. Absolute
+discipline and unity of action, except in matters specially left open to
+individual <a name="Page_13"></a>judgment, were enforced on all. These were the essentials.
+But in the period of acute war between the Irish and all other parties
+which was opening when Redmond entered there was a self-imposed rule
+that as the English public and English members disapproved and disliked
+the Irishmen an answering attitude should be adopted: that even private
+hospitality should be avoided and that the belligerents should behave as
+if they were quite literally in an enemy's country.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when Mr. Gladstone had adopted the Irish cause and alliance with
+the Liberal party had begun, the rigour of this attitude was modified.
+Many Irish members joined the Liberal clubs and went freely to houses
+where they were sure of sympathy. Yet neither of the Redmonds followed
+far in this direction, and the habit of social isolation which they
+formed in their early days lasted with them to the end. If John Redmond
+ever went to any house in London which was not an Irish home it was by
+the rarest exception.</p>
+
+<p>For society, Parnell's party depended on themselves and their countrymen
+and sympathizers. But they were in no way to be pitied; they were the
+best of company for one another. It was a movement of the young, it had
+all the strength and audacity of youth, it was a great adventure. A few
+men from an older generation came with them, Mr. Biggar, Justin McCarthy
+and others. But their leader, though older than most of his followers,
+was a young man by parliamentary standards. In 1880 Parnell was only
+thirty-three; and within four years more he was as great a power in the
+House as Mr. Gladstone. Some few years back I heard Willie Redmond say
+in the Members' smoking-room, &quot;Isn't it strange to think that Parnell
+would be sixty now if he had lived. I can't imagine him as an old man.&quot;
+Yet the accent of maturity was on Parnell's leadership; the men whom he
+led were essentially young. In 1881, when Redmond entered Parliament,
+Mr. Dillon was thirty, Mr. T.P.<a name="Page_14"></a> O'Connor and Mr. Sexton veterans of
+thirty-three, Mr. Healy twenty-six. Mr. William O'Brien (who did not
+come in until 1883) was of the same year as Mr. Dillon. Redmond was
+younger than any of them, being elected at the age of twenty-four. Yet
+nobody then thought it surprising that he should be sent in 1882 to
+represent the party on a mission to Australia and the United States at a
+most difficult time. The Phoenix Park murders had created widespread
+indiscriminating anger against all Irish Nationalists throughout the
+Empire, and Redmond found it difficult to secure even a hall to speak
+in. For support there was sent to him his brother, then a youth of
+twenty-one, and feeling ran so strong against the two that the Prime
+Minister of New South Wales (Sir Henry Parkes) proposed their expulsion
+from the colony. Nevertheless, Redmond made good. &quot;The Irish working-men
+stood by me,&quot; he said, &quot;and in fact saved the situation.&quot; Fifteen
+thousand pounds were collected before they left the island continent.</p>
+
+<p>It indicates well the changed conditions to remember that when in 1906
+Mr. Hazleton and the late T.M. Kettle were selected to go on a far less
+arduous and difficult mission to America, there was much talk about the
+astonishing youth of our representatives. Yet both were then older than
+John Redmond was in 1882&mdash;to say nothing of his brother, who must have
+been the most exuberantly youthful spokesman that a serious cause ever
+found.</p>
+
+<p>The Redmonds' stay in Australia, which lasted over a year, determined
+one important matter for both young men; they found their wives in the
+colony whose Prime Minister proposed to expel them. John Redmond married
+Miss Joanna Dalton and his brother her near kinswoman, Miss Eleanor
+Dalton. Willie Redmond was elected to Parliament in his absence for his
+father's old seat&mdash;Mr. Healy having vacated Wexford to fight and win a
+sensational election in county Monaghan.</p><a name="Page_15"></a>
+
+<p>This early visit to the great transmarine dominions, and the ties which
+he formed there, left a marked impression on John Redmond's mind, which
+was reinforced by other visits in later years, and by all the growing
+associations that linked him to life and politics in the dominions.
+Redmond knew vastly more, and in truth cared vastly more, about the
+British Empire than most Imperialists. His affection was not based on
+any inherited prejudice, nor inspired by a mere geographical idea. He
+was attracted to that which he had seen and handled, in whose making he
+had watched so many of his fellow-countrymen fruitfully and honourably
+busy. He felt acutely that the Empire belonged to Irish Nationalists at
+least as much as to English Tories. America also was familiar to him,
+and he had every cause to be grateful to the United States; but his
+interest in the dominions was of a different kind. He felt himself a
+partner in their glories, and by this feeling he was linked in sympathy
+to a great many elements in British life that were otherwise uncongenial
+to him&mdash;and was, on the other hand, divided in sympathy from some who in
+Irish politics were his staunch supporters. He could never understand
+the psychology of the Little Englander. &quot;If I were an Englishman,&quot; he
+once said to me, &quot;I should be the greatest Imperialist living.&quot; From
+first to last his attitude was that which is indicated by a passage of
+his speech on Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;As a Nationalist, I may say I do not regard as entirely palatable
+     the idea that for ever and a day Ireland's voice should be excluded
+     from the councils of an Empire which the genius and valour of her
+     sons have done so much to build up and of which she is to remain a
+     part.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a></p></blockquote>
+<a name="Page_16"></a>
+<br />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>To follow in detail Redmond's career under Parnell's leadership would be
+beyond the scope of this book. Less conspicuous in Parliament than such
+lieutenants of &quot;the Chief&quot; as Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy, John
+Redmond acted as one of the party whips and was in much demand outside
+Parliament as a platform speaker. In August 1886 he was once more sent
+overseas to attend the Convention of the Irish Race at Chicago. He had
+to tell his hearers of victory and of repulse.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;When you last assembled in Convention, two years ago, the Irish
+     party in Parliament did not number more than forty; to-day we hold
+     five-sixths of the Irish seats, and speak in the name of
+     five-sixths of the Irish people in Ireland. Two years ago we had
+     arrayed against us all English political parties and every English
+     statesman; to-day we have on our side one of the great English
+     political parties, which, though its past traditions in Ireland
+     have been evil, still represents the party of progress in England,
+     and the greatest statesman of the day, who has staked his all upon
+     winning for Ireland her national rights. Two years ago England had
+     in truth, in Mitchel's phrase, the ear of the world. To-day, at
+     last, that ear, so long poisoned with calumnies of our people, is
+     now open to the voice of Ireland. Two years ago the public opinion
+     of the world&mdash;aye, and even of this free land of America&mdash;was
+     doubtful as to the justice of our movement; to-day the opinion of
+     the civilized world, and of America in particular, is clearly and
+     distinctly on our side.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>On the other hand, in England the forces of reaction had succeeded. The
+Home Rule Bill had been defeated and the Liberal party broken up. A
+Government was in power whose programme was one of coercion. But
+Ireland, Redmond said, was ready for the fight and confident that with
+the weapons at command the enemy could be defeated.</p><a name="Page_17"></a>
+
+<p>Who were the enemy, and what the weapon? His speech made this plain.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;Once more Irish landlords have behaved themselves with
+     unaccountable folly and stupidity. They have once more stood
+     between Ireland and her freedom, and have refused even an
+     extravagant price for the land because the offer was coupled with
+     the concession of an Irish Parliament. So be it. I believe the last
+     offer has been made to Irish landlordism. The ultimate settlement
+     of this question must now be reserved for the Parliament of
+     Ireland, and meantime the people must take care to protect
+     themselves and their children. In many parts of Ireland, I assert,
+     rent is to-day an impossibility, and in every part of Ireland the
+     rents demanded are exorbitant, and will not, and cannot, be paid.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>He was wrong. The settlement of this vast question was to be
+accomplished through the Imperial Parliament, not the Irish. Yet it was
+accomplished in essence by an agreement between Irishmen for which
+Redmond himself was largely responsible.</p>
+
+<p>That settlement, however, merely ratified in 1903 the final stage in the
+conversion of both countries to Parnell's policy of State-aided land
+purchase. Tentative beginnings were made with it under the Government
+which was in power from 1886 to 1892; but the main characteristic of
+this period was a fierce revival of the land war. It was virulent in
+Wexford, and in 1888 Redmond shared the experience which few Irish
+members escaped or desired to escape; he was sentenced to imprisonment
+on a charge of intimidation for a speech condemning some evictions. He
+and his brother met in Wexford jail, and both used to describe with glee
+their mutual salutation: &quot;Good heavens, what a ruffian you look!&quot;
+Cropped hair and convict clothes were part of Mr. Balfour's resolute
+government.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in those days Ireland was winning, and winning fast. Mr. Gladstone's
+personal ascendancy, never stronger <a name="Page_18"></a>than in the wonderful effort of his
+old age, asserted itself more and more. Public sympathy in Great Britain
+was turning against the wholesale evictions, the knocking down of
+peasants' houses by police and military with battering-rams. The Tory
+party sought for a new political weapon, and one day <i>The Times</i> came
+out with the facsimile of what purported to be a letter in Parnell's
+hand. This document implied at least condonation of the Phoenix Park
+murders.</p>
+
+<p>Other letters equally incriminating were published. Parnell denied the
+authorship, his denial was not accepted; fierce controversy ended in the
+establishment of one of the strangest Commissions of Enquiry ever set
+up&mdash;a semi-judicial tribunal of judges. Its proceedings created the
+acutest public interest, drawn out over long months, up to the day when
+Sir Charles Russell had before him in the witness-box the original
+vendor of the letters&mdash;one Pigott. Pigott's collapse, confession of
+forgery, flight and suicide, followed with appalling swiftness: and the
+result was to generate through England a very strong sympathy for the
+man against whom, and against whose followers, such desperate calumnies
+had been uttered and exploited. Parnell's prestige was no longer
+confined to his own countrymen: and the sense of all Home Rulers was
+that they fought a winning battle, under two allied leaders of
+extraordinary personal gifts.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as soon as it was clear that the attack of the Pigott letters had
+recoiled on those who launched it, came the indication of a fresh
+menace. Proceedings for divorce were taken with Parnell as the
+co-respondent: the case was undefended. Mr. Gladstone and probably most
+Englishmen expected that Parnell would retire, at all events
+temporarily, from public life, as, in Lord Morley's words, &quot;any English
+politician of his rank&quot; would have been obliged to do. Parnell refused
+to retire; and Gladstone made it publicly known that if Parnell
+continued to lead the Irish party, his own leader<a name="Page_19"></a>ship of the Liberal
+party, &quot;based, as it had been, mainly on the prosecution of the Irish
+cause,&quot; would be rendered &quot;almost a nullity.&quot; The choice&mdash;for it was a
+choice&mdash;was left to the Irish. To retain Parnell as leader in
+Gladstone's judgment made Gladstone's task impossible, and therefore
+indicated Gladstone's withdrawal from public life. To part with Parnell
+meant parting with the ablest leader that Nationalist Ireland had ever
+found.</p>
+
+<p>A more heartrending alternative has never been imposed on any body of
+politicians, and John Redmond, unlike his younger brother, was not of
+those to whom decision came by an instinctive act of allegiance. His
+nature forced him to see both sides, but when he decided it was with his
+whole nature. The issue was debated by the Irish party in Committee Room
+15 of the House of Commons, with the Press in attendance. In this
+encounter Redmond for the first time stepped to the front. He had
+hitherto been outside the first flight of Irish parliamentarians. Now,
+he was the first to state the case for maintaining Parnell's leadership,
+and throughout the discussions he led on that side. When Parnell's death
+came a few months after the &quot;split&quot; declared itself, there was no
+hesitation as to which of the Parnellites should assume the leadership
+of their party. Redmond resigned his seat in North Wexford and contested
+Cork city, where Parnell had long been member. He was badly beaten, and
+for some three months the new leader of the Parnellites was without a
+seat in the House&mdash;though not during a session. Another death made a new
+opening, and in December 1891 his fight at Waterford against no less a
+man than Michael Davitt turned for a moment the electoral tide which was
+setting heavily against the smaller group. It was a notable win, and the
+hero of that triumph retained his hold on the loyalty of those with whom
+he won it when the rest of Ireland had turned away from him. The tie
+lasted to his death&mdash;and after it, for Waterford then chose as <a name="Page_20"></a>its
+representative the dead leader's son, and renewed that choice in the
+general election of 1918, when other allegiances to the old party were
+like leaves on the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Other ties were formed in these years, which lasted through Redmond's
+life. I have deliberately abstained from entering into either the merits
+or the details of the &quot;split.&quot; But certain of its aspects must be
+recognized. In the division into Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites,
+Parnellites were a small but fierce minority. It needed resolution for a
+man to be a Parnellite, all the more because the whole force of the
+Catholic Church was thrown against them, and in some instances
+disgraceful methods were used. One of Redmond's best friends was the
+owner of a local newspaper; it was declared to be a mortal sin to buy,
+sell, or read his journal. The business was reduced to the verge of ruin
+but the man went on, till a new bishop came and gradually things mended.
+He, like Redmond, was a staunch practising Catholic, and later on was
+the friend and trusted associate of many priests; but he stood for an
+element in Ireland which refused to allow the least usurpation by
+ecclesiastical authority in the sphere of citizenship.</p>
+
+<p>Willie Redmond won East Clare, as his brother won Waterford city, after
+a turbulent election with the priests against him. He gave in that
+contest, as always, at least as good as he got; but his collision with
+individuals never affected his devotion or his brother's to their
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>But in social life the estrangements of these days were far-reaching,
+and, at least negatively, so far as Redmond was concerned, they were
+lasting. His existence had been saddened and altered shortly before the
+break up by the death of his first wife, which left him a young widower
+with three children. After the &quot;split&quot; the whole circle of friends among
+whom he had lived in Dublin and in London was shattered and divided; and
+in <a name="Page_21"></a>later life none, I think, of those broken intimacies was renewed.</p>
+
+<p>In Redmond's nature there was a total lack of rancour. Clear-sighted as
+he was, he realized how desperately difficult a choice was imposed on
+Nationalists by Parnell's situation, and he knew how honestly men had
+differed. He could command completely his intellectual judgment of their
+action, and there were many whom in later stages of the movement he
+trusted none the less for their divergence from him at this crisis. But
+he was more than commonly a creature of instinct; and the associations
+of his intimate life were all decided in these years. His affection was
+given to those who were comrades in this pass of danger. The only two
+exceptions to be made are, first and chiefly, Mr. Devlin, who was too
+young to be actively concerned with politics at the time of Parnell's
+overthrow; and, to speak truth, it is not possible to be so closely
+associated as Redmond was with this lieutenant of his, or to be so long
+and loyally served by him, and not to undergo his personal attraction.
+The other exception is Mr. J.J. Mooney, who entered Parliament and
+politics later than the &quot;split,&quot; but whose personal allegiance to Mr.
+Redmond was always declared. He acted for long as Redmond's secretary
+and always as his counsellor&mdash;for in all the detail of parliamentary
+business, especially on the side of private bill legislation, the House
+had few more capable members. He was perhaps more completely than Mr.
+Devlin one of the little group of intimates with whom Redmond loved to
+surround himself in the country. All the rest were old champions of the
+fight over Parnell's body; but by far the closest friend of all was his
+brother Willie. Their marriages to kinswomen had redoubled the tie of
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>It should be noted here that Redmond married for the second time in
+1899, after ten years of widowerhood. His wife was, by his wish and her
+own, never at all in <a name="Page_22"></a>the public eye. All that should be said here is
+that his friends found friendship with him easier and not more difficult
+than before this marriage, and were grateful for the devoted care which
+was bestowed upon their leader. She accompanied him on all his political
+journeyings, whatever their duration, and gave him in the fullest
+measure the companionship which he desired.</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1">[1]</a><div class="note"><p> This speech is included in &quot;Home Rule: Speeches of John
+Redmond, M.P.,&quot; a volume edited in 1910 by Mr. Barry O'Brien. It
+contains also the American addresses quoted in this chapter, and a
+speech to the Dublin Convention in 1907, quoted in the next.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><a name="Page_23"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_II"></a><h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN</h3>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Parliament of 1892-5 was barren of results for Ireland, being
+consumed by factious strife, at Westminster between the Houses and in
+Ireland between the parties. With Gladstone's retirement it seemed as if
+Home Rule were dead. But thinking men realized that the Irish question
+was still there to be dealt with, and approach to solution began along
+new lines. When Lord Salisbury returned to power in 1895, Land Purchase
+was cautiously extended with much success: the Congested Districts
+Board, originally established by Mr. Arthur Balfour, was showing good
+results, and his brother Mr. Gerald Balfour, now Chief Secretary, felt
+his way towards a policy which came to be described as &quot;killing Home
+Rule with kindness.&quot; A section of Irish Nationalist opinion was scared
+by the menace contained in this epigram; and consequently, when in 1895
+Mr. Horace Plunkett (as he then was) put forward proposals for a
+conference of Irishmen to consider possible means for developing Irish
+agriculture and Irish industries under the existing system, voices were
+raised against what was denounced as a new attempt to divert Nationalist
+Ireland from its main purpose of achieving self-government. Mr.
+Plunkett's original proposal was that a body of four Anti-Parnellites,
+two Parnellites and two Unionists should meet and deliberate in Ireland,
+during the recess. In the upshot the Nationalist majority refused to
+take any part; but Redmond, with one of his supporters,<a name="Page_24"></a> Mr. William
+Field, served on the &quot;Recess Committee&quot; and concurred in its Report, out
+of which came the creation of the Department of Agriculture and
+Technical Instruction.</p>
+
+<p>In 1896 the Commission on Financial Relations, which had been set up by
+the Liberal Ministry in 1894, reported, and its findings produced a
+state of feeling which for a moment promised co-operation between
+divided interests in Ireland. Unionist magnates joined with Nationalists
+in denouncing the system of taxation, which the Commission&mdash;by a
+majority of eleven to two&mdash;had described as oppressive and unjust to the
+weaker country.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond was one of the members of this Commission, which included also
+distinguished representatives of his Nationalist opponents&mdash;Mr. Blake
+and Mr. Sexton; and he no doubt cherished hopes arising from the
+resolute demands for redress uttered by Lord Castletown and other Irish
+Unionist Peers. Those hopes were soon dispelled; nothing but much
+controversy came of the demand for improved financial relations. Mr.
+Gerald Balfour's schemes were more tangible, and in 1897 Redmond
+announced that the Government's proposal to introduce a measure of Local
+Government for Ireland should have his support. The Bill, when it came,
+exceeded expectation in its scope, and Redmond gave it a cordial welcome
+in the name of the Parnellites. The larger group, however, then led by
+Mr. Dillon, declined to be responsible for accepting it.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in the working of this measure, Redmond pressed strongly that
+elections under it should not be conducted on party lines and that the
+landlord class should be brought into local administrative work. His
+advice unfortunately was not taken.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed the South African struggle, and in giving voice to a
+common sentiment against what Nationalist Ireland held to be an unjust
+war the two Irish parties found themselves united and telling together
+<a name="Page_25"></a>in the lobby. Formal union followed. By this time the cleavage between
+Parnellite and Anti-Parnellite was less acute than that between Mr.
+Healy's section and the followers of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien. The
+choice of Redmond as Chairman was due less to a sense of his general
+fitness than to despair of reaching a decision between the claims of the
+other three outstanding men.</p>
+
+<p>The sacrifice to be made was made at Mr. Dillon's expense, and he did
+not acquiesce willingly or cordially. The cordiality which ultimately
+marked his relations with Redmond was of later growth&mdash;fostered by the
+necessity which Mr. Dillon found imposed on him of defending loyally the
+party's leader against attacks from the men who had been most active in
+selecting him.</p>
+
+<p>A part of the compact under which Redmond was elected to the chair
+limited the power of the newly chosen. He was to be Chairman, not
+leader; that is to say, he was not to act except after consultation with
+the party as a whole: he was not to commit them upon policy. This meant
+in practice that he acted as head of a cabinet, which from 1906 onwards
+consisted of Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor&mdash;the last
+representing not only a great personal parliamentary experience and
+ability, but also the powerful and zealous organization of Irish in
+Great Britain. Redmond adhered scrupulously to the spirit of this
+compact. There was only one instance in which he took action without
+consultation. But that instance was the most important of all&mdash;his
+speech at the outbreak of the war.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing which governed his conduct in the chair of the party, as
+indeed it governed that of nearly all the rank and file, was his horror
+of the years which Ireland had gone through since Parnell's fall. He
+loathed faction and he had struggled through murky whirlpools of it; for
+the rest of his life he was determined, almost at any cost, to maintain
+the greatest possible degree of unity among Irish Nationalists. Yet in
+the end he <a name="Page_26"></a>unhesitatingly made a choice and took an action which risked
+dividing, and in the last event actually divided, Nationalist Ireland as
+it had never been divided before. There were things for which he would
+face even that supreme peril. Deep in his heart there was a vision which
+compelled him. It was the vision of Ireland united as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>All this, however, lay far in the future when he was elected to the
+chair; for the moment his task was to reunite Irish Nationalists, and it
+began prosperously. From the first his position was one of growing
+strength. Irishmen all the world over were heartsick of faction and
+rejoiced in even the name of unity. Redmond made it a reality. While
+leading the little Parnellite party, reduced at last to nine, his line
+of action was comparable to that pursued by Mr. William O'Brien from
+1910 onwards. It had, to put things mildly, not been calculated to
+assist the leader of the main Nationalist body. In 1904, Justin
+McCarthy, then retired from politics, wrote in his book on <i>British
+Political Parties</i>: &quot;Parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service
+of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and
+was utterly unsparing in his denunciations of the men who maintained the
+other side of the controversy. From this it was not unnatural to expect
+difficulties occasioned both by the leader's temper and by the temper of
+those whom he led. But men who had been adverse assured me that they had
+changed their opinions and were glad to find they could work with
+Redmond in perfect harmony and that his manners and bearing showed no
+signs whatever of any bitter memories belonging to the days of internal
+dispute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the man's nature was kindly and tolerant; courtesy came more
+natural to him than invective. Above all, he was sensitive for the
+reputation of his country in the eyes of the world, and the spectacle of
+Irishmen heaping vilifications on each other always filled <a name="Page_27"></a>him with
+distaste. Whether the taunts passed between Nationalist and Unionist or
+Nationalist and Nationalist made little difference to his feeling. With
+him it was no empty phrase that he regarded all Irishmen in equal degree
+as his fellow-countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>In 1902 he was once more a party to a continued effort made by Irishmen
+outside of party lines to solve a part of the national difficulty. The
+policy of land purchase had proved its immense superiority over that of
+dual ownership and had even been introduced on a considerable scale. But
+its very success led to trouble, because on one side of a boundary fence
+there would be farmers who had purchased and whose annual instalments of
+purchase money were lower than the rents paid by their neighbours on the
+other side of the mearing. Renewed struggle against rent led to new
+eviction scenes on the grand scale; and by this time landlord opinion
+was half converted to the purchase policy, as a necessary solution. The
+persistency of one young Galway man, Captain John Shawe Taylor, brought
+about the famous Land Conference of 1902, in which Mr. O'Brien, Mr.
+Healy, Mr. Redmond and Mr. T.W. Russell on behalf of the tenants met
+Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson Poe and Colonel Nugent
+Everard representing (though not officially) the landlord interest: and
+the result of the agreement reached by this body was seen in Mr.
+Wyndham's Land Purchase Act of 1903. This great and drastic measure
+altered fundamentally the character of the Irish problem. Directly by
+its own effect, and indirectly by the example of new methods, it changed
+opinion alike in Ireland and Great Britain. In Ireland hitherto, as has
+been already seen, resistance to Home Rule had come primarily from the
+landlord class, by whom the Nationalist desire for self-government was
+construed as a cloak for the wish to revive or reverse the ancient
+confiscations. Now, the land question was by general consent settled, at
+least in principle; in propor<a name="Page_28"></a>tion as landlords were bought out the
+leading economic argument against Home Rule disappeared. The opposition
+reduced itself strictly to political grounds; and it began to be plain
+that the true heart of resistance lay in Ulster.</p>
+
+<p>Also, lines of cleavage in the Unionist camp began to appear. Already,
+landlords in the South and West had found a common ground of action with
+representatives of the tenants. It was felt, alike in Ireland and
+England, that this precedent might be developed further.</p>
+
+<p>In England political opinion was much affected by the apparent success
+of an attempt to deal with the Irish problem piecemeal. The Congested
+Districts Board had done much to relieve those regions where famine was
+always a possibility; Local Government had given satisfactory results;
+and now Land Purchase was hailed as the beginning of a new era. The idea
+of seeing how much farther the principle of tentative approach could be
+carried took strong hold of many minds, and the word &quot;devolution&quot; came
+into fashion.</p>
+
+<p>When it became known that Sir Antony MacDonnell, then Under-Secretary at
+Dublin Castle, had, in consultation with Lord Dunraven, drafted a scheme
+for transferring parts of Irish administration to a purely Irish
+authority, a situation rapidly defined itself in which Ulster broke away
+from the more liberal elements in Irish Unionism. The Ulster group
+demanded and obtained the resignation of Mr. George Wyndham; they
+demanded also the dismissal of the Under-Secretary. But Sir Antony
+MacDonnell was not of a resigning temper; he had not acted without
+authority, and he was defended zealously by the Irish members. The
+section of Liberal opinion which adhered rather to Lord Rosebery than to
+Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman probably drew the conclusion that the Irish
+party were prepared at least to tolerate the policy of approaching Home
+Rule step by step; and beyond doubt they were impressed by the prestige
+of<a name="Page_29"></a> Sir Antony MacDonnell's record and personality. The son of a small
+Irish Catholic landlord, educated at the Galway College of the Queen's
+University, he had entered the Indian Civil Service and in it risen to
+the highest point of power. The recommendation that he should be brought
+home to assist in the Government of Ireland had come from Lord
+Lansdowne, then Governor-General of India, who knew that the famous
+administrator of the Punjab was a Catholic Irishman of Nationalist
+sympathies. He had been accepted by Mr. Wyndham, his official chief,
+&quot;rather as a colleague than as a subordinate.&quot; Officially and publicly,
+the credit for the Land Act of 1903 went to the Chief Secretary, and Mr.
+Wyndham deserves much of it. But no one who knew the two men could have
+doubted that in the shaping of a measure involving so wide a range of
+detail, the leading part must have been taken by the Irish Civil Servant
+who in India had acquired most of his fame from a sweeping measure of
+land reform.</p>
+
+<p>Proposals to alter the method and conduct of Irish administration before
+touching the parliamentary power to legislate and to tax came with
+extraordinary weight in coming from such a man; and the history of the
+previous Home Rule Bills was not encouraging to anyone, especially to
+those who had been members of Mr. Gladstone's two last administrations.
+From the time of the Parnell divorce case onwards, the Irish question
+had brought to Liberals nothing but embarrassment and embitterment. The
+enthusiasm for Home Rule which grew steadily from 1886 up to the
+severance between Gladstone and Parnell had vanished in the squalid
+controversies of the &quot;split.&quot; Moreover, now, by the action of Mr.
+Chamberlain, a new dividing line had been brought into British politics.
+The cry of Protection seemed in the opinion of all Liberals to menace
+ruin to British prosperity; the banner of Free Trade offered a splendid
+rallying-point for a party which had known fifteen years <a name="Page_30"></a>of dissension
+and division. Prudent men thought it would be unsafe, unwise and
+unpatriotic to compromise this great national interest by retaining the
+old watch-word on which Gladstone had twice fought and twice been
+beaten.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear, too, that a Home Rule Bill would provoke a direct conflict
+with the House of Lords and would raise that great struggle on not the
+most favourable issue. Statesmen like Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith
+probably believed that a partial measure, an instalment of
+self-government, to which some influential sections of the Tory party
+would not be unfriendly, might have strong hopes of passing into law.</p>
+
+<p>So it came to pass that in the election of 1906 the Liberal Party came
+into power with a majority of unexampled magnitude, but with a
+Government pledged, negatively, not to introduce a Home Rule Bill in
+that Parliament, but, positively, to attempt an Irish settlement by the
+policy of instalments.</p>
+
+<p>In all this lay the seeds of trouble for the Irish leader. Liberals have
+never understood that Ireland will not take from them what it would take
+from the Tories. It will accept, as a palliative, from the party opposed
+to Home Rule what it will not accept from those who have admitted the
+justice of the national demand.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>&quot;For myself,&quot; said Redmond in his speech to the Irish Convention in May
+1907, &quot;I have always expressed in public and in private my opinion that
+no half-way house on this question is possible; but at the same time I
+am, or at any rate I try to be, a practical politician. In the lodgment
+this idea of instalments had got in the minds of English statesmen I
+recognized the fact&mdash;and after all in politics the first essential is to
+recognize <a name="Page_31"></a>facts&mdash;I recognized the fact that in this Parliament we were
+not going to get a pure Home Rule Bill offered, and I consented, and I
+was absolutely right in consenting, that whatever scheme short of that
+was put forward would be considered calmly on its merits.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This meant that during the whole of the year 1906 and a part of 1907 the
+proposal of the new Irish Bill was under discussion with the Irish
+leaders. The course of these deliberations was undoubtedly a
+disappointment. Mr. Bryce was replaced by Mr. Birrell as Chief
+Secretary, but the scheme still fell short of what Redmond had hoped to
+attain. Unfortunately, and it was a characteristic error, his sanguine
+temperament had led him to encourage in Ireland hopes as high as his
+own. The production of the Irish Council Bill and its reception in
+Ireland was the first real shock to his power.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Birrell in introducing the measure spoke with his eye on the Tories
+and the House of Lords. He represented it as only the most trifling
+concession; he emphasized not the powers which it conveyed but the
+limitations to them. Redmond in following him was in a difficult
+position. He stressed the point that to accept a scheme which by reason
+of its partial nature would break down in its working would be ruinous,
+because failure would be attributed to natural incapacity in the Irish
+people. Acceptance, therefore, he said, could not be unconditional and
+undoubtedly to his mind it was conditioned by his hope of securing
+certain important amendments, which he outlined. None the less, the tone
+of his speech was one of acceptance, and he concluded:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;I have never in all the long years that I have been in this House
+     spoken under such a heavy sense of responsibility as I am speaking
+     on this measure this afternoon. Ever since Mr. Gladstone's Bill of
+     1886 Ireland has been waiting for some scheme to settle the
+     problem&mdash;waiting sometimes in hope, sometimes almost in despair;
+     but the horrible thing is this, that all the time that Ireland <a name="Page_32"></a>has
+     been so waiting there has been a gaping wound in her side, and her
+     sons have had to stand by helpless while they saw her very
+     life-blood flowing out. Who can say that is an exaggeration? Twenty
+     years of resolute government by the party above the gangway have
+     diminished the population of Ireland by a million. No man in any
+     position of influence can take upon himself the awful
+     responsibility of despising and putting upon one side any device
+     that may arrest that hemorrhage, even although he believed, as I
+     do, that far different remedies must be applied before Ireland can
+     stand upon her feet in vigorous strength. We are determined, as far
+     as we are concerned, that these other remedies shall be applied;
+     but in the meantime we should shrink from the responsibility of
+     rejecting anything which, after that full consideration which the
+     Bill will receive, seems to our deliberate judgment calculated to
+     relieve the sufferings of Ireland and hasten the day of her full
+     national convalescence.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>There is no doubt that the element in him which urged him to welcome
+anything that could set Irishmen working together on Irish problems made
+it almost impossible for him to throw aside this chance. It was clear to
+me also that by long months of work in secret deliberation the proposals
+originally set out had been greatly altered, so much so that in
+surveying the Bill he was conscious mainly of the improvements in it;
+and that in this process his mind had lost perception of how the measure
+was likely to affect Irish opinion&mdash;especially in view of his own
+hopeful prognostications. At all events, the reception of Mr. Birrell's
+speech, even by Redmond's own colleagues, marked a sudden change in the
+atmosphere. Some desired to vote at once against the measure; many were
+with difficulty brought into the lobby to support even the formal stage
+of first reading. In Ireland there was fierce denunciation. A Convention
+was called for May 21st. The crowd was so great that many of us could
+not make our way into the Mansion House; and Redmond opened the
+proceedings by moving <a name="Page_33"></a>the rejection of the Bill. In the interval since
+the debate he had been confronted with a definite refusal to concede the
+amendments for which he asked.</p>
+
+<p>These were mainly two, of principle: for the objection taken to the
+finance of the Bill was a detail, though of the first importance. The
+Bill proposed to hand over the five great departments of Irish
+administration to the control of an Irish Council. The decisions of that
+Council were to be subject to the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant, as are
+the decisions of Parliament to the veto of the Crown. But the Bill
+proposed not merely to give to the Viceroy the power of vetoing proposed
+action but of instituting other action on his own initiative. Secondly,
+the Council was to exercise its control through Committees, each of
+which was to have a paid chairman, nominated by the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would be far better,&quot; Redmond had said in the House of Commons, &quot;to
+have one man selected as the chairmen of these committees are to be
+selected, to have charge, so far as the Council is concerned, of the
+working of the Department, and then all these chairmen acting together
+could form a sort of organic body which would give cohesion, would
+co-ordinate and give stability to the whole of the work. I am afraid
+that the Government seem to have shrunk from that for fear the argument
+would be used against them that they were really creating a Ministry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was the real difficulty. A Council subject only to a veto on its
+acts, even though it could neither pass a by-law nor strike a rate,
+would undoubtedly be said by the Unionist opposition to be a rudimentary
+parliament. A group of chairmen possessing administrative powers like
+those of Ministers would be labelled a Ministry; and the Liberals who
+had pledged themselves not to give effect to their Home Rule principles
+were sensitive to charges of breach of faith.</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious fact in politics that the public promise <a name="Page_34"></a>conveyed in
+the adoption of certain principles is generally taken to be on the level
+of ordinary commercial obligation. Failure to keep it jeopardizes a
+man's reputation for political stability, just as failure to pay a
+tailor's bill imperils a man's financial character. But a promise to
+political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles
+stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make
+good; and on this point Mr. Asquith in particular has always shown an
+adamantine resolution.</p>
+
+<p>From 1907 onwards it was with Mr. Asquith that Redmond had chiefly to
+count. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who, personally, had given no such
+limiting pledges, and who during his two years of leadership commanded a
+respect, an affectionate allegiance, from his followers in the House
+without parallel at all events since Mr. Gladstone's day, was fast
+weakening in health. He lived long enough to give freedom to South
+Africa, the one outstanding achievement of that Parliament; and by the
+success of that great measure he did more to remove British distrust of
+Home Rule than even Gladstone ever accomplished. It was no fault of his
+if Liberalism failed to settle the Irish question at the moment when
+Liberal power reached its highest point.</p>
+
+<p>The failure of the Council Bill had one good result, and one only. It
+cleared the way for a definite propaganda on Home Rule. But before this
+could be undertaken it was necessary to pull Nationalist Ireland
+together, for it was once more rent with division and distrust. Mr.
+Healy, who in 1901 had been expelled from the Irish party and its
+organization on the motion of Mr. O'Brien and against Redmond's advice,
+and Mr. O'Brien, who had subsequently retired from the party against
+Redmond's wish, were both of them formidable antagonists; and each was
+vehement in attack on the main body of Nationalists and their leader. It
+was some time before Redmond braced himself to the struggle; but from
+the <a name="Page_35"></a>opening of the autumn recess in 1907 he undertook a campaign
+throughout Ireland which it would be difficult to overpraise. In a
+series of speeches at chosen centres, delivered before great audiences,
+he laid down once more the national demand as he conceived it; and in
+each speech he dealt with a different aspect of the case for Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>A formal outcome of this campaign was the re-establishment of national
+unity. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy returned to the Irish party for a brief
+period. But the more important result was the re-establishment of
+Redmond's personal position. He had made an effort which would have been
+great for any man, but for him was a victory over his own temperament.
+That temperament had in it, negatively, a great lack of personal
+ambition and, positively, a strong love for a quiet life. He did his
+work in Parliament regularly and conscientiously, always there day in
+and day out; and it was work of a very exacting kind. This had become
+the routine of his existence and he did it without strain. But to go
+outside it was for him always an effort. He hated town life; but more
+than this, he hated ceremonies, presentations, receptions in hotels, and
+all the promiscuous contact of political gatherings. Nevertheless, when
+he came to such an occasion no living man acquitted himself better.
+Apart from his oratory, he had an admirable manner, a dignified yet
+friendly courtesy which gained attachment. In the course of the autumn
+and winter following the Irish Council Bill he must have met and been
+seen by a hundred times more of his adherents than in any similar period
+of his leadership. People all over Ireland heard him not only on the
+public platform but in small addresses to deputations, in impromptu
+speeches at semi-public dinners, and all of this strengthened him where
+an Irish leader most needs to be strengthened&mdash;in the hearts of the
+people. The hold which he gained then stood to him during the years
+which <a name="Page_36"></a>followed and up to the outbreak of the war. But it could have
+been still further strengthened, and if ambition had been a motive force
+in him, he would have strengthened it. More than that, if he had
+realized his full value to Ireland, he would have felt it his duty to do
+so. Modesty, combined with a certain degree of indolence, made him leave
+all that contact with the mass of his followers which is necessary to
+leadership to be effected through his chief colleagues, Mr. Dillon and
+Mr. Devlin&mdash;who, through no will of theirs, became rather joint leaders
+than lieutenants, so far as Ireland was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Circumstances helped to emphasize this tendency. His work lay very
+greatly in London, Parliament occupied every year a longer and longer
+space. The task of platform advocacy all over England was urgent, and in
+England Redmond stood out alone. It was little to be wondered at that
+when each long deferred recess came he made it a vacation and not a
+change of work. The seclusion from direct intercourse with the mass of
+his followers which conditions imposed upon him was further accentuated
+by his personal tastes and his choice of a dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of the nineteenth century the mountain range which
+runs along the east coast from outside Dublin through Wicklow into
+county Wexford was a country difficult of access and unsubdued. Here in
+1803 Emmet found a refuge, and after Emmet's death here Michael Dwyer
+still held out: Connemara itself was hardly wilder or less accessible,
+till the &quot;military road&quot; was run, little more than a hundred years ago,
+from Dublin over the western slopes of Featherbed, past Glencree, and
+through Callary Bog, skirting Glendalough and traversing the wild
+recesses of Glenmalure, so that it cuts across the headwaters of those
+beautiful streams which meet in the Vale of Ovoca. From Glenmalure the
+road climbs a steep ridge and then travels in wide <a name="Page_37"></a>downward curves
+across the seaward side of Lugnaquilla&mdash;fifth in height among Irish
+mountains. Here, at the head of a long valley which runs down to the
+Meeting of the Waters, was built one of the barracks which billeted the
+original garrison of the road. Later, these buildings had been used for
+constabulary; but with peaceful times this grew needless, for there was
+little disturbance among these Wicklow folk, tenants of little farms,
+each with a sheep-run on the vast hills. Nothing could be less like the
+flat sea-bordering lands of the Barony of Forth in which the Redmonds
+spent their boyhood than these wild, sweeping, torrent-seamed folds of
+hill and valley; but the place came to him as part of his inheritance
+from &quot;the Chief.&quot; Parnell's home at Avondale was some ten miles from
+here, lying in woods beside the Ovoca River; but the Parnell property
+stretched up to the slopes of Lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack
+was used by him as a shooting lodge. Here, in the early days before his
+life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to
+his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two Redmonds and those
+others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in
+this strange, gaunt survival of military rule. After Parnell's death
+Redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it
+became increasingly and exclusively his home in Ireland. It was, indeed,
+Ireland itself for him. In it and through it he knew Ireland intimately,
+felt Ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a
+way of being. Ireland to him meant Aughavanagh.</p>
+
+<p>Partly, no doubt, the almost unbroken wildness of his surroundings
+appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly
+emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have
+recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be
+difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the <a name="Page_38"></a>hill shapes are
+featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born
+artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to
+beauty in all kinds&mdash;yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical,
+graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its
+beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea&mdash;yet with a
+difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and
+Aughavanagh was a place of rest. Ireland is a good country to rest in.
+But it would have been far better for Redmond and for Ireland if Ireland
+had been the place not of his rest, but of his work.</p>
+
+<p>His work was essentially that of an agent of Ireland carrying on
+Ireland's affairs in a strange capital. He spent more of his time in
+London than in Ireland, but he was never part of the life of London,
+never in any sense a Londoner. He was part of the life of the House of
+Commons, for that was his place of work; and when he left it he went to
+Aughavanagh as a man returns from the City to his home. This home of his
+was in no sense connected with his active occupations. He was no lover
+of gardening or of farming; he had none of the Irishman's taste for the
+overseeing of stock or land; he enjoyed shooting, but he was not a
+passionate sportsman. What was a passion with him&mdash;- for he sacrificed
+much to it&mdash;was rest in the place of his choice.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a lonely habitation. He was no recluse, and when there he was
+always surrounded by his friends. I do not know precisely how one could
+constitute a list of them&mdash;but half a dozen men at least came and went
+there as they chose. Mr. Mooney, Mr. Hayden, &quot;Long John&quot; O'Connor, Dr.
+Kenny&mdash;these, and above all, Paddy O'Brien, the party's chief acting
+whip&mdash;were constant there. Some came to shoot, and Willie Redmond used
+to come over from his house at Delgany, where the Glen of the Downs
+debouches seaward; walking generally, for he was the fastest and most
+untiring of mountaineers:<a name="Page_39"></a> very few cared to keep beside him on the
+hills. Others were content to share the daily bathes, morning and
+afternoon, in a long deep pool where the little stream tumbling down a
+series of cascades makes a place to dive and swim in. These were the
+friends of Redmond's own generation, and they were also his son's
+friends; but the two daughters had their allies, and one way or another
+the party was apt to be a big one&mdash;very simply provided for. When I went
+there first (in 1907) you climbed a narrow stone stair to the first
+floor; on the left was a dining-room, beyond that a billiard-room; on
+the right, Redmond's study, and beyond that his bedroom. Another flight
+took you to the upper regions, where were two dormitories&mdash;the girls to
+the right, the men to the left. Later, he made some alterations, and the
+upstair rooms were subdivided off; the garden was developed; it became
+more of a house and less of a barrack; but the character of the life did
+not change. It was most simple, most hospitable, most unconventional and
+most remote.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly a great part of Aughavanagh's charm for him lay in its
+remoteness. It was seven Irish miles up a hilly road from the nearest
+railway station, post office or telegraph station. Aughrim was three
+hours' train journey from Dublin, on a tiny branch line, and trains were
+few. Until motors brought him (to his intense resentment) within reach,
+he was as inaccessible as if he had lived in Clare or Mayo.</p>
+
+<p>So it came to pass that though he knew to the very core one typical
+district of Ireland, and was far more closely in touch with a few score
+of Irish peasants through their daily life than any of his leading
+associates, he was yet cut off by his own choice from much that is
+Ireland&mdash;and perhaps from much that was most important to him. Political
+opinion is created in the towns, and he knew the Irish townsfolk, so far
+as he could manage it, only through his correspondence, and through
+those <a name="Page_40"></a>business visits to Dublin which he made as few as possible.</p>
+
+<p>If his work had lain, where it should by rights have lain, in a
+ministerial office in Dublin, all would have been well. As it was, the
+deliberate and extreme seclusion of his life in Ireland weakened his
+influence. He was far too shrewd not to know this, and far too
+unambitious to care. Work he never shrank from. But the daily
+solicitations of people with personal grievances to lay before him,
+personal interests which they desired him to promote, made a form of
+trouble which in his periods of rest from work he refused to undergo.</p>
+
+<p>The same qualities in him were responsible for his persistent refusal to
+accept private hospitality where he went on public business. Whether in
+Ireland or in Great Britain, he must stay at a hotel, and many were the
+magnates of Liberalism whose ruffled feelings it was necessary to smooth
+down on this account. He detested being lionized and wanted always, when
+the public affair was over, to get away to his own quarters.</p>
+
+<p>The demands on him in England for platform work were portentous. Every
+constituency which wanted a meeting on the Home Rule question wanted
+Redmond and no other speaker. Of course he could not go to one-twentieth
+of the places where he was asked for; and his objection to going was not
+the effort involved but the impossibility either of indefinitely
+repeating himself or of finding something new to say each time. &quot;If it
+was in America,&quot; he would say, &quot;I would speak as often as you asked me&quot;
+(it was my misfortune to have to do the asking), &quot;because they never
+report a speech.&quot; The fact is worth noting, for in scores of instances
+what was adduced by opponents as quotation from his utterances in the
+United States represented simply some American journalist's impression,
+perhaps less of what Redmond said than of what, in the reporter's
+opinion, he should have said. Those who represented him as <a name="Page_41"></a>putting one
+face on the argument in America and another in Great Britain did not
+know the man. &quot;I have made it a rule,&quot; he said to me more than once, &quot;to
+say the extremest things I had to say in the House of Commons.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>However, all the machinery which was employed by the opponents of Home
+Rule to prejudice Ireland's case in the British constituencies proved
+very ineffectual. For one thing, the lesson of South Africa had gone
+home. For another, and perhaps a greater, no cause ever had a missionary
+better adapted to the temperament of the British democracy. The dignity
+and beauty of Redmond's eloquence, the weight which he could give to an
+argument, his extraordinary gift for simplifying an issue and grouping
+thoughts in large bold masses&mdash;all these things carried audiences with
+them.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>Between 1908 and 1910 we were still, though with rapidly increasing
+success, trying to get a hearing for the Irish question&mdash;trying to push
+it once more to the front. The change of leadership from Sir Henry
+Campbell-Bannerman to Mr. Asquith had damped Liberal enthusiasm. We got
+solid work done for Ireland in the University Act of 1908, though
+Redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like
+that in which he had himself been an undergraduate. A highly contentious
+measure was also carried in the Land Act of 1909. But a new power was
+coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts. Mr.
+Lloyd George put a new fighting spirit into Liberalism: but the objects
+which he had at heart could only be achieved by a great expenditure of
+electoral power, and among those objects Irish self-government found
+only a secondary place.<a name="Page_42"></a> When Mr. Gladstone spoke of liberty he thought
+of what he had helped to bring to Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and
+Montenegro&mdash;what he had tried to bring to Ireland. When Mr. Lloyd George
+spoke of liberty, he thought of what he wanted to bring to England
+first, and to Ireland by the way; his conviction that Ireland needed
+self-government was not so deeply rooted as his conviction that the poor
+throughout the United Kingdom needed help.</p>
+
+<p>Old Age Pensions had been popular, but had not been a fighting issue.
+Mr. Lloyd George provided the fighting issue with a vengeance when he
+set himself to pay for them. Unfortunately, Nationalist Ireland had no
+enthusiasm for the Budget which English Radicalism made its flag. A
+country of peasant proprietors was easily scared by the very name of
+land taxes. But above all the Finance Bill dealt drastically, and many
+thought unfairly, with the powerful liquor trade, which in its branches
+of brewing and distilling included the main manufacturing interest of
+southern Ireland, and on its retail side was incredibly diffused through
+the whole shopkeeping community.</p>
+
+<p>The dissident Nationalists saw their chance. Mr. O'Brien emerged from
+one of his periodic retirements to lead a whirlwind campaign against the
+&quot;robber Budget.&quot; Redmond and our party were obliged to oppose a measure
+which pressed so hard as this undoubtedly did on Ireland. Our opposition
+to the land taxes was withdrawn when valuable concessions had been made,
+but no such compromise was considered possible on the liquor taxes. On
+the other hand, it grew clear that the measure was likely to produce a
+conflict in which the power of the House of Lords might be challenged on
+the most favourable ground: and for that reason, when the third reading
+was reached, the Irish party abstained from voting against it. This
+course, while it facilitated close co-operation with Liberalism in the
+<a name="Page_43"></a>general election which followed, weakened us in Ireland; and eleven out
+of the eighty-three Nationalist members returned in January 1910 ranked
+themselves as outside the party; though Mr. O'Brien's actual following
+was limited to seven Cork members and Mr. Healy.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The action of the Lords in rejecting the Budget of 1909 had an important
+personal result. It placed Mr. Asquith in a r&ocirc;le which no one was ever
+better qualified to fill&mdash;that of a Liberal statesman defending
+principles of democratic control menaced after a long period of
+security. The Prime Minister, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now
+became the protagonist; and this was to Redmond's liking, for he felt
+that Mr. Asquith was more concerned with the problems which had occupied
+Gladstone's closing years and Mr. Lloyd George with those of a later
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in the first grave encounter after the rejection of the Budget,
+Redmond and the leader of the Liberal party came to sharp differences.
+The general election had amply justified the advice which was urged by
+him on Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman when the House of Lords rejected the
+Education Bill in 1906&mdash;namely, that the Liberal party should take up at
+once the inevitable fight before their enormous strength had been
+frittered away in a series of disappointments. The majority of 1906 was
+too swollen to be healthy: owing to the ruling out of Home Rule, it
+included a number of men only partial adherents of the full Liberal
+programme; and a diminution of its proportions owing to the traditional
+swing of the pendulum was certain. But in January 1910 the losses were
+more than even sanguine Tory prophets predicted. Tories came back equal
+in strength <a name="Page_44"></a>to the Liberals: Labour was only forty, so that the Irish
+party held the balance in the House.</p>
+
+<p>The election had been fought expressly on the issue of Government's
+claim to enable a Liberal Government to deal with certain problems,
+among which the Irish question occupied the foremost place. It was easy
+now for the Tories to argue that the Government appealing to the country
+on that issue had lost two hundred seats. They said: &quot;You have authority
+to pass your Budget&mdash;but for these vast unconstitutional changes you
+have no mandate.&quot; The temper of their party, which had more than doubled
+its numbers, was very high: in the Liberal ranks depression reigned and
+counsels were divided.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the election Mr. Asquith had made a great speech in
+the Albert Hall in which he outlined the Liberal policy. In it he
+declared that the pledge against introducing a Home Rule Bill was
+withdrawn, and that the establishment of self-government for Ireland,
+subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, was among the
+Government's main purposes. But the House of Lords was in the way.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall not assume office and we shall not hold office unless we can
+secure the safeguards which experience shows us to be necessary for the
+legislative utility and honour of the party of progress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was universally taken to mean that he would obtain a guarantee that
+the King would, if necessary, consent to the creation of sufficient new
+peers to override the hostile majority. But as the election progressed,
+uncertainties developed and an alternative policy of attempting to
+reform the Upper House was advocated in certain quarters. The question
+arose also as to whether the first business of the new House should be
+to pass the Budget which the Lords had thrown out or to proceed with the
+attack on the power of veto.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond's view on this was not in doubt. At a <a name="Page_45"></a>meeting in Dublin on
+February 10, 1910, he declared in the most emphatic manner that to deal
+with the Budget first would be a breach of Mr. Asquith's pledge to the
+country, since it would throw away the power of the House of Commons to
+stop supply. This speech attracted much attention, and the memory of it
+was present to many a fortnight later when Mr. Asquith was replying to
+Mr. Balfour at the opening of the debate on the Address. The Prime
+Minister dwelt strongly on the administrative necessity for regularizing
+the financial position disturbed by the Upper House's unconstitutional
+action. He indicated also the need for reform in the composition of that
+House. But, above all, he disclaimed as improper and impossible any
+attempt to secure in advance a pledge for the contingent exercise of the
+Royal prerogative.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have received no such guarantee and I have asked for no such
+guarantee,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>The change was marked indeed from the moment when he uttered in the
+Albert Hall his sentence against assuming office or holding office
+without the necessary safeguards&mdash;an assurance at which the whole vast
+assembly rose to their feet and cheered. Every word in his speech on the
+Address added to the depression of his followers and the elation of the
+Opposition. Redmond followed him at once. In such circumstances as then
+existed, it was exceedingly undesirable for the Irish leader to
+emphasize the fact that his vote could overthrow the Government: and the
+least unnecessary display of this power would naturally and properly
+have been resented by the Government's following. No one knew this
+better than Redmond, yet the position demanded bold action. His speech,
+courteous, as always, in tone, and studiously respectful in its
+reference to the position of the Crown, was an open menace to the
+Government. He quoted the Prime Minister's words at the Albert Hall, he
+appealed to the House at large for the construction <a name="Page_46"></a>which had been
+everywhere put on them; and it was apparent that he had the full
+sympathy not only of his own party and of Labour, but of most of Mr.
+Asquith's own following. He concluded in these words:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;If the Prime Minister is not in a position to say that he has such
+     guarantees as are necessary to enable him to pass a Veto Bill this
+     year, and if in spite of that he intends to remain in office and
+     proposes to pass the Budget into law and then to adjourn&mdash;I do not
+     care for how short or how long&mdash;the consideration of the Bill
+     dealing with the veto of the House of Lords, that is a policy which
+     Ireland cannot and will not support.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The effect on the House was such that no one rose to continue the
+debate. Next day it was resumed, and not only Labour speakers, but one
+after another of the Liberals, including some of the Prime Minister's
+most docile, old-fashioned supporters rose and declared that Redmond and
+not the Leader of the House had expressed their views. So began a
+remarkable struggle in which the combined forces of the private
+members&mdash;Liberal, Labour and Irish&mdash;united by a common desire to destroy
+the domination of the Peers, contended against the Cabinet's policy of
+attempting not merely to limit the power of veto but to reconstitute the
+Upper House. In such a process men saw that the driving force of the
+majority would waste away and that the composite character of their
+alliance would lead to certain disruption.</p>
+
+<p>Before the debate on the Address concluded it was plain that Redmond had
+won. From that period onwards his popularity, and, through him, the
+popularity of the party which he led, was immensely increased in Great
+Britain. He was regarded as one of the men who had rendered best service
+to democracy against privilege. He himself believed that in this first
+contest Ireland had decided the victory&mdash;had decided the overthrow of
+the House which had so long opposed its liberties. Labour had then
+neither the essential leader <a name="Page_47"></a>nor the necessary parliamentary strength:
+Liberalism was confused and uncertain at the critical moment.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in the very process of achieving this success Redmond laid himself
+open to attack. The Budget was regarded with dislike by a very large
+section of Irishmen, and apart from considerations of political strategy
+the Irish members would certainly have voted against it. Now, the power
+was in their hands to defeat it finally. By so doing they would, of
+course, justify to some degree the unconstitutional action of the Lords;
+but this consideration did not weigh with Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy.
+They accused Redmond of selling the real interests of Ireland to keep a
+Government in office which could offer nothing in return but a gambling
+chance of limiting the veto of the Lords. Mr. O'Brien was firmly
+confident that no such measure would ever pass. He denounced the
+bargain, not merely because it was a bargain in which Redmond accepted
+what was in his view a ruinous injustice to Ireland, but because it was
+a bargain in which the Irish had been outwitted. This line of argument
+was to be dinned into the ears of Ireland during all the remaining years
+of Redmond's life. The only conclusive answer to it was to gain Home
+Rule. If, in the long run, it came to appear that the attackers had been
+right in their contention, and that Ireland had never received the
+expected return, the fault for that result lay with Ireland itself no
+less than with England; it most assuredly did not lie with John Redmond.
+A great weight of responsibility rests on those who from the first hour
+of Ireland's opportunity ingeminated distrust to an over-suspicious
+people.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, however, the attack made no headway. Irishmen have a
+shrewd political sense, and they felt that in the struggle to pin
+Liberal Ministers to the true fighting objective Redmond had won. They
+were also delighted to see the Irish party openly exert its power&mdash;not
+quite realizing that such exhibitions were <a name="Page_48"></a>against the interest of the
+democratic alliance, which had to undergo a grave test. The Government's
+vacillation had rendered another general election necessary if the Veto
+question were to be fought out.</p>
+
+<p>On April 29th the House adjourned for the Whitsuntide recess, after
+which the crisis was to come with the decision of the House of Lords
+whether to accept or reject the Veto Resolution, which had then passed
+the Commons. On May 7th, after a short and sudden illness, King Edward
+died. Both the great English parties were unwilling to renew the most
+acute political struggle of modern times at the opening of a new reign,
+and means of accommodation was sought through a Conference which sat
+first on June 16th and held twenty-one meetings. No representative of
+Ireland was on this body. On November 10th it reported that no result
+had come of its efforts, and a new general election was fixed for
+December 1st.</p>
+
+<p>When the Conference finally broke down Redmond was on his way back from
+America, whither he had gone accompanied by Mr. Devlin. Mr. T.P.
+O'Connor at the same time undertook a tour in Canada. The success of
+these missions showed that the interest and the confidence of the Irish
+race were higher than at any previous period: the ambassadors brought
+back a contribution of one hundred thousand dollars to the election
+funds, and the ship on which they came was saluted by bonfires all along
+the coast of Cork. Ireland, too, was subscribing as Ireland had not
+subscribed since Parnell's zenith: and this was an Ireland in which the
+land-hunger had been largely appeased. The theory that Ireland's demand
+for self-government was merely generated by Ireland's poverty began to
+look ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>It was the cue of the Tory Press at this moment to excite prejudice
+against the Liberals by representing them as the bondslaves of the
+&quot;dollar dictator&quot;&mdash;ordered about by an Irish autocrat with swollen
+money-<a name="Page_49"></a>bags from New York. This line of argument did us little harm in
+Great Britain; in Ireland it improved Redmond's position, for it was a
+useful answer to Mr. O'Brien's representation of him as the abject tool
+of Liberal politicians. The election, on the whole, strengthened our
+party. Mr. Healy was thrown out; and Mr. O'Brien, though he retained the
+seven seats held by his adherents in Cork, failed in two out of three
+personal candidatures.</p>
+
+<p>In Great Britain the second election of the year 1910 had the surprising
+result of reproducing almost exactly the same division of parties: and
+this added greatly to the strength of the Government. The Tory leaders
+now, instead of insisting on a maintenance of the old Constitution, went
+into alternative proposals&mdash;including the adoption of the Referendum.
+This was their constructive line; the destructive resolved itself
+largely into an endeavour to focus resistance on the question of
+Ireland&mdash;the purpose for which alone, they said, abolition of the veto
+was demanded. As has often happened, action taken by the Vatican gave
+the opponents of Home Rule a useful weapon. The <i>Ne Temere</i> decree,
+promulgated in the year 1908, laid down that any marriage to which a
+Roman Catholic was a party, if not solemnized according to the rites of
+the Church of Rome, should be treated as invalid from a canonical point
+of view. Although legally binding, it should be regarded as no marriage
+in the eyes of an orthodox Roman Catholic until it was regularized in
+the manner provided by the Church, The case of an unhappy mixed marriage
+in Belfast was exploited with fury on a thousand platforms. Another
+decree, the <i>Motu Proprio</i>, was construed as seeking to establish
+immunity for the clergy from proceedings in civil courts. This, however,
+was of less platform value, because no instance could be found of a
+practical application; whereas the McCann case unquestionably gave Tory
+disputants a formidable instrument for evoking the ancient distrust of
+Roman<a name="Page_50"></a> Catholicism which is so deeply ingrained in the Protestant mind.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of all, the English democracy remained steady in its purpose.
+Party feeling, however, ran to heights not known in living memory. In
+July 1911 the Parliament Bill went to the Lords, where it was altered
+out of all recognition. On July 20th Mr. Asquith sent a letter to Mr.
+Balfour stating that the King had guaranteed that he would exercise his
+prerogative to secure that the Bill should be passed substantially as it
+left the Commons. On the 24th the extreme section of the Tory party,
+headed by Lord Hugh Cecil, refused to allow the Prime Minister a hearing
+in the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>From an Irish point of view the episode was noteworthy. At the outset of
+this critical session Redmond had cautioned his party to abstain from
+giving provocation and from allowing themselves to be provoked. The
+counsel was the harder to follow because some of the most vehement of
+the younger Tories sat below the gangway, almost in physical contact
+with Irish members, and hot words passed. Still, it was grounded into
+all that we should not allow the great issue then at trial to be
+represented as an Irish quarrel. Our cause was linked with the whole
+cause of democracy as against privilege: it was an issue for the whole
+United Kingdom; and that was never plainer than on this day of July.
+English, Scottish and Welsh members hurled interruptions and taunts at
+each other across the floor of the House, while Irish members sat
+watching. Something older and more far-reaching than the opposition to
+Ireland's demand now was felt itself assailed; and a force in which the
+Irish movement was only one stream of many swept against it. Anger in
+the Tory party was not directed against Ireland's representatives; and
+an odd chance made this plain. The fierce scene in the House reached its
+culmination when Ministers withdrew in a body from the Treasury Bench
+and the two sides <a name="Page_51"></a>of the House stood up, one cheering, the other
+hooting, in opposite ranks. For a moment it seemed as if the affair
+would come to blows, till Mr. Will Crooks, with a genial inspiration,
+uplifted his voice in song: &quot;Should auld acquaintance be forgot?&quot; The
+tension was relaxed and members moved out in groups&mdash;we Irishmen
+necessarily among the Tories. In the movement I saw Willie Redmond go up
+to one of the fiercest among the Ulstermen, whose face was dark with
+passion. Colloquy began: &quot;Isn't it a hard thing that you wouldn't let us
+speak?&quot; The Ulsterman turned: &quot;Not let you speak? My dear fellow, we'd
+listen to you for as long as you liked&mdash;it's only these accursed English
+Liberals.&quot; And upon this mutual understanding the two Irishmen walked
+down the floor into the Lobby exchanging expressions of mutual goodwill
+and possibly of mutual comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>This little piece of by-play, so full of Irish nature, struck me at the
+time as something more than amusing&mdash;as having in it a ray of hopeful
+significance. But the most sanguine imagination would never have
+foreseen the series of events which brought it to pass, not merely that
+these two men should wear the same uniform, on a common service, but
+that the same Gazette should publish both their names as enrolled on the
+same day in the French Legion of Honour. On that day Mr. Charles Craig
+was a prisoner in Germany, wounded in a famous fight; and Willie Redmond
+was in a grave towards which Ulster comrades had been the first to carry
+him. There is an Irish saying, &quot;Men may meet, but the mountains stand
+apart.&quot; In July 1911 such an association as the Gazette of July 1917
+illustrated would have seemed hardly more possible than the meeting of
+the everlasting hills.</p>
+
+<p>The dramatic crisis of the parliamentary struggle between the two Houses
+of Parliament did not, and could not, come in the House of Commons. Its
+place was in the final citadel of privilege, and privilege sur<a name="Page_52"></a>rendered
+on August 10th, when the Bill passed the Lords after the most exciting
+and uncertain division that is ever likely to be known. But there were
+elements in the Tory party which did not accept defeat, though they had
+not yet clearly decided on what battleground to renew their efforts. For
+the moment, however, men were disposed to pause and take stock of the
+new situation.</p>
+
+<p>But at such a time events cannot stand still, and almost at the same
+moment as the Parliament Act was carried, the Government took a step
+which gravely affected the Irish party. Payment of members was
+established by a resolution of the House of Commons.</p>
+
+<p>Irish Nationalist members had always been paid from the party fund, that
+is to say, by their supporters. Payment was conditional, not of right,
+and it was not made except when the member was in attendance: it
+amounted only to twenty pounds a month. The new payment came from the
+British Treasury; it was made irrespective of the desire of
+constituents, or of any other consideration; and it amounted to a sum
+which in a country of small incomes sounded very imposing.
+Unquestionably the receipt of it weakened the position of the party in
+the eyes of Ireland, and gave a new sting to the charge of a bargain.</p>
+
+<p>All this was clearly discerned in advance, by no one more than by
+Redmond; and an amendment was moved to strike Irish members out of the
+application of the resolution. But the situation was hopelessly
+involved, the Irish party having repeatedly voted for payment of members
+as part of the Radical programme which they supported as affecting any
+normally governed country; and Government refused to make the exception.</p>
+
+<p>As a result, Redmond's following lost much of the prestige which had
+resulted from scrupulous observance of the understanding that no
+Nationalist member should take office under Government. To join the
+Irish party had been, in effect, for most men, to make a vow of
+<a name="Page_53"></a>poverty. Now, on the contrary, it involved acceptance of what was in
+Ireland's eyes a well-paid and unlaborious office. The Irish are no less
+prone than any other nation to take a cynical view of these matters.</p>
+
+<p>Yet assuredly no man ever gave more service for less pay than the
+Nationalist leader, and it was the harder because he was a man who liked
+comfort and had no ambition. If at the time of the great &quot;split&quot; he had
+stood down from politics, success would have been assured to him at the
+Bar in Ireland, or, more surely still, and far more profitably, at
+Westminster itself. There never was anyone so well-fitted for the work
+of a parliamentary barrister who has to deal with great interests before
+a tribunal largely composed of laymen. No one had the House of Commons
+tone more perfectly than Redmond, and no one that I ever heard equalled
+his gift for making a complicated issue appear simple. When he was
+thrown out of Parliament at the Cork election, he thought of retirement,
+mainly for one reason: it would be better for his children. Yet, first
+by personal loyalty to Parnell, later by his loyalty to Ireland, he was
+held firm to his task&mdash;always a poor man, always knowing that it lay in
+his power, without the least sacrifice of principle, to become rich by a
+way of work less laborious and infinitely less harassing than that which
+he pursued.</p>
+
+<p>The effect upon the Irish situation produced by the payment of members
+was slow to develop, and obscure. But an obvious and grave complication
+was introduced into both British and Irish politics at the moment when
+the democratic alliance had achieved its first great objective.
+Parliament had been in session almost continuously since the beginning
+of 1909, with the added strain of two general elections thrown in. There
+was a widespread desire to clear the autumn of 1911, so that members
+might have some breathing space, and, not less important, devote
+themselves to propagandist work in their constituencies for the new
+struggle of carrying measures <a name="Page_54"></a>under the hardly won Parliament Act. Each
+of these measures must involve a fight prolonged over three years.</p>
+
+<p>But this desire ran against the purposes of Mr. Asquith's chief
+lieutenant, whose power and popularity were now at their height. Mr.
+Lloyd George in the course of the session had introduced his Insurance
+Bill, and it was welcomed with astonishing effusion from both sides of
+the House. As discussion proceeded, however, the complexity and
+difficulty of its proposals, and the number of oppositions which they
+provoked, became so apparent that it was not in human nature for
+politicians at such a crisis to forgo the opportunity. Most of the
+Liberal party would have preferred to drop the Bill temporarily and
+refer it to a Committee of Enquiry. Mr. Lloyd George was convinced that
+this would be fatal to his measure, concerning which he was possessed by
+a missionary zeal. Probably when his career comes under the study of
+impartial history it will be perceived that never at any moment was he
+so passionately and so honestly in earnest as upon this quest. But it is
+certain that by pursuit of it he created enormous difficulties in the
+way of those reforms which the democratic alliance at large most desired
+to achieve. He carried his point; an autumn session followed, in which
+the mind of the electorate was diverted from the Irish question and all
+other questions except that of Insurance, and Parliament itself was
+jaded to the brink of exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>The matter was difficult for us in Ireland because, owing to the
+different system of Public Health Administration, many of the most
+important provisions could not apply, and because the Bill as a whole
+was framed to meet the needs of a highly industrialized and crowded
+community. Broadly speaking, it was less desired in Ireland than in
+Great Britain; and even for Great Britain Mr. Lloyd George was
+legislating in advance <a name="Page_55"></a>of public opinion rather than in response to it.
+Mr. O'Brien and his following vehemently opposed the application of the
+Bill to Ireland; and the Irish Catholic Bishops, by a special
+resolution, expressed their view to the same effect. The Bill, however,
+had a powerful advocate in Mr. Devlin, and the Irish party decided to
+support its extension to Ireland, subject to certain modifications which
+they obtained.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the new unsettlement of public opinion which it created both
+in Great Britain and in Ireland, the Insurance Act added to our
+difficulties on the Home Rule question. It was clear already that the
+question of finance lay like a rock ahead. Up to 1908 the proceeds of
+Irish revenue had always given a margin over the cost of all Irish
+services, though that margin had dwindled almost to vanishing-point. Old
+Age Pensions completely turned the beam and left us in the position of
+costing more than we contributed. Now the outlay on Insurance added half
+a million a year to the balance against us.</p>
+
+<p>Still, difficulties and perplexities were not limited to one side. The
+Tory party were much divided since the crisis on the Parliament Act. A
+section, and the most active section, had been violently opposed to the
+surrender on the critical division, and these men were profoundly
+discontented with Mr. Balfour's leadership; so Mr. Balfour, yielding to
+intimations, suddenly resigned. Somewhat unexpectedly, Mr. Bonar Law was
+chosen to succeed him, Mr. Long and Mr. Chamberlain waiving their
+respective claims.</p>
+
+<p>This choice was of sinister augury. Mr. Law did not know Ireland. But,
+Canadian-born, he came from a country in which the Irish factions and
+theological enmities had always had their counterpart; his father, a
+Presbyterian Minister, came of Ulster stock. All the blood in him
+instinctively responded to the tap of the Orange drum. As far back as
+January 27, 1911, he had urged armed resistance to Home Rule.</p><a name="Page_56"></a>
+
+<p>This was a line which Mr. Balfour did not see his way to take, and
+probably here rather than elsewhere lay the reason for the choice of Mr.
+Bonar Law. The most active section of the Tory party&mdash;probably a
+minority, for in such cases minorities decide&mdash;regarded the passing of
+the Parliament Act as an outrage on the Constitution, which should be
+resisted by any means, constitutional or unconstitutional. But no
+possibility existed of mobilizing a force in Great Britain to fight for
+the veto of the House of Lords, nor again did the resistance to a new
+Franchise Act, or even to Welsh Disestablishment, promise to be
+desperate. In one part only of these islands was there material for a
+form of struggle in which the ballot-box and the division lobby might be
+supplemented, if not replaced, by quite other methods of political war.
+The Tory party saw in Ulster their best fighting chance. There was no
+use in telling them that they jeopardized the British Constitution; from
+their point of view the British Constitution&mdash;as they had known it&mdash;was
+already gone; it was destroyed in principle and must be either restored
+or refashioned according to their mind.</p>
+
+<p>This temper, with the attitude towards parliamentary tradition which it
+produced, rendered the political history of the next two and a half
+years unlike any other in the history of these countries. The main
+purpose of this book is to record and illustrate Redmond's action during
+the period which began with the opening of the Great War. But since that
+action was conditioned by the circumstances preceding the war&mdash;since in
+two notable ways it aimed at a solution of the fierce political struggle
+which the war interrupted&mdash;the political history connected with the
+passage of the Home Rule Bill through Parliament must be outlined in
+detail, with avoidance, so far as may be, of a controversial tone.</p><a name="Page_57"></a>
+<br />
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>It is however necessary, before closing this preliminary review, to take
+some account of Redmond's relation to his party, and, in general, of the
+working of the parliamentary machine. Difficulties were imposed on him
+and on the party from 1910 onwards by our very success.</p>
+
+<p>Electoral chances had placed us apparently in the position of maximum
+power. From January 1910 onwards we had a Government committed to Home
+Rule, yet so far dependent on us that we could put it out at any moment.
+Yet this was by no means an ideal state of affairs. The Government's
+weakness was our weakness, and they were liable to the reproach that
+they never proposed a Home Rule measure except when they could not
+dispense with the Irish vote. Still, from this embarrassing position we
+achieved an extraordinary result. Right across our path was the obstacle
+of the House of Lords. It was not an impassable barrier for measures in
+which the British working classes were keenly interested&mdash;for it let the
+Trades Disputes Bill go through; but it was wholly regardless of Irish
+and of Welsh popular opinion. Under Redmond's leadership we smashed the
+House of Lords. The English middle class instinct for compromise was
+asserting itself, when he took hold and gave direction to the great mass
+of popular indignation which the hereditary chamber had roused against
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Yet guiding action in an alliance of which he was not the head was
+delicate work. A clumsy speaker in debate might do infinite mischief.
+When a party is in opposition, all its members can talk, and are
+encouraged to talk, to the utmost; little harm can be done to one's own
+side by what is said in criticism of measures proposed. Support and
+exposition is a much more ticklish business. Add to this the fact that
+under the fully developed system <a name="Page_58"></a>of parliamentary obstruction&mdash;that is,
+of using discussion to prevent legislation from being put through&mdash;the
+best service that a member can render to Government is to say nothing,
+but vote.</p>
+
+<p>The tactics of limiting discussion to chosen speakers in important
+debates and of discouraging sharply any intervention which might help to
+delay a division were pushed further in the Irish party than elsewhere.
+We were there under different conditions from the rest; our objective
+was as clearly defined as in a military operation: and we all understood
+the position. We recognized also that negotiation must be a matter for
+Redmond and his inner cabinet of three, and that many things could not
+be usefully discussed in a body of seventy men. But the net result was
+that the bulk of the party lost interest in their work, and, which was
+worse, that Ireland lost interest in the bulk of the party. It followed,
+not unnaturally, that the constituencies held one voting machine to be
+as good as another, and they did not generally send any men who could
+have been of service in debate. They did not any longer see their
+members heading a fiery campaign against rents, or flamboyant in attack
+on the Government; they heard very little of them at all. They knew
+little and cared less about the work of education in British
+constituencies, which had to be carried on through the mouths of Irish
+members.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond has often been blamed, but quite unjustly, for failure to
+attract men of talent into his ranks. Parnell had that power. He had,
+and used, the right of suggesting names. But under the constitution of
+the United Irish League (originally the work of Mr. William O'Brien when
+reunion was accomplished in 1900) the machinery of local conventions was
+set up and no interference with their choice was permitted to the
+central directorate&mdash;which could only insist that a man properly
+selected must take the party pledge. Whether this machinery was
+inevitable or no, cannot be argued here; but Red<a name="Page_59"></a>mond himself complained
+repeatedly in public that it worked badly. Candidates were often chosen
+purely for local and even personal considerations, and seldom with any
+real thought of finding the man best fitted to do Ireland's work at
+Westminster.</p>
+
+<p>This evil, for it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in
+a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others.
+There being no Unionist candidature possible in the majority of
+constituencies, any contest was deprecated&mdash;and from some points of view
+rightly&mdash;as leading to possible faction between Nationalists. The choice
+of a member really fell into too few hands; the electorate as a whole
+was not sufficiently interested. Nevertheless, several able men came
+into our ranks, and under the conditions it was not possible to utilize
+their talents fully, as they would have been utilized had we been in
+opposition, not in support of the Government. More could have been done,
+however, to give them their opportunity, and the responsibility for not
+varying the list of speakers rests on Redmond. It was his policy to
+avoid personal intervention, and to leave such choices to be settled by
+proposals from the party itself. This was a real limitation to his
+excellence as leader&mdash;for leader he was.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, an even more important limitation arising out of his
+personal temperament. As chairman, I never expect to see his equal. He
+had the most perfect public manners of any man I have known, whether in
+dealing with some vast assembly or small confidential gathering. The
+latter type of meeting is the more difficult to handle, and nothing
+could exceed his gift for presiding over and guiding debate. He could
+set out a political situation to his party with extraordinary force and
+lucidity. He could also, when he chose, so present an issue as to
+suggest almost irresistibly the conclusion which he desired&mdash;and this
+was how he led. Where he came short in the quality of leadership was in
+the personal contact.</p><a name="Page_60"></a>
+
+<p>His relations with all his followers in the party were courteous and
+cordial; yet without the least appearance of aloofness he was always
+aloof. He did not invite discussion. It needed some courage to go to him
+with a question in policy, and if you went, the answer would be simply a
+&quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;No.&quot; He lacked what Lord Morley attributed to Gladstone, &quot;the
+priceless gift of throwing his mind into common stock.&quot; No one thought
+more constantly, or further ahead; but he could not, rather than would
+not, impart his mind by bringing it into contact with others. Men like
+being taken into their leader's confidence, and he knew this and, I have
+reason to believe, knew the disability which his temperament laid upon
+him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from
+pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not
+going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more
+enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one
+who liked discussion for discussion's sake.</p>
+
+<p>Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. I
+cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently
+aware of the qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his
+team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and
+a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the
+separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He
+welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both
+as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally
+speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented
+mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the
+new Young Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook&mdash;and they
+were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party&mdash;Redmond's essential
+limitation, as a <a name="Page_61"></a>leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities
+which produce idolatry and blind allegiance. What his followers gave him
+was admiration, liking and profound respect. No less than this was
+strictly due to his high standard of honour, his scorn of all personal
+pettiness, his control of temper. In twelve years I heard many
+complaints of the manner in which things were managed in the party: I
+scarcely ever remember to have heard anyone complain of him. He was
+always spoken of as &quot;The Chairman&quot;; no one attributed to him sole
+responsibility; and he was the last on whom any man desired to lay a
+fault.</p>
+
+<p>Yet when it came, as it often did, to a question of weighing advices one
+against the other, there was no mistake how men's opinions inclined. He
+had taught his party by experience to have almost implicit confidence in
+his judgment; and by this earned confidence he led and he ruled.</p><a name="Page_62"></a>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912</h3>
+
+<p>The year 1912, in which the straight fight on Home Rule was to begin,
+opened stormily. Mr. Churchill was announced to speak under the auspices
+of the Ulster Liberal Association in the Ulster Hall at Belfast. It was
+the hall in which his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had used the
+famous phrase &quot;Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.&quot; Belfast was
+determined that the son should not unsay what the father had said in
+this consecrated building; it would be, as an Ulster member put it in
+the House of Commons, &quot;a profanation.&quot; On this first round, Ulster won;
+Mr. Churchill spoke at Belfast, but not in the Ulster Hall. There were
+angry demonstrations against him; his person had to be strongly
+protected and he went away from the meeting by back streets. It was
+noticeable that no such precautions were needed for Redmond, who
+attended the meeting and walked quite unmolested through the crowd. The
+British electorate, as a whole, was somewhat scandalized by the
+exhibition of so violent a temper; but the education of the British
+electorate was only beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Congestion of business from the previous session deferred the
+introduction of the Home Rule Bill till April. Great demonstrations for
+and against it were held in advance. In Dublin on March 31st was such a
+gathering as scarcely any man remembered. O'Connell Street is rather a
+boulevard than a thoroughfare; it is as wide as Whitehall and its length
+is about the same. On that day, from the Parnell monument at the north
+end to the O'Connell monument at the south, you could have walked on the
+<a name="Page_63"></a>shoulders of the people. Four separate platforms were erected, and
+Redmond spoke from that nearest to the statue of his old chief. He dwelt
+on the universality of the demonstration; nine out of eleven
+corporations were represented officially by their civic officers;
+professional men, business men, were all fully to the fore. But one
+section of his countrymen were conspicuously absent. To Ulster he had
+this to say:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have not one word of reproach or one word of bitter feeling. We have
+one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the
+arrival of the day of reconciliation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A feature of that gathering, little noted at the time, assumes strange
+significance in retrospect. At one platform Patrick Pearse, then
+headmaster of St. Enda's school, spoke in Irish. What he said may be
+thus roughly rendered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are as many men here as would destroy the British Empire if they
+were united and did their utmost. We have no wish to destroy the
+British, we only want our freedom. We differ among ourselves on small
+points, but we agree that we want freedom, in some shape or other. There
+are two sections of us&mdash;one that would be content to remain under the
+British Government in our own land, another that never paid, and never
+will pay, homage to the King of England. I am of the latter, and
+everyone knows it. But I should think myself a traitor to my country if
+I did not answer the summons to this gathering, for it is clear to me
+that the Bill which we support to-day will be for the good of Ireland
+and that we shall be stronger with it than without it. I am not
+accepting the Bill in advance. We may have to refuse it. We are here
+only to say that the voice of Ireland must be listened to henceforward.
+Let us unite and win a good Act from the British; I think it can be
+done. But if we are tricked this time, there is a party in Ireland, and
+I am one of them, that will advise <a name="Page_64"></a>the Gael to have no counsel or
+dealings with the Gall [the foreigner] for ever again, but to answer
+them henceforward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. Let the
+Gall understand that if we are cheated once more there will be red war
+in Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The platform where Pearse spoke was set up within a stone's throw of the
+General Post Office in which, four years later, he was to give effect to
+the words he spoke then and to earn his own death in undoing the work of
+Redmond's lifetime. At that moment no one heeded his utterance, nor the
+speech, also in Irish, of Professor John MacNeill from another platform,
+which went, as its speaker was destined to go, half the way with Pearse.</p>
+
+<p>But Redmond never attempted to conceal the existence of this element in
+Ireland. Speaking on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill on April
+11th, he dealt at the very opening with the charge that the Irish people
+wanted separation and that the Irish leaders were separatists in
+disguise:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will be perfectly frank on this matter. There always has been, and
+there is to-day, a certain section of Irishmen who would like to see
+separation from this country. They are a small, a very small section.
+They were once a very large section. They are a very small section, but
+the men who hold, these views at this moment only desire separation as
+an alternative to the present system, and if you change the present
+system and give into the hands of Irishmen the management of purely
+Irish affairs, even that small feeling in favour of separation will
+disappear; and if it survives at all, I would like to know how under
+those circumstances it could be stronger or more powerful for mischief
+than at the present moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sincerer words were never spoken, nor, I think, a better justified
+forecast. Where Redmond and all of us were wrong was that we
+underestimated the possibility of accomplishing what Pearse ultimately
+accomplished, even <a name="Page_65"></a>when assisted by the widespread disillusionment and
+sense of betrayal which was the atmosphere of 1916.</p>
+
+<p>But no one in Ireland in 1912 thought of a separatist rebellion. What
+was on all tongues was the possibility of physical resistance to Home
+Rule. The debate on the first reading went by with little reference to
+this contingency, but Mr. Bonar Law closed his speech on that note. He
+had attended the great counter-demonstration in Belfast which followed
+ours in Dublin and had seen in it &quot;the expression of the soul of a
+people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These people look upon their being subject to an executive Government
+taken out of the Parliament in Dublin with as much horror, I believe
+with more horror, than the people of Poland ever regarded their being
+put under subjection by Russia; they say they will not submit except by
+force to such government. These people in Ulster are under no illusion.
+They know they cannot fight the British Army. But these men are ready,
+in what they believe to be the cause of justice and liberty, to lay down
+their lives.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Bloodshed, if bloodshed there was to be, was anticipated in Ulster only,
+and the resistance indicated at this point was purely passive. But even
+after the Bill had been introduced, Tories entertained the hope that a
+Nationalist Convention might save them trouble and reject what the
+Government offered. Even Mr. O'Brien, however, had given the Bill a
+lukewarm approval, and at this moment Redmond's prestige stood very
+high. When the Convention assembled, he utilized that advantage to the
+full. These assemblies presented a problem which might intimidate the
+most capable chairman. Theoretically deliberative, they had at least a
+representative character; all branches of the United Irish League, all
+branches of the Hibernians and Foresters, all county and district
+councils sent up their chosen men, to whom were added such clergy as
+chose to attend. The result was a mass of over two thousand persons
+packed into <a name="Page_66"></a>a single room; they deliberated in the physical conditions
+of a crowd; hearing was difficult, disorder only too easily brought
+about. I have seen one of these Conventions sharply divided in opinion,
+and counting of votes would have been impossible. On this day, however,
+there was only one opinion: the business was to manifest support and to
+strengthen the leader's hand, Redmond at the outset laid down the
+proposition that it was their &quot;duty&quot; as Nationalists to accept what he
+described as a far better Bill than Gladstone ever offered. He further
+indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting,
+proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the Irish party.
+This was promptly carried by acclamation. All decisions were unanimous
+that day.</p>
+
+<p>But before this or any other resolution was put to the Convention,
+Redmond asked the multitude there to give, what they gave most
+willingly, a welcome to Mr. Gladstone's grandson, who as a young member
+of Parliament had just voted for the Bill. The greeting which he
+received showed that Ireland had not forgotten what Gladstone's last
+years had been.</p>
+
+<p>In the first of his speeches upon the Bill, Sir Edward Grey, a survivor
+from Gladstone's Ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the
+struggle from 1886 to 1893:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still. One is Mr.
+Gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in
+Ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to
+acknowledge and reconcile that spirit. The other is the Irish response
+to Mr. Gladstone. It was not the assent of mere tacticians who had
+gained an advocate and a point. It was genuine, warm and living feeling,
+a response of gratitude and sympathy the same in kind and as living as
+his own.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>If Redmond's task from 1912 onwards was not lightened by the existence
+of any such genuine, warm and <a name="Page_67"></a>living feeling for any of Mr. Asquith's
+Ministry, perhaps Ireland is not to blame. There was no intense grip of
+any fact in the Government's attitude, and on one cardinal point they
+were unstable as water. Sir Edward Carson, in opposing the introduction
+of the Bill, had used the words: &quot;What argument is there that you can
+raise for giving Home Rule to Ireland that you do not equally raise for
+giving Home Rule to that Protestant minority in the north-east
+province?&quot; Redmond, following him, made one of his few false moves in
+debate. &quot;Is that the proposal? Is that the demand?&quot; he asked. Sir Edward
+Carson shot the question at him: &quot;Will you agree to it?&quot; Seldom does the
+House see a practised speaker so much embarrassed; Redmond in confusion
+passed to another topic. He was soon to be confronted with that same
+line of reasoning, pushed not dialectically by an opponent, but as a
+step in parliamentary negotiation from the Treasury Bench. Mr.
+Churchill, who introduced the Second Reading, made it apparent that the
+demonstration in Belfast had not been wasted on him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whatever Ulster's rights may be,&quot; he said, &quot;they cannot stand in the
+way of the whole of the rest of Ireland. Half a province cannot impose a
+permanent veto on the nation. The utmost they can claim is for
+themselves. I ask, do they claim separate treatment for themselves? Do
+the counties of Down and Antrim and Londonderry, for instance, ask to be
+excepted from the scope of this Bill? Do they ask for a parliament of
+their own, or do they wish to remain here? We ought to know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was to proceed at once into the region of a bargain. Mr. Gladstone,
+with his grip on the existence of a national spirit in Ireland, would
+have known that concession on such point was a very different matter
+from some alteration in the financial terms or in the composition of the
+Parliament. It admitted, in fact, the contention that Ireland was not a
+nation but a geographical expression.</p><a name="Page_68"></a>
+
+<p>As soon as the Bill went into Committee, the result was seen. The first
+serious amendment proposed to exclude the four counties, Antrim, Down,
+Armagh, and Derry, and it was moved from the Liberal benches. Three
+Liberal speakers supported it in the early stages of a debate which
+lasted to the third day&mdash;and on the division the majority, which had
+been 100 for the Second Reading, fell to 69. Mr. Churchill did not
+vote&mdash;nor, although this was not then so apparently significant, did Mr.
+Lloyd George.</p>
+
+<p>Thus from the very first the point of danger revealed itself. By the
+mere threat of a resistance which could only be overcome through the use
+of troops, Ulster had made the first dint for the insertion of a wedge
+into the composite Home Rule alliance, and into the Cabinet itself. All
+this had been gained without any tactical sacrifice, without even
+anything like a full disclosure of the force which lay behind this line
+of attack.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the full extent of weakness revealed. In such a case, much
+depended on the personality of the man who moved the amendment, and Mr.
+Agar-Robartes was one of the most whimsically incongruous figures in the
+Government ranks. Twentieth-century Liberalism wears a somewhat drab and
+serious aspect, but this ultra-fashionable example of gilded youth would
+have been in his place among the votaries of Charles James Fox. The
+climax of his incongruity was a vehement and rather antiquated
+Protestantism; he was, for instance, among the few who opposed the
+alteration of the Coronation oath to a formula less offensive to
+Catholics. Nobody doubted that his Cornish constituents would endorse
+whatever he did, for the House held few more popular human beings, but
+no one took him very seriously as a politician. This particular view of
+his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable associate,
+Mr. Neil Primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against
+Ulster's claims as Agar-Robartes did for <a name="Page_69"></a>them.&mdash;<i>Sunt lacrimae rerum</i>.
+I remember vividly in August 1914 the sudden apparition of this pair,
+side by side as always, in their familiar place below the gangway, but
+in quite unfamiliar guise, for khaki was still new to the benches. The
+two brilliant lads&mdash;for they were little more&mdash;have gone now, swept into
+the abyss of war's wreckage; the controversy which divided them remains,
+virulent as ever.</p>
+
+<p>Agar-Robartes stuck to his guns and voted against the Bill henceforward;
+the other Liberals who supported him were ultimately brought into the
+Government lobby. What had really mattered was Mr. Churchill's speech on
+the Second Reading. Captain Pirrie, one of Redmond's few closely
+attached friends outside the Irish party, bound, I think, far more in
+affection to the Irish leader than to his own chiefs, complained angrily
+of the Government's evasive reticence. This brought up the Prime
+Minister, whose speech was brief and direct:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This amendment proceeds on an assumption which I believe is radically
+false, namely, that you can split Ireland into parts. You can no more
+split Ireland into parts than you can split England or Scotland into
+parts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When Sir Edward Carson had spoken, the Ulster leader's speech enabled
+Redmond to point out that Ulstermen refused to accept this proposal as a
+means by which Ulster might be reconciled to Home Rule, but were ready
+to vote for it simply as a wrecking amendment. General opinion on both
+sides of the House agreed that the amendment made the Bill impossible;
+and the majority held that therefore Ulster must give way. Ulster, on
+the other hand, held that therefore there must be no Home Rule Bill. But
+there was a Liberal element evidently not convinced that Home Rule might
+not be possible with Ulster excluded. Mr. Birrell admitted that the plan
+of segregating a portion had been considered, but had been rejected, on
+the merits, as unworkable. Still he professed himself open to
+conviction. The argument <a name="Page_70"></a>which Mr. Bonar Law decided to use was a
+threat. Government are saying to the people of Ulster, he said,
+&quot;Convince us that you are in earnest, show us that you will fight, and
+we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else.&quot; Captain
+Craig, following, said that the Prime Minister anticipated that Ulster's
+objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface. &quot;If
+the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his Majesty's
+dominions to civil war, we accept the challenge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This temper soon had ugly expression. On June 29th an excursion party of
+the Ancient Order of Hibernians (the Roman Catholic counterpart to the
+Orange Order) met with another excursion party of Protestants, mainly
+Sunday-school children, at a place called Castledawson. Taunts were
+exchanged and one of the Hibernians tried to snatch a flag from the
+other procession; so a disturbance began in which some of the children
+were hurt and many frightened. This discreditable incident was magnified
+with all the rancour of partisanship&mdash;as in the state of feeling must
+have been expected. But the reprisals were startling. All Catholics were
+driven out of the Belfast shipyards; many were injured, and over two
+thousand men were still deprived of work on July 12th, when the Unionist
+party held a great meeting at Blenheim. Mr. Bonar Law, facing for the
+first time a vast typical gathering of his supporters, said that, on a
+previous occasion, when speaking as little more than a private member of
+Parliament, he had counselled action outside constitutional limits. Now,
+he emphasized it that he took the same attitude as leader of the
+Unionist party.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall use any means&mdash;whatever means seem to us to be most likely to
+be effective&mdash;any means to deprive them&quot; (the Government) &quot;of the power
+they have usurped and to compel them to face the people whom they have
+deceived. The Home Rule Bill in spite of us may go <a name="Page_71"></a>through the House of
+Commons. There are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. I can
+imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall
+not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by
+the overwhelming majority of the British people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sir Edward Carson said on behalf of Ulster: &quot;It will be our duty shortly
+to take such steps&mdash;and, indeed, they are already being taken&mdash;as will
+perfect our arrangements for making Home Rule absolutely impossible. We
+will shortly challenge the Government to interfere with us if they dare.
+We will do this regardless of consequences, of all personal loss and
+inconvenience. They may tell us, if they like, that this is treason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Well might Mr. Bonar Law say in returning thanks that this day &quot;would be
+a turning-point in their political history.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Moderate opinion was by no means glad to have reached this
+turning-point, and <i>The Times</i> rebuked Mr. Law for his violence. But,
+tactically, the Unionists were right: they had a Government indisposed
+to action and they made the most of their opportunity. Mr. Churchill
+again took up the conduct of the controversy, and in the recess
+proceeded to outline a policy which he described as federal devolution.
+The Prime Minister had said you could no more split Ireland into parts
+than England or Scotland. But Mr. Churchill argued that, in the interest
+of efficiency, England must be divided into provincial units with
+separate assemblies; that Lancashire, for instance, had on many matters
+a very different outlook from that of Yorkshire. He did not draw the
+conclusion; but it was not difficult to infer that Mr. Churchill was at
+least as ready to give separate rights to Ulster as to any group of
+English counties, and was equally ready to pitch overboard the Prime
+Minister's argument for refusing partition in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Ulster's preparations continued. It <a name="Page_72"></a>was indicated that
+they would bear a religious character, and the Protestant Churches were
+deeply involved. The proposal of a Covenant was made public in August,
+though the actual signing of it was deferred to &quot;Ulster Day,&quot; September
+28th. Sir Edward Carson was provided with a guard carrying swords and
+wooden rifles, and in one instance dummy cannon made a feature of the
+pageant. These things excited a good deal of derision, and the language
+of the Covenant was held to be only &quot;hypothetical treason.&quot; The main
+words were:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our
+cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and in
+using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present
+conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Covenant in that committed the signatories to no breach of the law;
+it was only a pledge to refuse to recognize the authority of a
+Parliament not yet in being. All Ulster's proceedings might so far be
+dismissed, as the Attorney-General, Mr. Rufus Isaacs, dismissed them, as
+being &quot;a demonstration admirably stage-managed, and led by one of great
+histrionic gifts.&quot; The threats of the use of force, said the
+Attorney-General, would not turn them aside by a hair's-breadth. Mr.
+Asquith, equally vigorous in his speech, was less decisive in his
+conclusions. Speaking at Ladybank on October 5th, he denounced &quot;the
+reckless rodomontade of Blenheim, which furnishes forth the complete
+grammar of anarchy.&quot; But he was careful to point out that there was no
+demand for separate treatment for Ulster, and that Irish Unionists were
+simply refusing to consent to Home Rule under any conditions. He
+refrained from saying how a demand for separate treatment of Ulster
+would be dealt with if it were made.</p>
+
+<p>When Parliament resumed its sittings, in a temper much heated by all the
+challenge and controversy of the recess, Mr. Lloyd George pushed this
+line of argument <a name="Page_73"></a>a shade further. He argued that Sir Edward Carson
+himself persisted in treating Ireland as a unit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Until Ulster departs from that position there is no case. Ulster has a
+right to claim a hearing for separate treatment; she has no right to
+say, 'Because we do not want Home Rule ourselves the majority of
+Irishmen are not to have Home Rule.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yet upon the balance of events, Unionists were probably disappointed. A
+very strong British feeling against Sir Edward Carson and his Belfast
+following had been generated by the expulsion of Catholics from the
+shipyards and in general by the advocacy of civil war. In October 1912
+several notable men who had previously counted as Unionists&mdash;Sir Arthur
+Conan Doyle, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir J. West-Ridgway&mdash;all declared
+for Home Rule. Exasperation against the incidence of the new Insurance
+Act lost the Government votes at every by-election; but the Irish cause
+on the whole gained ground, and the chief cause of that advance was the
+respect universally felt for Redmond's personality and leadership. On
+November 22nd he attended a huge meeting of the National Liberal
+Federation at Nottingham along with the Prime Minister and received a
+wonderful welcome. The step was novel. Never since Parnell's work began
+had the leader of the Irish people stood on the same platform in Great
+Britain with the leader of any English party. It was, however, the
+return of a compliment, for Mr. Asquith had come to Dublin in the summer
+and there spoken along with the Irish leader. Moreover, a recent
+incident had shown how necessary it was to maintain the closest
+co-operation; a snap division on November 11th had inflicted defeat on
+the Government and occasioned loss of perhaps a fortnight's
+parliamentary time.</p>
+
+<p>But in the very act of thus strengthening his hold on the British
+electorate, Redmond gave ground to those in Ireland who desired to
+represent him as a mere tool <a name="Page_74"></a>of the Liberal party, a pawn in Mr.
+Asquith's game. Foreseeing this evil did not help to combat it, and on
+the whole it was Redmond's inclination to take a sanguine view of his
+country's good sense and generosity.</p>
+
+<p>The Committee stage of discussion lasted beyond the end of the year. On
+the finance arrangements Redmond had to face fierce opposition from Mr.
+O'Brien's party, which was endorsed by the Irish Council of County
+Councils. Here difficulties were inevitable, and attack was easy either
+for the Unionists, who pressed the argument that Ireland was to be
+started on its career of self-government with a subsidy of some two
+millions per annum from Great Britain, or for the O'Brienites, who urged
+that the country was already overtaxed in proportion to its resources,
+that it needed large expenditure for development, and that the possible
+budget indicated by the Bill left no serious possibility for reducing
+taxes or for undertaking even necessary expenditure. Redmond, on the
+other hand, was bound to conciliate the vested interests of civil
+servants, officials in all degrees, and the immense police force.
+Retrenchment on the vast area of unproductive expenditure which Castle
+government had created could only be hoped for at a very distant date.
+He could not therefore promise substantial economy; nor could he argue
+for a further increase of subsidy without playing into the Tories'
+hands. On all this detail of the measure, the attack in debate was bound
+to be very powerful.</p>
+
+<p>So far as Great Britain was concerned, the reply of Home Rulers was
+tolerably effective. In 1886 it had been feasible to propose Home Rule
+with an Imperial contribution of two and a half millions. By 1893 the
+possible margin had dropped heavily, and Mr. Gladstone had foretold that
+within fifteen years Ireland would absorb more money for purely Irish
+services than Irish taxation produced. This prophecy had been fulfilled
+to the letter, and everyone saw that to continue the Union meant
+<a name="Page_75"></a>increasing this charge automatically. It was better to cut the loss and
+at least say that it should not exceed a fixed figure.</p>
+
+<p>But in Ireland men dwelt always on the Report of the Financial Relations
+Commission, which had represented the balance as heavily against England
+and the account for overtaxation of the poorer country as reaching three
+hundred millions. No man quoted this document oftener than Redmond, and
+none was a firmer believer in its justification. But he realized, as his
+countrymen did not, that such a claim could never hope for cash
+settlement, that its value was as an argument for the concession of
+freedom upon generous terms. How could he urge that the terms proposed
+were ungenerous, when Great Britain offered to pay the cost of all Irish
+services&mdash;amounting to a million and a half more than Irish revenue&mdash;and
+to provide over and above this a yearly grant of half a million,
+dropping gradually, it is true, but still remaining at a subsidy of two
+hundred thousand a year so long as the finance arrangements of the Bill
+lasted?</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, these arrangements were bad ones, and this was where the
+Bill was most vulnerable on its merits; for self-government without the
+control of taxation and expenditure is at best an unhopeful experiment.</p>
+
+<p>But in the public mind at large only one difficulty bulked big, and that
+was Ulster. Men on both sides began to be uneasy about the consequences
+of what was happening, and this temper reflected itself in the House. On
+New Year's Day 1913, at the beginning of the Report stage, Sir Edward
+Carson moved the exclusion of the province of Ulster. His speech was in
+a new tone of studied conciliation. But, as the Prime Minister
+immediately made clear, there was no offer that if this concession were
+made opposition would cease. It was merely recommended as the sole
+alternative to civil <a name="Page_76"></a>war. Redmond, in following, let fall an <i>obiter
+dictum</i> on the position of the Irish controversy:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No one who observes the current of popular opinion in this country can
+doubt for one instant that if this opposition from the north-east corner
+of Ulster did not exist, Home Rule would go through to-morrow as an
+agreed Bill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For this reason, he said, he would go almost any length within certain
+well-defined limits to meet that section of his fellow-countrymen. His
+conditions were, first, that the proposal must be a genuine one, not put
+forward as a piece of tactics to wreck the Bill, but frankly as part of
+a general settlement of the Home Rule question; secondly, that it must
+be of reasonable character; and thirdly, not inconsistent with the
+fundamental principle of national self-government. Ulster's present
+proposal, if accepted, carried with it no promise of a settlement; it
+was unreasonable as proposing to strike out of Ireland five counties
+with Nationalist majorities. But finally, on a broader ground, it
+destroyed the national right of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ireland for us is one entity. It is one land. Tyrone and Tyrconnell are
+as much a part of Ireland as Munster or Connaught. Some of the most
+glorious chapters connected with our national struggle have been
+associated with Ulster&mdash;aye, and with the Protestants of Ulster&mdash;and I
+declare here to-day, as a Catholic Irishman, notwithstanding all the
+bitterness of the past, that I am as proud of Derry as of Limerick. Our
+ideal in this movement is a self-governing Ireland in the future, when
+all her sons of all races and creeds within her shores will bring their
+tribute, great or small, to the great total of national enterprise,
+national statesmanship, and national happiness. Men may deride that
+ideal; they may say that it is a futile and unreliable ideal, but they
+cannot call it an ignoble one. It is an ideal that we, at any rate, will
+cling to, and because we cling to it, and because <a name="Page_77"></a>it is there, embedded
+in our hearts and natures, it is an absolute bar to such a proposal as
+this amendment makes, a proposal which would create for all times a
+sharp, eternal dividing line between Irish Catholics and Irish
+Protestants, and a measure which would for all time mean the partition
+and disintegration of our nation. To that we as Irish Nationalists can
+never submit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later in the debate, Mr. Bonar Law admitted quite frankly the argument
+against treating all Ulster as Unionist, and he proceeded to suggest
+that any county in Ulster might be given power to decide whether or not
+it should come into the new Parliament. It was plain, however, and Mr.
+Churchill made it plainer, that the Unionist leader did not speak for
+Ulster; Ulster's intention was still to use its own opposition to Home
+Rule as a bar to self-government for the whole of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Equally was it plain that the plebiscite by counties would not be
+unacceptable to Mr. Churchill.</p>
+
+<p>The proposal for the exclusion of the entire province was defeated by a
+majority of 97 and the Third Reading was carried by 110. A few days
+later the city of Derry returned a Home Ruler, and the Ulster
+representation became seventeen for the Bill and sixteen against. This
+dramatic change produced a considerable effect on British opinion.
+Redmond, speaking at a luncheon given to the winner, Mr. Hogg, indicated
+the lines on which he was disposed to bargain. He would be willing to
+give Ulster more than its proportional share of representation in the
+Irish Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>The debate in the House of Lords was marked by certain speeches which
+showed that public opinion had moved considerably. Lord Dunraven
+declared for the Second Reading, though pressing all the line of
+objection to the Bill which had been taken by Mr. O'Brien and his party.
+He heaped scorn also as an Irishman upon &quot;this absurd theory of two
+nations which is only invented to make discord where accord would
+naturally be.&quot; Lord<a name="Page_78"></a> MacDonnell, whose administrative experience could
+no more be questioned than his genius for administration, held that
+though amendment was needed the framework of the Bill was good, and that
+urgent necessity existed for the change to self-government. He alluded
+to the opinion expressed by Mr. Balfour in 1905, that the proper way of
+reforming Dublin Castle was by increasing the power of the Chief
+Secretary and his Under-Secretary, and thereby getting a stronger grip
+on the various departments of the &quot;complicated system&quot; prevailing. &quot;I
+thought so too,&quot; said Lord MacDonnell, who in 1905 as Under-Secretary
+had tried his hand at this reform. &quot;It was one of the illusions that I
+took with me to Ireland twenty years ago&mdash;but I am now a wiser man....
+My observation of the Boards had convinced me before I left Ireland that
+no scheme of administrative reform which depends on bureaucratic
+organization for its success, or which has not behind it a popular
+backing, has the least chance of success in an attempt to establish in
+Ireland a government that is satisfactory to the Imperial Parliament or
+acceptable to the Irish people.&quot;&mdash;This was a repudiation of the Irish
+Council Bill of 1907 by its main author.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Grey, a vivid and attractive personality, declared strongly for
+&quot;such a measure of Home Rule as will give the Irish people power to
+manage their own domestic affairs.&quot; It was a conviction that had been
+forced upon him by his experience of Greater Britain. &quot;Practically every
+American, every Canadian, every Australian is a Home Ruler.&quot; But the
+settlement must proceed upon federal lines; his ideal for Ireland was
+the provincial status of Ontario or Quebec, linked federally to a
+central parliament at Westminster.</p>
+
+<p>The most significant speech, however, came from the Archbishop of York.
+Disclaiming all party allegiance, Dr. Lang claimed to express &quot;the
+opinions of a very large number of fair-minded citizens.&quot; He admitted
+that <a name="Page_79"></a>there was an Irish problem, which could not be solved by &quot;a policy
+however generous of promoting the economic welfare of Ireland.&quot; &quot;Some
+measure of Home Rule is necessary not only to meet the needs of Ireland
+but the needs of the Imperial Parliament.&quot; This Bill, however, in his
+opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. It would be a block
+rather than a relief to the congestion of business. But these objections
+were &quot;abstract and academic&quot; in face of the real governing fact.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The figure of Ulster, grim, determined, menacing, dominates the
+scene.... We may not like it. Frankly, I do not like it. It carries
+marks of religious and racial bitterness and suspicion. It uses language
+about dis-obedience to the law which must provoke disquiet and dislike
+in the minds of all who care for the good government of the country. I
+am not competent, because I have not shared in the experience of the
+history of the Ulster people, to decide whether or not their fears are
+groundless. All these things seem to me to be beside the point. If
+Ulster means to do what it says, then the results are certainly such as
+no citizen can contemplate without grave concern.... I admit, everyone
+must admit, that there are circumstances in which a Government is
+entitled and bound to run this kind of risk. At the present time I think
+we all feel that there is a call upon Governments to stiffen rather than
+to slacken their determination in the presence of threats of
+dis-obedience or disorder. I will go further and admit that there is one
+condition which would justify in my mind His Majesty's Government in
+running the risk of the forcible coercion of Ulster. That condition is
+that they should have received from the people of this country an
+authority, clear and explicit, to undertake that risk. It is perfectly
+true that the Prime Minister gave notice that if his party were returned
+to power they would be free to raise again the question of Home Rule,
+but there <a name="Page_80"></a>is a great difference between the abstract question of Home
+Rule and a concrete Home Rule Bill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That speech undoubtedly represented the temper prevailing in the class
+of balancing electors which is so largo in England. Some of us who read
+it at the time recognized how far the long struggle for autonomy had
+prevailed, but also how strong were the forces which no argument could
+reach. Men like Dr. Lang might be offended, even shocked by the action
+of those who claimed to be England's garrison in Ireland; but they would
+be very slow to use force against such a section, although quite ready
+to justify coercion of the Irish majority. Yet what impressed Redmond
+was the advance made, rather than the revelation of what resistance
+remained. Ho had been more than thirty years an advocate of Ireland's
+cause; and now by the spokesman of the impartial educated mind of
+England the justice of that cause was admitted. The argument that a
+general election was necessary, or would be efficacious in solving the
+problem, was one with which he felt well able to contend. In that speech
+the Archbishop of York admitted his impression that in by-elections
+there had been &quot;much more of Food Taxes and the Insurance Act than of
+Home Rule.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, for Ulster such a speech had the plainest possible
+moral: Ulster's game was to become more grim, more determined, more
+menacing. The Home Rule controversy had now resolved itself into a
+question whether Ulster really meant business. Sir Edward Carson set
+himself to make that plain beyond yea or nay.</p>
+
+<p>In a speech delivered in Belfast, at the opening of a new drill hall, he
+asked and answered the question, &quot;Why are we drilling?&quot; He and his
+colleagues did not recognize the Parliament Act, he said; a law passed
+under it would be only an act of usurpation, a breach of right. &quot;We seek
+nothing but the elementary right implanted <a name="Page_81"></a>in every man: the right, if
+you are attacked, to defend yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ulster was going to stand by its Covenant.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When we talk of force, we use it, if we are driven to use it, to beat
+back those who will dare to barter away those elementary rights of
+citizenship which we have inherited.... Go on, be ready, you are our
+great army. Under what circumstances you have to come into action, you
+must leave with us. There are matters which give us grave consideration
+which we cannot and ought not to talk about in public. You must trust us
+that we will select the most opportune methods of, if necessary, taking
+on ourselves the whole government of the community in which we live. I
+know a great deal of that will involve statutory illegality, but it will
+also involve much righteousness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Some of the questions which needed grave consideration were suggested by
+happenings that followed hard on this speech. Much ridicule had been
+poured on the drillings with dummy muskets. Ulster evidently decided to
+push the matter a step further. A consignment of one thousand rifles
+with bayonets, in cases marked &quot;electrical fittings,&quot; was seized at
+Belfast on June 3, 1913. Other incidents of the same nature followed. It
+was argued, by those who sought to represent the whole campaign as an
+elaborate piece of bluff, that the weapons were useless and that they
+were deliberately sent to be seized. A feature which scarcely bore out
+this view was that one consignment was addressed to the Lord-Lieutenant
+of an Ulster county who was also an officer in the Army. A justice of
+the peace, or an officer, to whom a consignment of arms had been sent
+for a Nationalist organization would have been ordered to clear himself
+in the fullest way of complicity, and even of sympathy, or he would have
+forfeited his commission. The noble-man involved, however, made no
+explanation, and was probably never officially asked to do so.</p><a name="Page_82"></a>
+
+<p>It was commonly believed in the House of Commons that at some point, if
+not repeatedly, Government consulted the Irish leader or his principal
+advisers as to whether measures of repression should be undertaken
+against Ulster. No such consultation took place. But the opinion
+prevailing among the leading Nationalists was no doubt known or
+inferred. Mr. Dillon, speaking on June 16, 1914, when the danger-point
+had been clearly reached, justified the previous abstinence from
+coercion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have held the view from the beginning that it would not have been
+wise policy for a Government engaged in the great work of the political
+emancipation of a nation to embark on a career of coercion. I knew, and
+knew well, all the difficulties and all the reproaches that the
+Government would have to face if they abstained from coercion. It is a
+difficult and almost unprecedented course for a Government to take, and
+it is, as the Chief Secretary said, a courageous one. But with all its
+difficulties and dangers it is the right course. We who have been
+through the mill know what the effect of coercion is. We know that you
+do not put down Irishmen by coercion. You simply embitter them and
+stiffen their backs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore unquestionable that the decision to do nothing had
+Redmond's approval. Whatever may be thought of that policy, one factor
+was assuredly underestimated&mdash;the effect produced on the public mind by
+the spectacle of highly placed personages defying the law and defying it
+with impunity. It was possible to argue that a conviction for
+hypothetical treason would be difficult to secure and that failure in a
+prosecution would only encourage lawless conduct. But Privy Councillors
+who made preparations for prospective rebellion and remained Privy
+Councillors were a new phenomenon. The public thought, and it was
+apparent that the public would think, that Government was afraid to
+quarrel with what is called Society. Society shared that belief <a name="Page_83"></a>and
+began to extend its influence in a new direction. No Government can
+permit itself to be defied without general relaxation of discipline, and
+the effects extended themselves to the Army. At a meeting on July 12th
+in Ulster a telegram was read out from &quot;Covenanters&quot; in an Ulster
+regiment, urging &quot;No surrender until ammunition is spent and the last
+drop of blood.&quot; In his speech on that occasion Sir Edward Carson
+declared that every day brought him at least half a dozen letters from
+British officers asking to be enrolled among the future defenders of
+Ulster. One officer, he said, having signed the Covenant, was ordered to
+send in his papers and resign his commission. The officer refused to do
+so, and after a short time was simply told to resume his duty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have assurance from the Prime Minister,&quot; said Sir Edward Carson,
+&quot;that the forces of the Crown are not to be used against Ulster.
+Government know that they could not rely on the Army to shoot down the
+people of Ulster.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later events in Ireland furnished a grim commentary as to what the Army
+would be willing, and would not be willing, to do in the way of shooting
+down in Ireland; and such words as these of Sir Edward Carson were
+destined to be among the chief difficulties which Redmond had to
+encounter when he sought to lead Ireland into the war.</p>
+
+<p>At the meeting of that day, delegates were present from a British League
+to assist Ulster in her resistance. Behind this new quasi-military
+organization stood now the whole of one great party. Sir Edward Carson
+transmitted a message from Mr. Bonar Law in these words:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Whatever steps we may feel compelled to take, whether they be
+constitutional, or in the long run whether they be unconstitutional, we
+will have the whole of the Unionist party under his leadership behind
+us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later in the autumn, on the first anniversary of Ulster Day, there was
+formally announced the formation of an<a name="Page_84"></a> Ulster Provisional Government,
+with a Military Committee attached to it. A guarantee fund to indemnify
+all who might be involved in damaging consequences was set on foot, and
+a million sterling was indicated as the necessary amount to be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime signs of distress came from the Liberal camp. Mr.
+Churchill, in speeches to his constituents, renewed the suggestions for
+partition. More notable was a letter from Lord Loreburn, who had till
+recently been Lord Chancellor, and who was known as a steady and
+outspoken Home Ruler. He appealed in <i>The Times</i> of September 11, 1913,
+for a conference between parties on the Irish difficulty. Irish
+Nationalist opinion grew profoundly uneasy, and Redmond at Limerick on
+October 12th set out his position with weighty emphasis. He referred to
+the fact that during the summer he himself, assisted by Mr. Devlin, had
+followed Sir Edward Carson and other Ulster speakers from place to place
+through Great Britain, and on the same ground had stated the case for
+Home Rule. He claimed, and with justice, a triumphant success for this
+counter-campaign.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The argumentative opposition to Home Rule is dead, and all the violent
+language, all the extravagant action, all the bombastic threats, are but
+indications that the battle is over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Still, he was too old a politician, he said, not to build a bridge of
+gold to convenience his opponents' retreat, provided that the fruits of
+victory were not flung away. Mr. Churchill had told the Ulstermen that
+there was no demand they could make which would not be matched, and more
+than matched, by their countrymen and the Liberal party. On this it was
+necessary to be explicit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Irish Nationalists can never be assenting parties to the mutilation of
+the Irish nation; Ireland is a unit. It is true that within the bosom of
+a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government
+and of administration, but a unit Ireland is and Ireland <a name="Page_85"></a>must
+remain.... The two-nation theory is to us an abomination and a
+blasphemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These were carefully chosen words, and they indicated a possible
+acceptance of the proposal that Ulster should have control of its own
+administration in regard to local affairs, but that Irish legislation
+should be left to a common parliament.</p>
+
+<p>This plan Sir Edward Grey described as his &quot;personal contribution&quot; to a
+discussion of possibilities which had been inaugurated by a notable
+speech from the Prime Minister. At Ladybank, on October 25th, Mr.
+Asquith invited &quot;interchange of views and suggestions, free, frank, and
+without prejudice.&quot; Nothing, however, could be accepted which did not
+conform to three governing considerations. First, there must be
+established &quot;a subordinate Irish legislature with an executive
+responsible to it&quot;; secondly, &quot;nothing must be done to erect a permanent
+and insuperable bar to Irish unity&quot;; and thirdly, though the process of
+relieving congestion in the Imperial Parliament could not be fully
+accomplished by the present Bill, Ireland must not be made to wait till
+a complete scheme of decentralization could be carried out.</p>
+
+<p>The second of these conditions was plainly the most significant. It was
+taken to mean that &quot;county option&quot;&mdash;the right for each county to decide
+whether it would come under a Home Rule Government&mdash;would not create &quot;a
+permanent and insuperable&quot; obstacle, since each county could be given
+the opportunity to vote itself in at any time. Redmond's next important
+speech in England showed by its emphasis that he felt a danger. He
+denounced &quot;the gigantic game of bluff and black-mail&quot; which was in
+progress. The proposed exclusion of Ulster was not a proposition that
+could be considered. It would bring about, he thought, the ruin of
+Ulster's prosperity. &quot;For us it would mean the nullification of our
+hopes and aspirations for the future.&quot; It would stereotype an old evil
+in the region where it still existed.<a name="Page_86"></a> What Ulster really feared, he
+said, was the loss, not of freedom or prosperity, but of Protestant
+ascendancy.</p>
+
+<p>This was the truth; Protestant ascendancy, which in his boyhood had
+existed throughout all Ireland, was in consequence of the Irish party's
+work dead in three provinces. It remained and must remain in Ulster,
+where Protestants were a majority, but it would be qualified if that
+region came under the control of a parliament elected by all Ireland.
+That was and is the true reason of Ulster's resistance to national
+self-government. What he would concede and what he would reject, Redmond
+indicated in general words: &quot;There is no demand, however extravagant and
+unreasonable it may appear to us, that we are not ready carefully to
+consider, so long as it is consistent with the principle for which
+generations of our race have battled, the principle of a settlement
+based on the national self-government of Ireland. I shut no door to a
+settlement by consent, but ... we will not be intimidated or bullied
+into a betrayal' of our trust.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was noted at that time that he had said nothing to rule out Sir
+Edward Grey's proposal, which would have left the local majority
+predominant in Ulster's own affairs; and on December 4th Sir Edward Grey
+spoke again, showing a firmness that was the more impressive because of
+his habitual moderation of tone. One thing, he said, was worse than
+carrying Home Rule by force, and that would be the abandonment of Home
+Rule. Two suggestions had been made&mdash;a proposal for the temporary
+exclusion of Ulster and a plan for giving to Ulster administrative
+autonomy. Neither had been received by Ulster &quot;in a spirit which seemed
+likely to lead to a settlement.... Was it a settlement by consent they
+wanted, or was their aim simply the destruction of the Bill?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This emphasized what Redmond had said a few days earlier at Birmingham,
+when he declared that the fight against Home Rule was not an honest one,
+that its real <a name="Page_87"></a>purpose was to defeat the Parliament Act and restore to
+the Tory party its special control over the legislative machine.</p>
+
+<p>The facts were plain on the surface. The Tories clamoured for a fresh
+general election, urging that the electors never realized that the
+Liberal programme involved civil war. But to concede this claim
+indirectly defeated the Parliament Act, which would then have broken
+down at the first attempt to apply it. What added to the insincerity of
+the argument was Ulster's repeated refusal to be influenced by the
+result of any election. Under no circumstances, speaker after speaker
+from Ulster declared, would they submit to Home Rule. The prospect of
+civil war remained, with only one limitation. Mr. Bonar Law undertook
+that if a general election took place and the Liberals again came back,
+the British Unionist party would not support Ulster in physical
+resistance. They would, however, continue to oppose a Home Rule Bill by
+all constitutional means.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the English disposition to compromise was already
+operating. Mr. Asquith was the last of mankind to make a quixotic stand
+for principle, and the most disposed to pride himself on a practical
+recognition of realities. His Government was in rough water. During the
+summer Mr. Lloyd George's transaction in Marconi shares had been
+magnified by partisan rancour into a crime. Much more serious was the
+split with Labour, which led to the loss of seat after seat at
+by-elections, when the allied forces which stood behind the Parliament
+Act attacked each other and let the Tories in. The Women's Franchise
+agitation was also coming to its stormiest point.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond's part was one of extraordinary difficulty. The cause for which
+he stood was one affecting the interests of only a small minority of the
+total electorate concerned in the struggle which now spread over both
+islands. The Irish problem belonged in reality to the Victorian era;
+<a name="Page_88"></a>those in the British electorate whom it could stir to enthusiasm were
+stirred by a memory, not by a new gospel. Normally, but for the chance
+of Parnell's overthrow, it would have been solved in Gladstone's last
+years. For most Liberals, for all Labour men, the fact that it had
+passed beyond the sphere of argument meant a lack of driving force. It
+was a part of accepted Liberal orthodoxy; minds were centred rather on
+those social controversies in which Mr. Lloyd George was the dominant
+figure, and upon which opinion had not yet crystallized.</p>
+
+<p>Further, the cry of Protestant liberties in danger, the cause of
+Protestants who conducted their arming to the accompaniment of hymns and
+prayer, made inevitably a searching appeal to the feelings of an island
+kingdom where the prejudice against Roman Catholics is more instinctive
+than anywhere else in the world. Looking back on it all, I marvel not at
+the difficulties we encountered, but at the success with which we
+surmounted them; and the great element in that success was Redmond's
+personality. His dignity, his noble eloquence, his sincerity, and the
+large, tolerant nature of the man, won upon the public imagination. His
+tact was unfailing. In all those years, under the most envenomed
+scrutiny, he never let slip a word that could be used to our
+disadvantage. This is merely a negative statement. It is truer to say
+that he never touched the question without raising it to the scope of
+great issues. Nothing petty, nothing personal came into his discourse;
+he so carried the national claim of Ireland that men saw in it at once
+the test and the justification of democracy.</p>
+
+<p>That is why the Irish cause, instead of being a millstone round the neck
+of the parliamentary alliance, was in truth a living cohesive force. But
+in order to keep it so it must be pleaded, not as a question for Ireland
+only but for the democracy of Great Britain and, in a still larger
+sense, for the Commonwealth of the British Empire.</p><a name="Page_89"></a>
+
+<p>Liberal statesmen in their desire to simplify their own task
+underestimated altogether the difficulty which their professed
+short-cuts to the goal&mdash;or rather, their attempted circuits round
+obstacles&mdash;created inevitably for the Irish leader. They did not realize
+that his genuine feeling&mdash;based on knowledge&mdash;for the British democracy
+at home, and still more for its offshoots overseas, was unshared by his
+countrymen, still aloof, still suspicious, and daily impressed by the
+spectacle of those who most paraded allegiance to British Imperialism
+professing a readiness to tear up the Constitution rather than allow
+freedom to Ireland. Liberal statesmen did not understand that Redmond
+could only justify to Ireland the part which he was taking if he won,
+and that he and not they must be the judge of what Ireland would
+consider a defeat. In all probability, also, they overrated his power
+and that of the party which he led. They did not guess at the potency of
+new forces which only in these months began to make themselves felt, and
+which in the end, breaking loose from Redmond's control, undid his work.
+A new phase in Irish history had begun, of which Sir Edward Carson was
+the chief responsible author.</p><a name="Page_90"></a>
+
+<br />
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES</h3>
+
+
+<p>The first stir of a new movement in Nationalist Ireland outside the old
+political lines came from Labour&mdash;from Irish Labour, as yet unorganized
+and terribly in need of organization. On August 26, 1913, a strike in
+Dublin began under the leadership of Mr. Larkin. It had all the violence
+and disorder which is characteristic of economic struggles where Labour
+has not yet learned to develop its strength; it opened new cleavages at
+this moment when national union was most necessary: it was fought with
+the passion of despair by workers whose scale of pay and living was a
+disgrace to civilization; and after five months it was not settled but
+scotched, leaving dark embers of revolutionary hate scattered through
+the capital of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>One incident showed some of the consequences ready to spring, even in
+England itself, from the action taken in Ulster. Mr. Larkin at the end
+of October 1913 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sedition
+and inciting to disturbance. A fierce outcry ran through the Labour
+world in Great Britain; by-elections were in progress, and Government
+was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for
+the poor, one law for Labour and another for the Unionist party. To this
+pressure Government yielded, and Mr. Larkin was liberated after a few
+days in jail.</p>
+
+<p>But in Ireland more formidable symptoms soon made themselves manifest.
+Captain J.R. White, son of Sir George White, the defender of Ladysmith,
+was a soldier by hereditary instinct and had won the Distinguished<a name="Page_91"></a>
+Service Order in South Africa. But some strain in his composition
+answered to other calls, and upon Tolstoyan grounds he ceased to be a
+soldier, without ceasing to be a natural leader of men. His first public
+appearance was at a meeting in London in support of Home Rule addressed
+by a number of prominent persons who were not Roman Catholics. But his
+interests were plainly not so much Nationalist as broadly humanitarian;
+freedom for the individual soul rather than for the nation was his
+object: and he suddenly enrolled himself among Mr. Larkin's allies. His
+proposal was outlined to a great assembly of the strikers gathered in
+front of Liberty Hall: Mr. Larkin set it out. They must no longer be
+&quot;content to assemble in hopeless haphazard crowds&quot; but must &quot;agree to
+bring themselves under the influences of an ordered and sympathetic
+discipline.&quot; &quot;Labour in its own defence must begin to train itself to
+act with disciplined courage and with organized and concentrated force.
+How could they accomplish this? By taking a leaf out of the book of
+Carson. If Carson had permission to train his braves of the North to
+fight against the aspirations of the Irish people, then it was
+legitimate and fair for Labour to organize in the same militant way to
+preserve their rights and to ensure that if they were attacked they
+would be able to give a very satisfactory account of themselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Thus began in a small sectional manner a national movement which led far
+indeed. Mr. O'Cathasaigh, from whose <i>Story of the Irish Citizen Army</i> I
+quote, attributes the failure of that purely Labour organization chiefly
+to the establishment of the Irish Volunteers.</p>
+
+<p>This was a development which Redmond on his part neither willed nor
+approved, yet one which in the circumstances was inevitable. Who could
+suppose that the formation of combatant forces would remain a monopoly
+of any party? There was no mistaking the weight which a hundred thousand
+Ulster Volunteers, drilled <a name="Page_92"></a>and regimented, threw into Sir Edward
+Carson's advocacy. As early as September 1913, during the parliamentary
+recess, Redmond received at least one letter&mdash;and possibly he received
+many&mdash;urging him to raise the standard of a similar force, and pointing
+out that if he did not take this course it might be taken by others less
+fit to guide it. The letter of which I speak elicited no answer. It was
+never his habit to reply to inconvenient communications&mdash;a policy which
+he inherited from Parnell, who held that nearly every letter answered
+itself within six months, if it were let alone. Certainly in this case
+it so happened. Long before six months were up, facts had made argument
+superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>Wisdom is easy after the event, and few would dispute now that the
+constitutional party ought either to have dissociated itself completely
+from the appeal to force, or to have launched and controlled it from the
+outset. Neither of these lines was followed, and the responsibility for
+what was done and what was not done must lie with Redmond. Yet, as I
+read it, the key to his policy lay in a dread, not of war, but of civil
+war. To arm Irishmen against each other was of all possible courses to
+him the most hateful. It opened a vision of fratricidal strife, of an
+Ireland divided against itself by new and bloody memories.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, though he had, as the world came to know, soldiering in his
+blood&mdash;though the call to war, when he counted the war righteous,
+stirred what was deepest in him&mdash;by training and conviction he was
+essentially a constitutionalist: he realized profoundly how strong were
+the forces behind constitutionalism in Great Britain, how impregnable
+was the position of British Ministers if they boldly asserted the law
+with equality as between man and man. Where he was mistaken was in his
+estimate of the Government with which he had to deal, and especially of
+Mr. Asquith. Speaking to his constituents early in the New Year of 1914
+he said, &quot;The Prime<a name="Page_93"></a> Minister is as firm as a rock, and is, I believe,
+the strongest and sanest man who has appeared in British politics in our
+time.&quot; The verdict of history might have borne out this judgment had Mr.
+Asquith never been forced to face extraordinary times. In the event, it
+was Mr. Asquith's lack of firmness and failure in strength which drove
+Redmond into belated acceptance of a policy modelled on Sir Edward
+Carson's.</p>
+
+<p>As early as July 1913 the demonstrations in Ulster led to discussion of
+a countermove among young men in Dublin. But there was no public
+proposal, until at the end of October Professor MacNeill, Vice-President
+of the Gaelic League, published an article in the League's official
+organ calling on Nationalist Ireland to drill and arm. The first meeting
+of a provisional committee followed a few days later. Support was asked
+from all sections of Nationalist opinion; but, as a whole, members of
+the United Irish League and of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who
+constituted the bulk of Redmond's following, refused to act. Still,
+about a third of the committee were supporters of the parliamentary
+party; they included Professor Kettle, who was from 1906 to 1910 among
+its most brilliant members. It was, however, significant that the Lord
+Mayor, a prominent official Nationalist, refused the use of the Mansion
+House for a meeting at which it was proposed to start the enrolment of
+Irish Volunteers. As a result, the venue was changed to the Rotunda, and
+so great enthusiasm was shown that the Rink was used for the assembly.
+Even that did not suffice for half the gathering. Three overflow
+meetings were held, and four thousand men are said to have been enrolled
+that evening.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the movement did not spread at once with rapidity. By the end of
+December recruits only amounted to ten thousand. For this two causes
+were answerable. The first was the honourable refusal of the committee
+to allow companies to be enrolled except according <a name="Page_94"></a>to locality. They
+would have no sectional companies of Sinn Fein volunteers, of United
+Irish League Volunteers, of Hibernian Volunteers. All must mix equally
+in the ranks. The second was the fear of most Nationalists that by
+joining an organization with which the national leader was not
+identified they might weaken his hand. This operated, although the
+declared intention of the organization was to strengthen Redmond's
+position. At Limerick in January Pearse said: &quot;In the Volunteer movement
+we are going to give Mr. Redmond a weapon which will enable him to
+enforce the demand for Home Rule.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Briefly, for several months the numbers of the new force did not show
+that the whole of Nationalist Ireland was in support of it. Ireland was
+waiting for a sign from Redmond, and it did not come. The events which
+literally drove Irish constitutional Nationalists into following
+Ulster's example had still to occur.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, a wide extension of the cadres of the organization,
+and it was being spread by men some of whom&mdash;like Professor
+MacNeill&mdash;dissented from Redmond's attitude of quiescence, while some
+were general opponents of the whole constitutional policy. They covered
+the country with committees, recruited, it is true, from all sections of
+Nationalist Ireland. But it was inevitable that the element who
+distrusted Redmond, and whose distrust he reciprocated, should attain an
+influence out of all proportion to its following in the country.</p>
+
+<p>Government's action&mdash;and this sentence will run like a refrain through
+the rest of this book&mdash;contributed largely to strengthen the extremists
+and to weaken Redmond's hold on the people. During eleven months the
+Ulster Volunteers had been drilling, had been importing arms, and no
+step was taken to interfere. Within ten days after the Irish Volunteer
+Force began to be enrolled, a proclamation (issued on December 4, 1913)<a name="Page_95"></a>
+prohibited the importation of military arms and ammunition into Ireland.
+A system of search was instituted. But the Ulstermen were already well
+supplied. Redmond was blamed for not forcing the withdrawal of the
+proclamation. He controlled the House of Commons, it was said. This was
+the line of argument constantly taken by dissentient Nationalists; and
+it was true that he could at any moment put the Government out. Critics
+did not stop to ask for whose advantage that would be. Government by
+issuing this proclamation had effected no good: they had embarrassed
+their chief ally, and they had laid the foundation for an imposing
+structure of incidents which grew with pernicious rapidity into a
+monumental proof that law, even under a Liberal administration, has one
+aspect for Protestant Ulster and quite another for the rest of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>But in England at the beginning of the fateful year 1914 the Irish
+Volunteers had not yet become recognized as a factor in the main
+political situation. An attitude of mind had been studiously fostered
+which found crude expression soon after the House met. One of the
+Liberal party was arguing that Ulster had made Home Rule an absolute
+necessity, because Nationalists would have &quot;fourfold justification if
+they resisted in the way you have taught them to resist the Government
+of this country in maintaining the old system.&quot; &quot;They have not the
+pluck,&quot; interjected Captain Craig, the most prominent of the Ulster
+members. The present Lord Chancellor, Mr. F.E. Smith, was voluble in
+declarations that Nationalists would &quot;neither fight for Home Rule nor
+pay for Home Rule.&quot; These taunts did not ease Redmond's position,
+especially as it became plain that Ulster's threat of violence had
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Asquith, referring to the &quot;conversations&quot; between leaders which had
+taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had
+been reached the Government had decided to reopen the matter in the<a name="Page_96"></a>
+House. This meant, as Redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the
+Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in
+making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not
+admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward
+some plan.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Redmond's attitude, and the attitude of the House, was considerably
+affected by an unusual speech which had been delivered by the Ulster
+leader.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Edward Carson, as everyone knows, is not an Ulsterman, and the chief
+of many advantages which Ulster gained from his advocacy was that
+Ulster's case was never stated to Great Britain as Ulstermen themselves
+would have stated it. It is not true to say that Ulstermen by habit
+think of Ireland as consisting of two nations, for all Ulstermen
+traditionally regard themselves as Irish and so have always described
+themselves without qualification. But it is true to say that Ulster
+Protestants have regarded Irish Catholics as a separate and inferior
+caste of Irishmen. The belief has been ingrained into them that as
+Protestants they are morally and intellectually superior to those of the
+other religion. Their whole political attitude is determined by this
+conviction. They refuse to come under a Dublin Parliament because in it
+they would be governed by a majority whom they regard as their
+inferiors. It is in their deliberate view natural that Roman Catholics
+should submit to be controlled by Protestants, unnatural that
+Protestants should submit to be controlled by Roman Catholics.</p>
+
+<p>It does not express the truth to say that Sir Edward Carson was adroit
+enough to avoid putting this view of the case to the electors of Great
+Britain or to the House of Commons. Temperamentally and instinctively,
+he did not share it. He was a Southern Irishman who at the opening of
+his life held himself, as not one Ulsterman in a thousand does,
+perfectly free to make up his mind for or against the maintenance of the
+Union. He reached <a name="Page_97"></a>the conclusion not only that Home Rule would be
+disastrous for Ireland, for the United Kingdom, and for the British
+Empire, but that it would mean for Irishmen the acceptance of an
+inferior status in the Empire. As citizens of the United Kingdom, he
+held, they were more honourably situated than they could be as citizens
+of an Irish State within the Empire. This was an attitude of mind which
+Ulster could endorse, although it did not fully represent Ulster's
+conviction: but this was the case which Sir Edward Carson always made on
+behalf of Ulster, and he made it as an Irishman whose personal interests
+and connections lay in the South of Ireland, not in the North. His
+argument was the more persuasive because it was based on a view of
+Ireland's true interest&mdash;not of Ulster's only; and it was the harder on
+that account for Redmond to repel peremptorily. More than this, between
+him and Redmond there was an old personal tie. The Irish Bar is a true
+centre of intercourse between men of varying political and religious
+beliefs, and as junior barristers Edward Carson and John Redmond went
+the Munster circuit together.</p>
+
+<p>All this lay behind the appeal which on February 11, 1914, was implied
+rather than expressed in the novel phrase and still more unaccustomed
+tone of a consummate orator.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Believe me,&quot; Sir Edward Carson said, &quot;whatever way you settle the Irish
+question&quot; (and that phrase threw over the cry of &quot;No Home Rule&quot;), &quot;there
+are only two ways to deal with Ulster. It is for statesmen to say which
+is the best and right one. She is not a part of the community which can
+be bought. She will not allow herself to be sold. You must therefore
+either coerce her if you go on, or you must in the long run, by showing
+that good government can come under the Home Rule Bill, try and win her
+over to the case of the rest of Ireland. You probably can coerce
+her&mdash;though I doubt it. If you do, what will be the disastrous
+conse<a name="Page_98"></a>quences not only to Ulster, but to this country and the Empire?
+Will my fellow-countryman&quot;&mdash;and at this emphatic word, which jettisoned
+absolutely the theory of two nations, the speaker turned to his left,
+where Redmond sat in his accustomed place below the gangway&mdash;&quot;will my
+fellow-countryman, the leader of the Nationalist Party, have gained
+anything? I will agree with him&mdash;I do not believe he wants to triumph
+any more than I do. But will he have gained anything if he takes over
+these people and then applies for what he used to call&mdash;at all events
+his party used to call&mdash;the enemies of the people to come in and coerce
+them into obedience? No, sir; one false step taken in relation to Ulster
+will, in my opinion, render for ever impossible a solution of the Irish
+question. I say this to my Nationalist fellow-countrymen, and, indeed,
+also to the Government: you have never tried to win over Ulster. You
+have never tried to understand her position. You have never alleged, and
+can never allege, that this Bill gives her one atom of advantage.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then, carried away by the course of his argument, an angry note came
+into his voice, and before a minute had passed we were back in the old
+atmosphere. He accused us of wanting &quot;not Ulster's affections but her
+taxes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Well might Redmond say when he rose that Sir Edward Carson had been
+heard by all of us with very mixed feelings. &quot;I care not about the
+assent of Englishmen,&quot; he said; &quot;I am fighting this matter out between a
+fellow-countryman and myself, and I say that it was an unworthy thing
+for him to say that I am animated by these base motives, especially
+after he had lectured the House on the undesirability of imputing
+motives.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the personal note Redmond was to the full as effective as his
+opponent, and his speech of that day was memorable. It was also very
+much more to the taste of the Liberal rank and file than what came from
+their own front bench. &quot;We do not by any means <a name="Page_99"></a>take the tragic view of
+the probabilities or even the possibilities of what is called civil war
+in Ulster,&quot; he said; and added that the House of Commons ought, in his
+opinion, &quot;to resent as an affront these threats of civil war.&quot; Yet in
+the end he promised, for the sake of peace, &quot;consideration in the
+friendliest spirit&quot; (not very different from acceptance) of any
+proposals that the Government might feel called upon to put forward.</p>
+
+<p>It is noteworthy that in this prolonged debate there was no reference to
+the new fact of a second volunteer force. But on February 12th a
+question was asked about it. On the 17th there was allusion to another
+growing element of danger&mdash;the discussions among officers of the Army of
+a combined refusal to serve against Ulster. All these factors must have
+weighed with Redmond and with his chief colleagues in their discussions
+with the Government during the next three weeks. &quot;Friendly
+consideration&quot; passed into acceptance on March 9th, when Mr. Asquith,
+introducing the Home Rule Bill for its passage in the third consecutive
+session (as required by the Parliament Act), outlined the proposed
+modifications in it. They involved partition. But the exclusion was to
+be optional by areas and limited in time.</p>
+
+<p>The proposal to take a vote by counties had, it will be remembered, been
+originally suggested by Mr. Bonar Law, and in following the Prime
+Minister he could not well repudiate it. The test, however, which he now
+put forward was whether or not the proposals satisfied Ulster: and he
+fixed upon the time-limit of six years as being wholly unacceptable.
+Redmond, on the other hand, while declaring that the Government had gone
+to &quot;the extremest limits of concession,&quot; said that the proposals had one
+merit: they would &quot;elicit beyond doubt or question by a free ballot the
+real opinion of the people of Ulster.&quot; This indicated his conviction
+that if Home Rule really came the majority in Ulster would prefer to
+take their chances under it; the proposal of exclusion being merely <a name="Page_100"></a>a
+tactical manoeuvre to defeat Home Rule by splitting the Nationalists.</p>
+
+<p>Its efficacy for that purpose was immediately demonstrated. Mr. O'Brien
+followed Redmond with a virulent denunciation of &quot;the one concession of
+all others which must be hateful and unthinkable from the point of view
+of any Nationalist in Ireland.&quot; Opposition from Mr. O'Brien and from Mr.
+Healy was no new thing. But by acceptance of these proposals the
+Nationalist leader made their opposition for the first time really
+formidable. Telegrams rained in that March afternoon&mdash;above all on Mr.
+Devlin, from his supporters in Belfast, who felt themselves betrayed and
+shut out from a national triumph which they had been the most zealous to
+promote. From this time onward the position of Redmond personally and of
+his party as a whole was perceptibly weakened. Especially an alienation
+began between him and the Catholic hierarchy. It was impossible that the
+clergy should be well disposed towards proposals which, as Mr. Healy put
+it, would make Cardinal Logue a foreigner in his own cathedral at
+Armagh.</p>
+
+<p>Yet upon the whole the shake to Redmond's power was less than might have
+been expected&mdash;largely, no doubt, because the offer was repelled. Sir
+Edward Carson described it as &quot;sentence of death with stay of execution
+for six years.&quot; With a great advocate's instinct, he fastened on the
+point in the Government's proposal which was least defensible.</p>
+
+<p>In my opinion these modifications of the Bill were never adequately
+discussed in the meetings of the Irish party. All was done between the
+Government and Redmond's inner cabinet, consisting of Redmond himself,
+Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor. The negotiations were most
+delicate and difficult, and above all secrecy is hard to maintain when a
+body of over seventy men, each keenly concerned for the view of his
+constituents, comes to be consulted. Yet I think it a pity <a name="Page_101"></a>that the
+party never thrashed this question out. Once the principle of option was
+admitted, a great deal had to be considered. Voting must be a referendum
+either to the province as a whole, to the constituencies separately, or
+to local units of administration. A referendum by constituencies was as
+impossible as one by parishes: for instance, Mr. Devlin's West Belfast,
+out of the city's four divisions, would certainly have voted to remain
+under the Irish Parliament, and an absurd situation would have resulted.
+The choice lay between a vote by counties or by the province as a whole.
+In the province, three counties out of nine were as predominantly
+Nationalist as any part of Leinster. In two others, Tyrone and
+Fermanagh, Nationalists were about 55 per cent of the electorate. But
+the bulk of the population of Ulster resided in four counties of the
+north-east, so that Protestants over the whole province had a majority
+of some two hundred thousand. An appeal to the province, therefore,
+might involve the exclusion from Home Rule of a very large area which
+was thoroughly Nationalist. On the other hand, every scheme of exclusion
+had in view the possibility of the excluded area changing its mind on
+the question after a short trial. To separate the four overwhelmingly
+Protestant counties was to set up a body in which a change of vote would
+be much harder to bring about than in the province. As a matter of
+statesmanship there was much to be said for closing with the Ulstermen's
+original demand that the province should come in or stay out as a whole.
+It satisfied Ulster's sentiment and lessened the chances of
+crystallizing a Protestant block of excluded territory, which would tend
+to become less and less Irish.</p>
+
+<p>The answer to this was that Nationalists would never consent and did
+never consent to the possibility of permanent exclusion for any part.
+Insistence on the time-limit was from this point of view a matter of
+absolute principle. Yet many believed then, and believe now, <a name="Page_102"></a>that if
+any part of Ulster were excluded by legislation it would certainly come
+in voluntarily after a short period. On the other hand, if any part were
+excluded even for a year, it was difficult to believe that it could ever
+be brought in except by its own consent. The view, however, to which we
+were committed (with the party's general approval), was expressed by
+Redmond at the customary St. Patrick's Day Nationalist banquet in
+London.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To agree to the permanent partition of Ireland would be,&quot; he said, &quot;an
+outrage upon nature and upon history.&quot; He quoted a phrase used by Mr.
+Austen Chamberlain, who had described it as &quot;the statutory negation of
+Ireland's national claim.&quot; But, he argued, no such sacrifice of
+principle had been made. The demand of Nationalists was for a Parliament
+for the whole of Ireland, having power to deal with &quot;every purely Irish
+matter.&quot; Temporary limitations of this demand had already been accepted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have agreed, as Parnell agreed in the Bill of 1886, and as we all
+agreed in the Bill of 1893, that the power of dealing with some of the
+most vital of Irish questions should not come within the purview of the
+new Parliament for a definite number of years.&quot; The control of police,
+for instance, was reserved to the Imperial Parliament in all those Bills
+for a term of years. But this did not mean that Parnell or we abandoned
+Ireland's right to manage her own police. Reservation of the police in
+perpetuity would have been impossible to accept. In the same way, said
+Redmond, &quot;the automatic ending of any period of exclusion is for us a
+fixed and immutable principle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To maintain this conformity with national sentiment great advantages
+were sacrificed. The whole debates of this period turned on the question
+of the time-limit. If it had never been raised, opposition would still
+have existed, but the fact would have been plain from the <a name="Page_103"></a>outset that
+Protestant Ulster claimed to dictate not only where it had the majority,
+but where the majority was against it. Redmond probably believed that
+the opinion of Nationalists in the North could not be brought to consent
+to abandonment of the time-limit. If so, he probably underrated, then as
+always, the influence he possessed. It is always easy to persuade
+Irishmen that if you are going to do a thing you should do it
+&quot;decently.&quot; What is more, a real effect could have been produced on much
+moderate opinion in Ulster by saying to Ulster: &quot;Stay out if you like,
+and come in when you like. When you come in, you will be more than
+welcome.&quot; But the decision for this course would have needed to be taken
+before the proposals were made, since any attempt to enlarge them was
+bound to renew and intensify the inevitable storm of Nationalist
+dissent. Whatever the proposal, it should have been absolutely the last
+word of concession.</p>
+
+<p>If a clear proposal of local option by counties without time-limit had
+been put before Parliament and the electorate, I do not think our
+position in Ireland would have been worse than it was made by the
+proposal of temporary exclusion, and it would have been greatly
+strengthened in Parliament and in the United Kingdom. All moderate men,
+and many pronounced Unionists, were becoming uneasy under the perpetual
+menace of trouble. Events which now followed rapidly turned the
+uneasiness into grave anxiety, but did not turn it to the profit of the
+Government.</p>
+
+<p>The policy which was adopted in Mr. Asquith's proposal of March 9th was
+the policy which Mr. Churchill had pushed from the first introduction of
+the Home Rule Bill, even when it was formally disavowed by the Prime
+Minister. Contemptuous rejection of it by the Ulstermen when it was
+proposed was not calculated to strengthen Mr. Churchill's personal
+position, or to soothe his temper, and on March 14th he made a speech at
+Bradford which <a name="Page_104"></a>very greatly stirred public feeling. If Ulster really
+rejects the offer, said Mr. Churchill, &quot;it can only be because they
+prefer shooting to voting and the bullet to the ballot.&quot; Should civil
+war break out in Ulster, the issue would not be confined to Ireland: the
+issue would be whether civil and parliamentary government in these
+realms was to be beaten down by the menace of armed force. Bloodshed was
+lamentable, but there were worse things. If the law could not prevail,
+if the veto of violence was to replace the veto of privilege, then, said
+the orator, &quot;let us go forward and put these grave matters to a proof.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Churchill next appeared in the House of Commons, a great
+outburst of cheering showed what a volume of feeling had found
+expression in his speech. Redmond came to the St. Patrick's Day banquet
+under the impression of that scene, and he spoke with a confidence which
+gives to his words a tragic irony to-day. He cited &quot;the superb speech of
+Mr. Churchill&quot; as evidence that &quot;what is our last word is also the last
+word of the Government.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the Opposition have spoken their last word,&quot; he said, &quot;the Bill will
+now proceed upon its natural course. It will proceed rapidly and
+irresistibly, and in a few short weeks become the law of the land.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The weeks have lengthened into years, and so much has happened in them
+that I keep no clear memory of that evening, though I was present. But
+it represented the temper of the time, among Home Rulers, and more
+particularly among Irish Nationalists, who generally held the opinion
+that the military preparations in Ulster were, as Mr. Devlin called
+them, &quot;a hollow masquerade.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>We saw the other side of the picture on Thursday, March 19th, when a
+Vote of Censure was moved. Mr. Bonar Law launched on the House of
+Commons a new and sinister suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What about the Army? If it is only a question of <a name="Page_105"></a>disorder, the Army I
+am sure will obey you, and I am sure that it ought to obey you; but if
+it really is a question of civil war, soldiers are citizens like the
+rest of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sir Edward rose immediately the Prime Minister had replied to Mr. Bonar
+Law, and his speech was furious. &quot;In consequence of the trifling with
+this subject by the Prime Minister and the provocation, which he has
+endorsed, by the First Lord of the Admiralty last Saturday, I feel I
+ought not to be here but in Belfast,&quot; he said; and he indicated his
+intention of proceeding there as soon as he had spoken. What he had to
+say chiefly concerned the Army, and the preparations which were being
+made at the War Office for the despatch of troops to Ulster. He
+suggested that there was the intention to provoke an attack so that
+there might be &quot;pretext for putting them down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will be all right. You will be no longer cowards. The cowardice
+will have been given up. You will have become men in entrenching
+yourselves behind the Army. But under your direction they will have
+become assassins.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With these words&mdash;memorable in connection with what happened later, but
+not in Ulster&mdash;the Ulster leader left the House, followed by Captain
+Craig. Friday's papers were of course full of the debate. At noon on
+that day, March 20, 1914, General Sir Arthur Paget, Commander-in-Chief
+in Ireland, held a meeting with the officers at the Curragh and received
+the intimation that the majority of them would resign their commissions
+rather than go on duty which was likely to involve a collision with
+Ulster.</p>
+
+<p>It seems only fair in dealing with this whole incident to print here an
+account of what happened, written from the soldier's point of view, by
+the man who was the spokesman and leader of the resigning
+officers&mdash;Brigadier (now Lieutenant) General Sir Hubert Gough.<a name="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a></p>
+<a name="Page_106"></a>
+<blockquote><p>'&quot;I never refused to obey orders. On the contrary, I obeyed them. I
+     was ordered to make a decision&mdash;namely, to leave the Army or 'to
+     undertake active operations against Ulster.' These were the very
+     words of the terms offered. As I was given a choice, I accepted it,
+     and chose the first alternative, and as a matter of fact I have a
+     letter in existence written the night before the offer was made by
+     Sir A. Paget to my brother, saying: 'Something is up' (we had been
+     suddenly ordered to a conference). 'What is it? If I receive orders
+     to march North, of course I will go.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>     'All the officers of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade took the same line'
+     (continues the correspondent of the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>) 'and
+     resigned. This decision seems not to have been expected by the
+     authorities, and caused great perturbation. General Gough was urged
+     by Sir Arthur Paget to withdraw the resignation. Sir Arthur Paget
+     told them that the operations against Ulster were to be of a purely
+     defensive nature. Unfortunately, Sir Arthur Paget based his appeal
+     on expediency and private interest, and not sufficiently on the
+     call of public duty. This failed to influence the officers. They
+     persisted in their resignations, and only finally withdrew them on
+     receiving a written undertaking from the War Office that they would
+     not be again presented with the alternative of resigning or
+     attacking Ulster.'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The Irish Party had no guess at the inner aspect of the occurrence.
+Naturally, but regrettably, we were the section of the House which had
+least touch with what was thought and felt in barrack-rooms and
+regimental messes. Naturally, but most regrettably, the opinion of the
+Army regarded us traditionally as a hostile body; and at this time every
+effort to accentuate that belief was made by the political party with
+which the Army had most intercourse and connection.</p>
+
+<p>Writing now, as I hope I may write without offence, of a state of things
+not far off in time, but divided from us of to-day by the marks of a
+vast upheaval, it can be said that the old professional Army was a
+society governed in an extraordinary degree by tradition. Part of that
+<a name="Page_107"></a>tradition was that the Army had no politics; and as everyone knows, the
+man who says he has no politics is in practice almost invariably a
+Conservative. In the Army, usage was at its strongest&mdash;stronger even
+than at a public school; it was almost bad manners, &quot;bad form,&quot; to hold
+political opinions differing from those of your mess. Political
+discussion was sharply discouraged; but this never meant that a man
+might not express vehemently the prevailing opinion. On the broad facts
+it was inevitable that the prevailing opinion should be unfriendly to
+Irish Nationalists. Irish Nationalists had taken passionately the line
+of opposition to the South African War; they had been sharply critical
+of all the minor campaigns in which the Army had been engaged for
+repression or for conquest during the whole period since Parnell began
+his leadership. In Ireland itself, every man who reflected for a moment
+saw at the Curragh the very embodiment of that force which had
+maintained for over a hundred years a Government which had not the
+consent of the governed; and unless he was one of those who regarded
+themselves as &quot;England's faithful garrison in Ireland,&quot; protestations of
+enthusiasm for the armed forces of the Crown could not be the natural
+expression of his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Yet mingled with the Nationalists' attitude of estrangement from the
+forces which upheld a detested system of government there was a
+deep-seated pride in the exploits of Irish troops; and no man ever felt
+this more strongly than Redmond. He seldom spoke of the distinguished
+men he met, but again and again I remember hearing him mention with
+pleasure some talk over a dinner-table with this or that famous
+soldier&mdash;Sir John French (as he then was), for instance. It was
+happiness for him to find himself on friendly terms with the service to
+which so many sentiments bound him. The Curragh incident was to him more
+than a grave political event; it pained him beyond measure that this
+opposition should be <a name="Page_108"></a>headed by a representative of one of the Irish
+families most famous for their military record. In the debates which
+dealt with all this matter he said no word, and he kept our party
+silent&mdash;a wise course, and one to which every instinct prompted him.</p>
+
+<p>In its political aspect, this action of General Gough and the fifty
+officers allied with him revealed a new and formidable impediment on the
+path to Home Rule; yet it was one of those barriers which rally forces
+rather than weaken them, and in surmounting which, or sweeping them
+aside, a new impetus may be gained. The incident was first discussed in
+the House on Monday, March 23rd, and continued to dominate all other
+questions for several days. From the Labour benches Mr. John Ward (now
+Colonel), who had been a private soldier, gave the first indication of
+the volume of resentment. His speech, remarkable in its power both of
+phrasing and of thought, was delivered quite unexpectedly in a thin
+House; but its effect was electrical. Later, Mr. J.H. Thomas spoke in
+the same strain. When a railway strike was threatened, the soldiers had
+been called out and had come without a murmur. Was the Army to be used
+against all movements except those under the patronage of the Tory
+party? If so, he would tell his four hundred thousand railway men to
+equip themselves to defend their own interests.</p>
+
+<p>These speeches set people thinking very gravely, but their effect was to
+increase the confidence of Home Rulers&mdash;the more so as Sir Edward Grey,
+in one of his rare moments of emphasis, declared his determination to go
+as far as either speaker if the case which they foreshadowed should
+arise. But new occurrences disquieted the public; the bungling which had
+characterized dealings with the officers at the Curragh was not ended
+there. General Gough received a document from Colonel Seely, Secretary
+of State for War, countersigned by Sir John French and Sir Spencer
+Ewart, the military heads of <a name="Page_109"></a>the War Office; and this document was in
+part disavowed by the Cabinet. The two Generals resigned and Colonel
+Seely followed their example. I have never seen the House of Commons so
+completely surprised as on the afternoon when the Prime Minister
+announced that he himself would succeed to the vacant office. The
+surprise passed at once into a feeling of immense relief, very widely
+shared by all parties. The right thing had been done in the right way,
+and it was clear that Mr. Asquith possessed enormous authority, if he
+chose to assert it.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of all these happenings was immediately perceptible in the
+resumed discussion on the Home Rule Bill. Mr. Dillon, speaking on the
+second day, said: &quot;Yesterday for the first time I heard this question
+debated in a spirit of reasonableness and conciliation and with an
+evident desire on both sides to reach an agreement.&quot; A proposal
+frequently put forward from the Tory side suggested exclusion until a
+federal arrangement for the United Kingdom could be completed. The
+official Tory demand was for either a referendum or a general election.
+But, as Redmond pointed out when he spoke on the fourth and last day of
+the debate, any proposal for a settlement must be a settlement which
+Ulster would accept, and Ulster declared that it would not be influenced
+by any vote of the British people or by any Act of Parliament. In a
+passage of very genuine feeling he indicated what Ulster might do to
+assist him in securing for Ulster the extremest limit of concession:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Anything which would mean burying the hatchet, anything which would
+mean the consent of these Ulstermen to shake hands frankly with their
+fellow-countrymen across the hateful memories of the past, would be
+welcomed with universal joy in Ireland, and would be gladly purchased by
+very large sacrifices indeed. If the right honourable and learned
+gentleman (Sir Edward Carson) would say to me, 'We are both Irishmen; we
+both love our country; we both hate&mdash;and I am sure this is <a name="Page_110"></a>absolutely
+true of both of us&mdash;we both hate all the old sectarian animosities, all
+the old wrongs, all the old memories which have kept Irishmen apart; let
+us come together and see what we can do for the welfare of our common
+country, so that we can hand down to those who come after us an Ireland
+more free, more peaceful, more tolerant, an Ireland less cursed by
+racial and religious differences'; if an appeal like that were made to
+me, I say without the smallest hesitation that there are no lengths that
+Nationalist Ireland would not be willing to go to assuage the fears,
+allay the anxieties, and remove the prejudices of their Ulster
+fellow-countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But, alas! that is not the position. Even the permanent exclusion of
+Ulster is not put forward as the price of reconciliation; it is simply
+put forward as the one and sole condition upon which they will give up
+their avowed intention of levying war upon their fellow-countrymen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He dealt with the federal proposal, and once more avowed his desire for
+that solution. &quot;I have been all my political life preaching in favour of
+federalism.&quot; But he could not consent that the exclusion of Ulster
+should be prolonged indefinitely pending a settlement on federal lines,
+nor consent to any &quot;watering down of the powers in the present Home Rule
+Bill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What remained then, if Ulster would not accept the offer? Nothing but
+&quot;to proceed calmly with the Bill.&quot; Threats of civil war he discounted.
+Disturbances there would probably be; but when the first Home Rule Bill
+was defeated, there were weeks of the most terrible riots in Belfast.
+The House could not afford to be deterred from any course by threats of
+violence; and he was confident that the Bill would pass into law and
+profoundly confident it would never be revoked.</p>
+
+<p>He gave his reasons for that confidence in a passage almost
+autobiographical in character&mdash;if only because it made the House realize
+how completely this man's <a name="Page_111"></a>whole adult life had been devoted to this one
+long service, and how far the labours of our party had achieved their
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In a sense I may say I have lived my whole life within these walls. I
+came in here little more than a boy, and I have grown old in the House
+of Commons, and in the long space of years which have passed since then
+I have witnessed the most extraordinary transformation of the whole
+public life of this country, and I have witnessed an almost miraculous
+change in the position and the prospects of the Irish National Cause.
+When I came to this House, Irish Nationalist members, in a sense, were
+almost outcasts. Both the great British parties&mdash;there was no Labour
+party then&mdash;divided on everything else, were united in hostility to the
+national movement and the national ideal. Home Rule seemed hopelessly
+out of the range of practical politics. There were only a handful of men
+in this whole House of Commons besides us who were in favour of any
+measure of Home Rule for Ireland. Outside, the public opinion of this
+country was ignorant, and it was actively hostile, and we found it
+impossible to gain the ear of the democracy of England for the voice of
+Ireland. All that has vanished into thin air. All that has radically
+changed. The change has been slow and gradual, but it has been
+continuous and sure. Such a change as that can never be reversed. You
+might as well talk of the world going back to the days before
+electricity or petrol as hope to bring back the prejudices and the
+ignorance of the masses of the people in this country about Ireland, as
+they existed in the past.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His confidence was strong and it communicated itself to Ireland. But
+whatever could be said to shake confidence was said by Mr. O'Brien and
+Mr. Healy, who denounced the Bill as worthless when linked to the plan
+of even temporary partition, and declared that, whatever the Government
+might say at present, we had not yet <a name="Page_112"></a>reached the end of their
+concessions. On the division they and their party abstained, so that the
+majority dropped to 77.</p>
+
+<p>Up to this point it is still true to say that the Nationalist party were
+constant to their faith in strictly constitutional action. But a new
+development was imminent. On the night of Friday to Saturday, April
+24th-25th, Ulstermen brought off their first overt act of rebellion.
+They seized the ports of Larne and Donaghadee, cut off telephone and
+telegraph, landed a very large quantity of rifles and ammunition, and
+despatched them to every quarter of the province by means of a great
+fleet of motor-cars which had been mobilized for the occasion. It was a
+clean and excellent piece of staff work, planned by a capable soldier
+and carried out under military direction: and the Tory Press hailed it
+with no less enthusiasm than was elicited by the most important
+victories in the recent war.</p>
+
+<p>One coastguard, running to give the alarm, died of heart failure:
+otherwise there was no casualty. The police and customs officers were
+confronted with <i>force majeure</i> and submitted without show of
+resistance. The Prime Minister, in answering a question as to the action
+which he proposed to take, used these words:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In view of this grave and unprecedented outrage the House may be
+assured that His Majesty's Government will take without delay
+appropriate steps to vindicate the authority of the law and protect
+officers and servants of the King and His Majesty's subjects in the
+exercise of their legal rights.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Opposition was noticeably silent, and next day some embarrassment
+was apparent when they proceeded with a previously arranged Vote of
+Censure on the Government for the military and naval movements in
+connection with which the Curragh incident had occurred. The sum of
+these movements amounted to despatching four companies to points in
+Ulster at which very large <a name="Page_113"></a>stores of arms and ammunition were lying
+under very small guard&mdash;and at one of which there was a battery of field
+guns with no protecting infantry. It was regarded as at least possible
+that the stores might be rushed by &quot;evil-disposed persons, not fully
+under the control of their leaders.&quot; It was also regarded as possible
+that the movement of these companies might be resisted and that much
+larger operations might be thereby involved. The stationing of the Fleet
+opposite the Belfast coast was part of the measures taken against this
+latter contingency.</p>
+
+<p>All this preparation was denounced as a conspiracy organized by Mr.
+Churchill with intent to provoke rebellion and put it down by a
+massacre. In view of the important military operation which Ulster had
+just carried out against the Crown, Mr. Churchill was not without
+justification in comparing the motion to a vote of censure by the
+criminal classes on the police. Yet, after much hard hitting in speech,
+he once more led the way in retreat from the Government's position. Sir
+Edward Grey had declared, speaking for the Government, that beyond the
+six years' limit they could not go. Mr. Churchill himself had declared
+the Government's offer would be and should be their last word. Yet now,
+avowedly on his own account, and not speaking for the Cabinet, he
+proposed that a new negotiation should be opened with Sir Edward Carson.</p>
+
+<p>This proposal elicited no response, and the debate continued that day in
+a line of violent recrimination. But next day Sir Edward Carson rose and
+affirmed that he had previously declared his willingness to advise
+Ulster to close with a proposal giving exclusion until a Federal scheme
+had been considered, when the whole matter should be reviewed &quot;in the
+light of the action of the Irish Parliament and how they got on.&quot; Now he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall try to make an advance on what I said before.<a name="Page_114"></a> I will say
+this&mdash;and I hope the House will believe me, because, though I do not
+want to be introducing my own personality into it, I am myself a
+southerner in Ireland&mdash;I would say this: That if Home Rule is to pass,
+much as I detest it, and little as I will take any responsibility for
+the passing of it, my earnest hope, and indeed I would say my most
+earnest prayer, would be that the Government of Ireland for the South
+and West would prove, and might prove, such a success in the future,
+notwithstanding all our anticipations, that it might be even for the
+interest of Ulster itself to move towards that Government, and come in
+under it and form one unit in relation to Ireland. May I say something
+more than that? I would be glad to see such a state of things arising in
+Ireland, in which you would find that mutual confidence and goodwill
+between all classes in Ireland as would lead to a stronger Ireland as an
+integral unit in the federal scheme. While I say all that, that depends
+upon goodwill, and never can be brought about by force.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Redmond remained silent; but months later it became known that he had
+taken action to foster this new spirit. He advised the Prime Minister
+not to proceed with the prosecution which had been threatened against
+the Larne gun-runners. But at the same time he urged upon Government
+that they should withdraw the proclamation against importing arms: and
+for this he had good reason. The Larne affair had rendered the movement
+in support of the Irish Volunteers irresistible, and Redmond had decided
+to throw himself in with it.</p>
+
+<p>The result was an amazing upward leap in the numbers of the Volunteers.
+On June 15th a question brought out that they were estimated at 80,000
+against 84,000 of the Ulster force; but the Nationalist body was
+increasing at the rate of 15,000 a week. By July 9th they were reckoned
+(on police information) at 132,000, of whom nearly forty thousand were
+Army reservists.</p><a name="Page_115"></a>
+
+<p>These facts now dominated the situation. It was now abundantly clear
+that if passing Home Rule meant civil war, so also would the abandonment
+of Home Rule. On June 16th Lord Robert Cecil raised a debate on the new
+danger. In that debate words were quoted from Sir Roger Casement, one of
+the most active promoters of the movement: &quot;When you are challenged on
+the field of force, it is upon that field you must reply.&quot; Mr. Dillon,
+who exulted in the &quot;splendid demonstration of national sentiment shown
+in the uprising of the National Volunteers,&quot; urged strongly that the
+growth of a rival body was not a menace to public order but an added
+security. The armed Ulstermen would be &quot;much slower to break the peace&quot;
+when they realized the certainty of formidable resistance&mdash;and this, be
+it said, was no ungrounded observation. Yet at the same time the very
+success of the Volunteer movement was disquieting Redmond. He was not in
+the same position as Sir Edward Carson, who from the first had directed,
+presided over, and controlled the raising and equipment of his force;
+and unless the force were to be a menace to his leadership, he must
+secure control. As Mr. Bulmer Hobson puts it in his <i>History of the
+Irish Volunteers</i>:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Volunteers had men in their ranks who were political followers of
+Mr. Redmond's, and men who were not, and who never had been. The latter
+were willing to help him if he had been ready to help them; they would
+have made terms with him, but were not prepared to be merely absorbed
+into his movement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The strength of Redmond's position lay in the fact that the vast
+majority of the enrolled men looked to him as their leader: his
+weakness, in that the committees under which enrolment had taken place
+were largely composed of the extremist section. He now determined to
+unite the Volunteers with the parliamentary party as the Ulster
+Volunteers were linked with Sir Edward Carson and his civilian
+organization.</p><a name="Page_116"></a>
+
+<p>The men with whom he had to deal were principally Professor MacNeill and
+Sir Roger Casement. His first proposal was to replace the existing
+Provisional Committee by another, consisting of nine members, with
+Professor MacNeill, who was regarded as a general supporter of
+Redmond's, in the chair. Oddly enough, the negotiations broke down
+because Redmond nominated Michael Davitt's son along with Mr. Devlin and
+his own brother to be representatives. The young Davitt had at an early
+stage expressed dissent from the movement, and this, coming from his
+father's son, left bitter resentment. The existing Committee now
+proposed to call a National Convention of the Volunteers. Such a body
+would clearly have become a rival, and a powerful rival, to the National
+Convention of a purely citizen type, and Redmond felt himself forced to
+take drastic action. In a public letter dated June 9th he wrote:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret to observe the controversy which is now taking place in the
+Press on the Irish National Volunteer movement. Many of the writers
+convey the impression that the Volunteer movement is, to some extent at
+all events, hostile to the objects and policy of the Irish party. I
+desire to say emphatically that there is no foundation for this idea,
+and any attempts to create discord between the Volunteer movement and
+the Irish party are calculated in my opinion to ruin the Volunteer
+movement, which, properly directed, may be of incalculable service to
+the National Cause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Up to two months ago I felt that the Volunteer movement was somewhat
+premature, but the effect of Sir Edward Carson's threats upon public
+opinion in England, the House of Commons, and the Government; the
+occurrences at the Curragh Camp, and the successful gun-running in
+Ulster, have vitally altered the position, and the Irish party took
+steps about six weeks ago to inform their friends and supporters in the
+country that in their opinion it was desirable to support the Volunteer
+<a name="Page_117"></a>movement, with the result that within the last six weeks the movement
+has spread like a prairie fire, and all the Nationalists of Ireland will
+shortly be enrolled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Within the last fortnight I have had communications from men in all
+parts of the country, inquiring as to the organization and control of
+the Volunteer movement, and it has been strongly represented to me that
+the Governing Body should be reconstructed and placed on a thoroughly
+representative basis, so as to give confidence to all shades of National
+opinion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Redmond's proposal was that to the existing Committee there should be
+added twenty-five representative men from different parts of the
+country, nominated at the instance of the Irish party and in sympathy
+with its policy and aims. Failing this, he intimated that it would be
+&quot;necessary to fall back on county control and government until the
+organization was sufficiently complete to make possible the election of
+a fully representative Executive by the Volunteers themselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The intimation was not at once accepted. An order was issued calling on
+the Volunteers to elect additional representatives by counties to be
+added to the Committee. Redmond at once publicly declared that this
+amounted to refusal of his offer, and he put the issue very plainly. The
+Provisional Committee was originally self-constituted and had been
+increased only by co-option. The majority of its members, he was
+informed, were not supporters of the Irish party: of the rank and file
+at least 95 per cent., he said, were supporters of the Irish party and
+its policy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is a condition of things which plainly cannot continue. The rank
+and file of the Volunteers and the responsible leaders of the Irish
+people are entitled, and indeed are bound, to demand some security that
+an attempt shall not be made in the name of the Volunteers to dictate
+policy to the National party who, as the elected representatives of the
+people, are charged with <a name="Page_118"></a>the responsibility of deciding upon the policy
+best calculated to bring the National movement to success.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Moreover, a military organization is of its very nature so grave and
+serious an undertaking that every responsible Nationalist in the country
+who supports it is entitled to the most substantial guarantees against
+any possible imprudence. The best guarantee to be found is clearly the
+presence on the Governing Body of men of proved judgment and
+steadiness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As a last word he renewed his threat of calling on his supporters to
+organize separate county committees independent of the Dublin centre.
+This was carrying matters with a high hand, and the fact that he
+succeeded proves the greatness of his prestige at the moment. The
+Committee in a published manifesto accepted his terms, but accepted them
+with declared regret, and eight of the original members seceded. Among
+them was Patrick Pearse, with whom went three others who suffered death
+in Easter week two years later.</p>
+
+<p>All this was a disastrous business, and the worst part of it lay in the
+public avowal of divided councils. Moreover, a committee so constituted
+could not, and did not, operate efficiently. The original members were
+primarily interested in the Volunteer Force; the added ones primarily in
+the parliamentary movement. Nearly all of the latter&mdash;selected for their
+&quot;proved judgment and steadiness&quot;&mdash;were men past middle age; and of the
+whole twenty-five Willie Redmond alone subsequently bore arms.</p>
+
+<p>There was indeed an underlying difference of principle. Redmond knew
+well, and all parliamentarians with him, that under the terms of the
+Home Rule Bill no army could be raised or maintained in Ireland without
+the consent of the Imperial Parliament. The original Volunteer Committee
+laid it down as an axiom that the Volunteer Force should be permanent;
+they were, as Casement put it, &quot;the beginning of an Irish army.&quot;<a name="Page_119"></a> Sir
+Edward Carson's policy had produced a new mentality among Irish
+Nationalists, and it made many take Redmond's constitutionalism for
+timidity.</p>
+
+<p>But in the eyes of the world and of Ireland generally, Redmond was just
+as much as Sir Edward Carson the accredited and accepted leader of his
+Volunteer organization, and to him the Volunteers looked for provision
+of arms and equipment. One of his chief preoccupations in those months
+was with this matter, and it explains his desire to have the
+proclamation against the import of arms withdrawn. The Larne exploit had
+proved the futility of it; articles by Colonel Repington in <i>The Times</i>
+testified to the completeness of the provision which had been made for
+Ulster. But smuggling is always a costly business, and Nationalists were
+hampered by the cost. More than that, there was ground for suspicion
+that the scales were not equally weighted as between Ulster and the rest
+of the country. On June 30th Redmond wrote a letter to the Chief
+Secretary repeating his case for withdrawal of the proclamation. It is
+all memorable, but especially the warning which concludes the following
+passages from it:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In the South and West of Ireland, not only are the most active measures
+being taken against the importation of arms, but many owners of vessels
+are harassed unnecessarily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The effect of this unequal working of the proclamation has been grave
+amongst our people, and has tended to increase both their exasperation
+and their apprehensions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The apprehensions of our people are justified to the fullest. They find
+themselves, especially in the North, faced by a large, drilled,
+organized and armed body. Furthermore, the incident at the Curragh has
+given them the fixed idea that they cannot rely on the Army for
+protection. The possession of arms by Nationalists would, under these
+circumstances, be no provocation for disorder, but a means of preserving
+the peace by <a name="Page_120"></a>confronting one armed force with another, not helpless
+but, by being armed, fully able to defend themselves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Finally, we want to call your most serious attention to the grave and
+imminent danger of a collision between Nationalists and the police in
+the effort to import arms. The police in the South and West might not be
+so passive as they were in the recent affair at Larne, and there might
+be serious conflicts, and even loss of life, and from this day forward
+every day which the proclamation is enforced as strictly as it is now
+against the Nationalists brings increased danger of disastrous collision
+between the police and the people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Within a fortnight a minor incident illustrated the &quot;unequal working&quot;
+referred to in the first of these points. General Richardson, who
+commanded the Ulster Force, had issued on July 1st an order authorizing
+all Ulster Volunteers to carry arms openly and to resist any attempt at
+interference. In Ulster accordingly no search was ever attempted. But on
+July 15th Mr. Lawrence Kettle, brother to Professor Kettle, who had from
+the first been a prominent official of the Volunteers, was returning in
+his motor from the electric works at the Pigeon House; he was stopped by
+the police and his car searched for arms. Such an occurrence in Ulster
+would have been held to justify immediate rebellion, and would have been
+carefully avoided. In Dublin there was no such avoidance of provocation.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the avoidance of anything which might precipitate strife was indeed
+in these days most desirable. June 28th saw the murder of the Archduke
+at Sarajevo. The European sky grew rapidly overcast. Days passed, and
+the possibility of civil war was exchanged for the near probability of
+European war which might find the British Empire divided against itself.</p>
+
+<p>It was necessary in the highest interests of State for the Government to
+make an effort to compose the cause of so much violent faction, which
+might at any moment <a name="Page_121"></a>assume acute form. The Amending Bill, introduced in
+the House of Lords with the Government's offer embodied in it, had been
+altered by the Peers in a manner which Lord Morley described as
+tantamount to rejection. In this shape it was to come before the House
+of Commons on July 20th. But on that Monday, when the House reassembled
+after the weekly holiday, the Prime Minister rose at once and announced
+in tones of no ordinary solemnity that the King had thought it right to
+summon representatives of parties both British and Irish to a Conference
+next day at Buckingham Palace, over which Mr. Speaker would preside.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond in two brief sentences guarded his attitude. He disclaimed all
+responsibility for the policy of calling the Conference and expressed no
+opinion as to its chances of success. The invitation had reached him and
+Mr. Dillon in the form of a command from the King, and as such they had
+accepted it.</p>
+
+<p>Some may remember how radiantly fine were those far-off days in July
+which led us up to the brink of such undreamt-of happenings. On the
+Tuesday night I was sitting alone on the Terrace, when Redmond came out.
+For once, he was in a mood to talk. His mind was full of the strangeness
+and interest of that first day's Conference&mdash;a council, or parley, so
+momentous, so unprecedented. It touched what was very strong in him&mdash;the
+historic imagination. He told me how the King had received them all,
+stayed with them for some intercourse of welcome, and had been specially
+marked in his courtesy to Redmond himself, who had of course never
+before been presented to him. Then, he had accompanied them to the room
+set apart for their deliberations and had left them with their chairman,
+the Speaker. When I think over Redmond's description of the Sovereign's
+personality, it seems to me that he was describing one so paralysed, as
+it were, by anxiety as to have lost the power of easy, genial and
+natural speech. But the <a name="Page_122"></a>dominant thought in his mind did not concern
+King George. One figure stood out&mdash;Sir Edward Carson. &quot;As an Irishman,&quot;
+Redmond said, &quot;you could not help being proud to see how he towered
+above the others. They simply did not count. He took charge absolutely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As I gathered, the eight members sat four on each side of a long table,
+with the Speaker at the head. The Irish leaders were on his right and
+left, and the discussion was chiefly between them.</p>
+
+<p>It turned mainly on the question of the area to be excluded. Enormous
+trouble had been taken, and Redmond told me later that a great map in
+relief had been constructed, showing the distribution of Protestant and
+Catholic population. This brought out with astonishing vividness the
+contrast: the Catholics were on the mountains and hill-tops, the
+Protestants down along the valley lands.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could be more cordial, Redmond said, than Sir Edward Carson's
+manner to him. They met as old friends, and I believe that when they
+parted, one asked the other that they should have &quot;one good shake-hands
+for the sake of old times on the Munster circuit.&quot; But it was clearly
+recognized that there was a point beyond which neither of them could
+take his followers, and these points could not be brought to meet. Even
+if adjustment had been possible on the question of time-limit, neither
+would give up the debatable counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, in which the
+Nationalists had a clear though small majority of the population, but in
+which the Ulster Volunteer organization was very strong. On Friday, July
+24th, Mr. Asquith announced the failure of the attempt. &quot;The possibility
+of defining an area for exclusion from the operation of the Government
+of Ireland Bill was considered, and the Conference being unable to agree
+either in principle or in detail on such an area, it concluded.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An incident which did not lack significance was that on the second day
+of these meetings Redmond, returning with Mr. Dillon along Birdcage Walk
+to the House, was <a name="Page_123"></a>recognized by some Irish Guards in the barracks, who
+raised a cheer for the Nationalist leaders which ran all along the
+barrack square. The Army was not all disposed to take sides with Ulster
+and against the Nationalists.</p>
+
+<p>But parts of it were. The collision between forces of the Crown and
+Irish Volunteers trying to land arms, which Redmond had foretold and
+deprecated in his letter of June 30th, was fated to occur.</p>
+
+<p>On Saturday, July 25th, five thousand Ulster Volunteers, fully armed,
+with four machine guns&mdash;in short, an infantry brigade equipped for
+active service&mdash;marched through the streets of Belfast, no one
+interfering. On Sunday, the 26th, a private yacht sailed into Howth
+harbour with eleven hundred rifles on board and some boxes of
+ammunition. By preconcerted arrangement a body of some seven hundred
+Irish Volunteers had marched down to meet the yacht. These men took the
+rifles, and with them set out to march back in column of route to
+Dublin. Two thousand rounds of ammunition were with them in a
+truck-cart, but none was distributed.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the telephones had been busy. The Assistant-Commissioner of
+Dublin Police, Mr. Harrel, an energetic officer, was informed, and he
+acted instantly. The Under-Secretary, permanent official head of Dublin
+Castle, was at his Lodge in the Phoenix Park some two miles distant: Mr.
+Harrel informed him of what was happening and was ordered to meet him at
+the Castle. But Mr. Harrel was not content to delay. He called out what
+police he could muster, some hundred and eighty men, and judging that
+they would be insufficient, decided on his own authority to requisition
+the military. At the Kildare Street Club he found the Brigadier-General
+in command of the troops in Dublin, and this officer immediately ordered
+out a company of the King's Own Scottish Borderers. With this force of
+soldiers and police Mr. Harrel proceeded to a point on the road from
+Howth to Dublin and blocked the way. When the body of<a name="Page_124"></a> Volunteers
+reached him, he demanded the surrender of their rifles. This was
+refused. He then ordered the police to disarm the men. A scuffle
+followed, in which nineteen rifles were seized. Some of the Volunteers
+without orders fired revolvers, and by this firing two soldiers were
+slightly wounded. One Volunteer received a slight bayonet wound.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a stop and a parley, and the Volunteer leaders threatened
+to distribute ammunition. While the parley lasted the Volunteers in rear
+of the column dispersed, carrying their rifles, leaving only a couple of
+ranks drawn across the road in front, who blocked the view. When Mr.
+Harrel perceived what was happening, he ordered the soldiers to march
+back to Dublin and took the police with him.</p>
+
+<p>By this time wild rumours had spread through the city, and on the way
+back the troops were mobbed. They were pelted with every kind of missile
+and many were hurt, though none seriously; and it understates the truth
+to say that they were in no danger. They had their bayonets, and from
+time to time made thrusts at their assailants. At last, on the quays, at
+a place called Bachelor's Walk, the company was halted, and the officer
+in command intended, if necessary, to give an order for a few individual
+men to fire over the heads of the crowd. But the troops had lost their
+temper, and without order given a considerable number fired into the
+crowd. Three persons were killed and some thirty injured.</p>
+
+<p>The first that I knew of these events was on the Monday, when I got the
+paper at a station in Gloucestershire, on my way to the House. The
+railway-carriage was full of casual English people, and I have never
+heard so much indignant comment on any piece of news. &quot;Why should they
+shoot the people in Dublin when they let the Ulstermen do what they
+like?&quot; That was the burden of it. It is easy to guess what was felt and
+thought and said in Dublin and throughout Ireland.</p><a name="Page_125"></a>
+
+<p>What Redmond said in the House of Commons is characteristic of his
+attitude. He demanded that full judicial and military inquiry into the
+action of the troops should be held, and that proper punishment should
+be inflicted on those found guilty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But,&quot; he said, &quot;really the responsibility rests upon those who
+requisitioned the troops under these circumstances. So far as the troops
+are concerned, I deplore more than I can say that this has
+occurred&mdash;this incident calculated to breed bad blood between the Irish
+people and the troops. I deplore that. I hope that our people will not
+be so unjust as to hold the troops generally responsible for what, no
+doubt, taking it at its worst, was the offence of a limited number of
+men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I do not think any soldier could have wished for a fairer or more
+friendly statement; and a chance assisted to realize his hope that the
+troops generally would not be held responsible. One of the killed was a
+woman whose son was a Dublin Fusilier. This man published a letter in
+the Press calling on all Dublin Fusiliers and all soldiers who
+sympathized with him to attend the funeral. It was well that the
+populace should feel on such a matter as this that all the troops were
+not against them; and well that they should be counselled by the leader
+of their nation to be reasonable in the direction of their resentment.</p>
+
+<p>This whole incident should never be forgotten by those who are disposed
+to judge the Irish harshly for what they did, and did not do, in the
+succeeding years. Above all, it should be remembered that the news of
+it, terribly provocative in itself to any people, but tenfold
+provocative by reason of the contrast which it revealed as compared with
+the treatment of Ulster, was published to the world less than ten days
+before Redmond had to face the question, What should Ireland do in the
+war?</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2">[2]</a><div class="note"><p> <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, February 4, 1919</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><a name="Page_126"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_V"></a><h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>WAR IN EUROPE</h3>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>The week which began on Monday, July 27th, was feverish and excited.
+Formal discussion on the occurrences at Clontarf and Bachelor's Walk was
+confined to the Monday; but each day had a stormy scene during
+question-time arising out of it. The Amending Bill from the Lords was to
+have been taken on Tuesday, but Mr. Asquith postponed it till Thursday,
+to get a calmer atmosphere. When Thursday came, it was postponed again
+and indefinitely. &quot;We meet,&quot; said the Prime Minister, &quot;under conditions
+of gravity which are almost unparalleled in the experience of any one of
+us.&quot; It was therefore necessary to &quot;present a united front and be able
+to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation.&quot; To continue
+the Home Rule discussion must involve the House in acute controversy in
+regard to &quot;domestic differences whose importance to ourselves no one in
+any quarter of the House is disposed to disparage or belittle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Leader of the Opposition assented. Two sentences in his speech have
+importance. The first laid it down that this postponement should not &quot;in
+any way prejudice the interests of any of the parties to the
+controversy.&quot; The second indicated that he spoke not only for the
+Unionist party but for Ulster.</p>
+
+<p>It is very difficult now, after all that has crowded in upon us, jading
+the sensitive recipient surface of memory, to reconstitute the frame of
+mind in which we passed those days. One thing I clearly remember,
+perhaps worth <a name="Page_127"></a>noting for its significance. In a division lobby,
+probably on the Wednesday night, I came in touch with a friend, then a
+subordinate member of the Government, who had been among the keenest
+advocates of our cause. I asked how he thought things were going. My
+question had reference to our affairs, which had been for so many months
+the dominant issue; but he answered with reference to the European
+situation, as if that alone existed. Looking back, it seems to me
+strange that one should have been so engrossed in any preoccupation as
+in reality to ignore the vast and imminent possibilities. Yet, after
+all, I believe my case was typical of many. For us Irish, this was the
+crucial point, the climax of a struggle which had been intense and
+continuous now for a period of four years&mdash;which in its wider sense had
+gone on, with ebb and flow, yet always in progress during the whole
+adult lifetime of our leader and his principal colleagues. For more than
+us, for scores of Labour men and Liberals, it had become almost a fixed
+belief that European war was only a nightmare of the imagination. War in
+the Balkans, war possibly in the East of Europe, we could think of; but
+war flinging the complex organization, so potent yet so delicate, of
+great and fully civilized States into the melting-pot&mdash;that we never
+really believed in. Prophets of finance, prophets of the labour world,
+had told us the thing was impossible. Even our most recent experience,
+the irruption of armed forces into the political arena, had contributed
+to fix in our minds the view that all armaments were merely <i>in
+terrorem</i>, part of a gigantic game of bluff.</p>
+
+<p>In a world organized as was Europe in 1914 on the basis of universal
+military service, it is dangerous, not only materially but morally and
+intellectually, to be as the people of these islands were, segregated
+from all military experience. We were almost like children in a magazine
+of explosives: we knew, of course, that there were dangerous substances
+about us; but we did not <a name="Page_128"></a>realize how suddenly and irretrievably the
+whole thing might go off.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how Redmond gauged the situation. But he spent the end of
+the week in town, and must have been less unprepared than was one like
+myself, who during the Saturday, Sunday and the Monday Bank Holiday was
+away in a most peaceful country-side, remote from news. Even on the
+Tuesday, the instant bearing on our own questions and our own lives of
+what we read in the newspapers was not clear to me. There was to be a
+debate, of course; but only when I saw the attendants setting chairs on
+the floor of the House itself&mdash;a thing which had not been done since
+Gladstone introduced his second Home Rule Bill&mdash;did I grasp the fact
+that something wholly unusual was expected.</p>
+
+<p>My strong impression is that the House as a whole was in great measure
+unprepared for what it had to face. You could feel surprise in the air
+as Sir Edward Grey developed his wonderful speech. Men, shaken away from
+all traditional attitudes, responded from the depths of themselves to an
+appeal which none of us had ever heard before.</p>
+
+<p>Having failed to secure my place on the Irish benches, I was sitting on
+one of the chairs close by the Sergeant at Arms, just inside the bar of
+the House, so that I saw at once both sides of the assembly: there were
+no parties that day. The Foreign Secretary's speech, intensely English,
+with all the quality that is finest in English tradition, clearly did
+not in its opening stages carry the House as a whole. Passages struck
+home, here and there, to men not to parties, kindling individual
+sentiments. Appeal to a common feeling for France did not elicit a
+general response; but here and there in every quarter there were those
+who leapt to their feet and cheered, waving the papers that were in
+their hands; and the two figures that stand out most vividly in my
+recollection were Willie Redmond, our leader's brother, <a name="Page_129"></a>and Arthur
+Lynch. We were in a very different atmosphere already from the days of
+the Boer War.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until the speaker reached in his statement the outrage
+committed on Belgian neutrality that feeling manifested itself
+universally. Appeal was made to the sense of honour, of fair play, of
+respect for pledges, by a man as well fitted to make such an appeal as
+ever addressed any audience; and it was the case of Belgium that made
+the House of Commons unanimous.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the evening speeches from the Radical group made it clear that
+unanimity was not yet definitive. Labour was hesitant; Germany had still
+to complete Sir Edward Grey's work. With this disposition in England
+itself, what was likely to be the feeling in Ireland? Nobody, I think,
+expected that anything would be said from our benches. There had been no
+consultation in our party, such as was customary and almost obligatory
+on important occasions. I have said before that Redmond's position was
+by understanding and agreement that of chairman, not of leader. Mr.
+Dillon, by far the most important of his colleagues, was away in
+Ireland. Any action that Redmond took he must take not merely in an
+unusual but in a new capacity, as leader, at a great moment, acting in
+his own right.</p>
+
+<p>Neither had there been any consultation between him and the Government.
+He knew only what the general public knew. Parts of Sir Edward Grey's
+speech were to him, as to the other members of the House, a surprise at
+many points. At one point it certainly was. After summing up the
+situation, first in relation to France, then in relation to Belgium, the
+Foreign Secretary, speaking with the utmost gravity, foretold for Great
+Britain terrible suffering in this war, &quot;whether we are in it or whether
+we stand aside.&quot; He made it clear that the island safety was not
+unchallengeable; there could be no pledge to send an expeditionary force
+outside the kingdom. Then, with a sudden lift of his voice, he added:
+&quot;One thing I <a name="Page_130"></a>would say: the one bright spot in the very dreadful
+situation is Ireland. The position in Ireland&mdash;and this I should like to
+be clearly understood abroad&mdash;is not a consideration among the things we
+have to take into account now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The history of this passage is strange. All who heard assumed that the
+speaker relied on definite promises. Such a promise had been given, from
+one party. The Ulster leader had, with the sure instinct for Ulster's
+interest which guided him throughout, conveyed to the Government through
+Mr. Bonar Law an assurance that they could count on Ulster's imperial
+patriotism. Ulster, so far as pledges went, was the bright spot. Where
+Germany had counted on finding trouble for Great Britain, no trouble
+would be found. But Sir Edward Grey at that moment of his career was
+lifted perhaps beyond himself, certainly to the utmost range of his
+statesmanship. He was a chief member of the Ministry which had brought
+to the verge of complete statutory accomplishment the task which the
+Liberal party inherited from Gladstone. He knew&mdash;his words have been
+already quoted&mdash;what Ireland's gratitude to Gladstone had been even for
+the unfinished effort; and now, in this crucial hour, he counted upon
+Ireland. From Ulster, which had its bitter resentment, assurances were
+needed: but if Ulster were contented to fall into line, then all was
+well with Ireland. Speaking as one who had done his part by Ireland,
+with the confidence that counts upon full comradeship he assumed the
+generosity of Ireland's response. That did not fail him, sudden and
+unforeseen though the challenge came&mdash;for it was an appeal and a
+challenge to Ireland's generosity.</p>
+
+<p>When the notable words concerning Ireland were spoken, Redmond turned to
+the colleague who sat next him, one of his close personal friends, and
+one of his wisest, most moderate and most courageous counsellors. He
+said: &quot;I'm thinking of saying something. Do you <a name="Page_131"></a>think I ought to?&quot; Mr.
+Hayden answered, &quot;That depends on what you are going to say.&quot; Redmond
+said: &quot;I'm going to tell them they can take all their troops out of
+Ireland and we will defend the country ourselves.&quot; &quot;In that case,&quot; said
+Mr. Hayden, &quot;you should certainly speak.&quot; Redmond leant over to Mr. T.P.
+O'Connor, who sat immediately below him, and consulted him also. Mr.
+O'Connor was against it. Though the war had no more enthusiastic
+supporter, he thought the risk too great. It was just a week and a day
+since Redmond had moved an adjournment to consider the occasion when
+Government forces were turned out to disarm Irish Volunteers, and when
+troops fired without order on a Dublin crowd. Ireland was still given
+over to a fury of resentment, issuing not alone in speeches but in
+active warlike preparation. On Sunday, August 1st, memorial masses for
+the victims were held up and down the country. In Belfast there was a
+parade of four thousand Irish Volunteers; and finally, at a point on the
+Wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in
+defiance of Government and its troops. Now, forty-eight hours after
+these demonstrations, would the Irish leader ask his countrymen to blot
+from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a
+wound? Would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation's
+feeling? The boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated.
+Redmond did not.</p>
+
+<p>This is not to say that he spoke without full reflection. He always
+thought far ahead; and in these tense days of waiting upon rumour, he
+must have pondered deeply upon all the possibilities&mdash;must have had
+intuition of what this opportunity, England's difficulty, might mean for
+Ireland. Other minds were on the same trail. In the Dublin papers of
+that morning were two letters of moment&mdash;one of them from Sir Arthur
+Conan Doyle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The chief point which has divided Protestant Ulster <a name="Page_132"></a>from the rest of
+Ireland,&quot; he wrote, &quot;is that Nationalists were not loyal to the Empire.&quot;
+Then, recalling briefly the extent to which Irish Nationalists had
+helped in creating that Empire, he went on: &quot;There is no possible reason
+why a man should not be a loyal Irishman and a loyal Imperialist
+also.... A whole-hearted declaration of loyalty to the common ideal
+would at the present moment do much to allay the natural fears of Ulster
+and to strengthen the position of Ireland. Such a chance is unlikely to
+recur. I pray that the Irish leaders may understand its significance and
+put themselves in a position to take advantage of it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The other letter, written from a different standpoint, was signed by Mr.
+M.J. Judge, a most active Irish Volunteer who had been wounded in the
+scuffle on the way back from Howth. &quot;England,&quot; he said, &quot;might inspire
+confidence by restoring it. She could bestow confidence by immediately
+arming and equipping the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers, properly
+armed and equipped, could preserve Ireland from invasion, and England
+would be free to utilize her 'army of occupation' for the defence of her
+own shores.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Redmond could not have seen either of these letters, but those two
+trains of thought were blended in his speech&mdash;which was less a speech
+than a supreme action. It was the utterance of a man who has a vision
+and who, acting in the light of it, seeks to embody the vision in a
+living reality.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bonar Law followed Sir Edward Grey with a few brief sentences of
+whole-hearted support. Then Redmond rose, and a hush of expectation went
+over the house. I can see it now, the crowded benches and the erect,
+solid figure with the massive hawk-visaged head thrown back, standing
+squarely at the top of the gangway. While he spoke, as during Sir Edward
+Grey's speech, the cheering broke out first intermittently and scattered
+over the House, then grew gradually universal. Sitting about <a name="Page_133"></a>me were
+Tory members whom I did not know; I heard their ejaculations of
+bewilderment, approval and delight. But in the main body of the
+Unionists behind the front Opposition bench papers were being waved, and
+when Redmond sat down many of these men stood up to cheer him. In five
+minutes he had changed the whole atmosphere of domestic politics in
+regard to the main issue of controversy.&mdash;Here is the speech:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hope the House will not think me impertinent to intervene in the
+debate, but I am moved to do so a great deal by that sentence in the
+speech of the Foreign Secretary in which he said that the one bright
+spot in the situation was the changed feeling in Ireland. Sir, in past
+time, when this Empire has been engaged in these terrible enterprises,
+it is true that it would be the utmost affectation and folly on my part
+to deny that the sympathies of Nationalist Ireland, for reasons deep
+down in the centuries of history, have been estranged from this country.
+But allow me to say that what has occurred in recent years has altered
+the situation completely. I must not touch upon any controversial topic,
+but this I may be allowed to say&mdash;that a wider knowledge of the real
+facts of Irish history has altered the view of the democracy of this
+country towards the Irish question, and I honestly believe that the
+democracy of Ireland will turn with the utmost anxiety and sympathy to
+this country in every trial and danger with which she is faced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is a possibility of history repeating itself. The House will
+remember that in 1778, at the end of the disastrous American War, when
+it might be said that the military force of this country was almost at
+its lowest ebb, the shores of Ireland were threatened with invasion.
+Then a hundred thousand Irish Volunteers sprang into existence for the
+purpose of defending those shores. At first, however&mdash;and how sad is the
+reading of the history of those days! no Catholic was allowed to be
+enrolled in that body of Volunteers; yet from the first day the
+Catholics <a name="Page_134"></a>of the South and West subscribed their money and sent it for
+the army of their Protestant fellow-countrymen. Ideas widened as time
+went on, and finally the Catholics of the South were armed and enrolled
+as brothers-in-arms with their fellow-countrymen. May history repeat
+itself! To-day there are in Ireland two large bodies of Volunteers, one
+of which has sprung into existence in the North and another in the
+South. I say to the Government that they may to-morrow withdraw every
+one of their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended by her armed
+sons from invasion, and for that purpose the armed Catholics in the
+South will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant
+Ulster men. Is it too much to hope that out of this situation a result
+may spring which will be good, not merely for the Empire, but for the
+future welfare and integrity of the Irish nation? Whilst Irishmen are in
+favour of peace and would desire to save the democracy of this country
+from all the horrors of war, whilst we will make any possible sacrifice
+for that purpose, still, if the necessity is forced upon this country,
+we offer this to the Government of the day: They may take their troops
+away, and if it is allowed to us, in comradeship with our brothers in
+the North, we will ourselves defend the shores of Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It needed no gift of prophecy to be certain that such a speech would be
+popular in the House of Commons, and many Unionists that day were almost
+aggrieved that Sir Edward Carson had not risen at once to reply to the
+offer in the same spirit. They did not realize the difficulty of the
+Ulster leader's position. To admit and welcome the unity of Ireland was
+to give away Ulster's case. To accept the Nationalist leader's utterance
+as sincere, still more to assume that Ireland as a whole would endorse
+it, was to weaken, if not to give away, Ulster's best argument, and from
+that hour to the end of the war Sir Edward Carson was most loyal to
+Ulster's interests.</p><a name="Page_135"></a>
+
+<p>Further, it is conceivable that by some who cheered it the speech may
+have been misunderstood. Yet it is not probable that many who heard
+Redmond believed that in order to serve England he was flinging away
+Ireland's national claim, to the successful furtherance of which his
+whole life had been devoted. The Unionist party as a whole certainly
+understood that to accept Redmond's offer in the spirit in which it was
+made meant accepting the principle of Home Rule: and on that afternoon
+in August they were not unready to accept it. They felt, for the speech
+made them feel, that a great thing had happened. Yet they might well be
+pardoned for some scepticism as to how the utterance might be taken in
+Ireland, and how it would issue in action. A famous Nationalist said
+some ten days later: &quot;When I read the speech in the paper, I was filled
+with dismay. Now I recognize that it was a great stroke of statesmanship
+which I should never have had the courage to advise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Redmond's instinct had been right. He trusted in the appeal to national
+pride and to the sense of national unity. Ireland was perfectly willing,
+and he knew it, to give loyal friendship to England on the basis of
+freedom. But the test of freedom had now come to be the right to bear
+arms, and this was a proposal that Ireland should undertake her own
+defence. Ireland was sick of the talk of civil war, and this was a
+proposal that Ulstermen and the rest should make common cause. It was an
+appeal addressed by an instinct, which was no less subtle than it was
+noble, to what was most responsive in the best qualities of Irishmen.
+None the less it was a statesman's utterance addressed to a people
+politically quick-minded; Ireland saw as well as Redmond himself that
+what stood in the way of Ireland's national aspiration was the
+opposition of one section of Irishmen. To that extent, and to that
+extent only, was the speech political in its purpose. Whatever made for
+common action made <a name="Page_136"></a>for unity; and whatever made for unity made for Home
+Rule. That is the key to Redmond's attitude throughout the war&mdash;perhaps
+also to Sir Edward Carson's.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The response from Nationalist Ireland had not long to be waited
+for&mdash;although the inquest on the victims of the Bachelor's Walk tragedy
+was in progress on the very day when Redmond's speech appeared in the
+Press. Waterford Corporation instantly endorsed their member's
+utterance, and throughout the week similar resolutions were passed all
+over the country, Unionist members of these bodies joining in to second
+the proposals. In Cork, the City Council had before it a resolution
+condemning the Government for its attempt to disarm the Irish
+Volunteers, and calling for stringent penalties on the offenders in the
+Bachelor's Walk affair: the resolution was withdrawn and one of hearty
+support to Redmond's attitude adopted.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Irish opinion did not go so far as Mr. William O'Brien, who proposed
+the complete dropping of the Home Rule Bill till after the war, in order
+to bring about a genuine national unity. The action of the Offaly corps
+of Volunteers, for instance, was typical. They agreed to offer their
+services gladly on two conditions: first, that the Home Rule Bill should
+go on the Statute Book; secondly, that the Volunteers should be
+subsidized and equipped by Government.</p>
+
+<p>But it was assumed in Ireland that no question arose about the safety of
+the Bill, and people gave themselves to the new emotion. Troops were
+cheered everywhere at stations and on the quays: National Volunteers and
+local bands turned out to see them off. Even the battalion of King's Own
+Scottish Borderers, which had been confined <a name="Page_137"></a>to barracks since the
+events of July 26th, was cheered like the rest as it marched down to the
+transports ready for it.<a name="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3"><sup>[3]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>This was the attitude of the general populace. Broadly speaking,
+Redmond's speech pleased the people. It was welcomed by generous-minded
+men in another class, who responded at once in the same spirit. Lord
+Monteagle wrote: &quot;Mr. Redmond has risen nobly to the occasion&quot;; Lord
+Bessborough, that he trusted all the Unionists in the South would at
+once join the Irish Volunteers. The Marquis of Headfort, the Earls of
+Fingall and of Desart, Lord Powerscourt, Lord Langford, all chimed in
+with offers of help. Mr. George Taaffe wrote: &quot;I thank God from the
+bottom of my heart that to-day we stand united Ireland.&quot; In county
+Wexford sixty young Protestants came in a body to join up, led by a very
+Tory squire.</p>
+
+<p>It should be clearly noted that while Redmond's aim was to make this
+Ireland's war, in which Irishmen should serve together without
+distinction of North or South, all that he asked of the land in his
+speech of August 4th was that the Volunteers should undertake duties of
+home defence. This was precisely what Sir Edward Carson had asked of
+Ulster. On August 14th, in a letter to the Press, the commander of a
+Fermanagh battalion of Ulster Volunteers wrote: &quot;No one will be asked to
+serve outside Ulster until Sir Edward Carson notifies that he is
+satisfied with the attitude of the Government with regard to the Home
+Rule Bill and Ulster.&quot;</p>
+<a name="Page_138"></a>
+<p>Redmond neither could nor did ask any man to serve outside Ireland till
+he was satisfied with the Government's attitude in regard to Home Rule.
+In the first days of the war, however, the critical question for him was
+to know how his offer of assistance from the Volunteers would be
+accepted by the Government, and at the outset all promised favourably.
+On August 8th a telegram was sent to the Lord-Lieutenant:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His Majesty's Government recognize with deep gratitude the loyal help
+which Ireland has offered in this grave hour. They hope to announce as
+soon as possible arrangements by which this offer can be made use of to
+the fullest possible extent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That unquestionably represented the mind of Mr. Asquith and his civilian
+colleagues. But a new power had transformed the Cabinet. Lord Kitchener,
+refusing to accept the post of Commander in Chief, had insisted on
+becoming Secretary of State for War.</p>
+
+<p>No one is likely to underestimate Lord Kitchener's value at that hour.
+But probably no one now will dispute that the political control which
+this soldier obtained was excessive and was dangerous. Years of fierce
+faction had shaken the public confidence in politicians, and a soldier
+was traditionally above and beyond politics. But in Lord Kitchener's
+case the soldier was certainly remote from and below the regions of
+statesmanship. Narrow, domineering, and obstinate, he was a difficult
+colleague for anyone; and for a Prime Minister with so easy a temper as
+Mr. Asquith he was not a colleague but a master. He claimed to be
+supreme in all matters relating to the Army, and in such a war this came
+near to covering the whole field of government. It most certainly
+covered the question of dealing with the Irish Volunteers and with the
+Ulster Volunteers, which meant in reality the whole question of
+Ireland.</p><a name="Page_139"></a>
+
+<p>Immediately on Lord Kitchener's appointment Redmond had an interview
+with him. Redmond's report was that he had been most friendly&mdash;and most
+limited in his expectations. &quot;Get me five thousand men, and I will say
+'Thank you,'&quot; he had said. &quot;Get me ten thousand, and I will take off my
+hat to you.&quot; Yet the very smallness of the estimate should have been a
+note of warning to us; it indicated a cynical view of Ireland's response
+to Redmond's public declaration.</p>
+
+<p>On the question of the Volunteers he made friendly promises. As the
+Sirdar in Egypt he had been used to giving fair words to native chiefs.
+There is not the least reason to suppose that Lord Kitchener would have
+felt bound to show Redmond his real mind.</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that Lord Kitchener held in respect to Ireland the
+traditional opinions of the British Army. Nobody could blame the
+professional soldier for dislike and distrust of Irish Nationalist
+politicians generally; but when at such a crisis a professional soldier,
+by no means conspicuous for breadth of mind, came to hold such a
+position as Lord Kitchener seized, the result was certain to be
+disastrous for Irish policy unless Liberal statesmanship exercised a
+strong control over him. Neither Mr. Asquith nor Mr. Birrell was likely
+to do this.</p>
+
+<p>Two views were taken of the proposal to encourage and utilize the Irish
+Volunteers. The first view was that Volunteers of any kind were a
+superfluous encumbrance at a moment when the supreme need was for men in
+the actual fighting-line; that encouragement of Volunteers gave an
+excuse for shirking war; and further, that Volunteers outside the
+State's control were a danger; that the danger was increased when there
+were two rival Volunteer forces which might fly at each other's throats;
+and that it was a matter for satisfaction that one of these forces
+should be very greatly inferior to the other in point of arms and
+equipment, so that considerations of prudence would lessen the chance of
+collision. This <a name="Page_140"></a>satisfaction was greatly heightened by the reflection
+that the armed force was thoroughly loyal to the Empire and could be
+trusted to assist troops in the case of any attack upon the Empire begun
+by the other&mdash;a contingency which should always be taken into account.</p>
+
+<p>This line of thought was certainly Lord Kitchener's. He had no distrust
+of Irish soldiers in ordinary regiments; no professional soldier ever
+had. But he had a deep distrust of a purely Irish military organization
+under Irish control. At the back of Lord Kitchener's mind was the
+determination &quot;I will not arm enemies.&quot; This was the very negation and
+the antithesis of the second view, which was Redmond's.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond's aim was to win the war, no less than Lord Kitchener's. But if
+Lord Kitchener realized more clearly than other men in power how
+far-reaching would be the need for troops, Redmond realized also far
+more than the men in power how vital would be the need for America. He
+saw from the first, knowing the English-speaking world far more widely
+than perhaps any member of the Government, that the Irish trouble could
+not limit its influence to Ireland only. Greater forces could be
+conciliated for war purposes by reconciliation with Ireland&mdash;by bringing
+Ireland heart and soul into the war&mdash;than the equivalent of many
+regiments. Yet even from the narrower aspect of finding men, he regarded
+the same policy as essential. He assumed that recruiting in Ireland must
+always be voluntary&mdash;at any rate a matter for Ireland's own decision:
+the question was how to get most troops. Knowing Ireland, he recognized
+how complete was the estrangement of its population from the idea of
+ordinary enlistment. The bulk of the population were on the land, and in
+Ireland, as in Great Britain, &quot;gone for a soldier&quot; was a word of
+disgrace for a farmer's son. More than that, the political organization
+of which he was head had inculcated an attitude of aloofness from the
+Army because <a name="Page_141"></a>it was the Army which held Ireland by force. Enlistment
+had been discouraged, on the principle that from a military point of
+view Ireland was regarded as a conquered country. A test case had arisen
+over the Territorial Act, which was not extended to Ireland, any more
+than the Volunteer Acts had been. We had voted against Lord Haldane's
+Bill on the express ground that it put Ireland into this status of
+inferiority and withheld from Irishmen that right to arm and drill which
+was pressed upon Englishmen as a patriotic duty. We had explicitly
+declared then in 1907 that our influence should and must be used against
+enlistment.</p>
+
+<p>These facts of history had not merely produced in Ireland an attitude of
+mind hostile to the idea, so to say, of the British Army as an
+institution, though the individual soldier had always been at least as
+popular as anyone else. They had produced a population extraordinarily
+unfamiliar with the idea of armament. The old Volunteers and the
+Territorials had at least conveyed to all ranks of society in Great
+Britain the possibility of joining a military organization while
+remaining an ordinary citizen. In the imagination of Ireland, either you
+were a soldier or you were not; and if you were a soldier, you belonged
+to an exceptional class, remote from ordinary existence. To cross that
+line was a far greater step to contemplate with us than in England.
+Redmond reckoned, and reckoned rightly, that to bring Irishmen together
+in military formations, learning the art of war, was the best way to
+combat this disinclination to enter the Army&mdash;this feeling that
+enlistment meant doing something &quot;out of the way,&quot; something contrary to
+usage and tradition. He reckoned that the attitude of Nationalist
+Ireland would alter towards a Government which put arms in their hands
+on their own terms; and that with a great war on foot a temper of
+adventure and emulation would very soon draw young men flocking to the
+ranks in which they could see the reality of war. That was Redmond's
+policy <a name="Page_142"></a>and it was the statesman's. Nationalist Ireland was perfectly
+ready to adopt the ideals which moved the British Empire at home and
+overseas in the war: but first the British Empire must show that it
+respected the ideals of Nationalist Ireland. The Empire's statesmen did
+so: the British democracy did so: but Lord Kitchener stood in the way.</p>
+
+<p>From Ulster, it was clear that immediate cordial co-operation could not
+be anticipated. Yet Redmond had implicit faith in the ultimate effect of
+comradeship in danger, and here we know he was right. He was to pay a
+heavy price in blood for the seal set upon that bond; but in the end the
+seal was set. For the moment, Ulster as a whole was sullen and
+distrustful. Feeling that to admit the good faith of Nationalists
+jeopardized their own political cause, they belittled what in the
+interests of the common weal it would have been wise even to over-value.
+At the outset &quot;An Ulster Volunteer&quot; wrote to the papers &quot;Let us all
+unite as a solid nation&quot;; but such an utterance was exceptional. Hardly
+less exceptional was the line taken by &quot;An Officer of National
+Volunteers&quot; who wrote, &quot;If the necessity arose to-morrow and the word
+went out from Headquarters, the National Volunteers would be prepared to
+fight to the very death in defending the homes and liberties of France
+and England.&quot; &quot;For Ireland Only&quot; was a motto much inculcated in those
+days among the Irish Volunteers. Suspicion on the one side bred
+estrangement on the other; and every hour lost increased the mischief.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, in spite of the generous action taken by outstanding
+individuals, the general mass of Unionist opinion was grudging and
+uncordial. A friend who was then closely in touch with it described to
+me the attitude of Dublin clubs: &quot;They were almost sorry Redmond had
+done the right thing.&quot; Such men were part of Ireland, and all Ireland
+was remote from war. For them, now as always, Home Rule was the
+paramount consideration, <a name="Page_143"></a>and none could deny that the prospects for
+Home Rule were immensely improved by Redmond's action. In these days,
+when an end of the conflict was expected in three months, when every
+check to the Germans was magnified out of all reason, there was no sense
+of the relative value of issues. Everywhere in Unionist society and in
+the Irish Unionist Press there was ungenerous and unfriendly criticism
+which did much harm.</p>
+
+<p>Two things could have checked these forces for evil. The first would
+have been an immediate decision to make Home Rule law. This would have
+put an end to the pestilent growth of suspicion among Nationalists, and
+it would have enabled Redmond to launch at once his appeal for soldiers.
+The other would have been a decision to make good the pledge contained
+in the Government's message to Lord Aberdeen and to accept in some
+practical way the offered service of the Volunteers.</p>
+
+<p>The latter of these courses involved no controversy with Ulster, and to
+it Redmond first addressed himself. He made constant appeals in private
+to Ministers; he was angry and disappointed over the delay: and after a
+week he thought it necessary to raise the matter in the House. He asked
+the Prime Minister whether British Territorials were to be sent to
+Ireland to replace the troops which had been withdrawn&mdash;a step which
+would have been equivalent to a rejection of his offer. On this point he
+received satisfaction; Territorials would not be sent. He asked then if
+the Prime Minister could not say at once what steps would be taken to
+arm and equip the Volunteers. Mr. Asquith's reply emphasized the great
+difficulty which stood in the way. &quot;I do not say,&quot; he added, &quot;that it is
+insuperable.&quot; The first part was the voice of Lord Kitchener; the
+second, the voice of the Government which had sent the telegram of
+August 8th.</p>
+
+<p>In the War Office the desire to give the National Volunteers as far as
+possible what they wanted did not exist, and the Government, who had
+that desire, had not the <a name="Page_144"></a>determination to enforce it. Such a position
+can never be for long concealed. Let it be remembered, too, that all
+through these days there was proceeding in Dublin a public inquiry into
+the events of the Howth gun-running and the affray at Bachelor's Walk,
+and some measure of Redmond's difficulties may be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, his policy was winning: and when Parliament rose for an
+adjournment, he spent his first Sunday in Ireland motoring to
+Maryborough, where he inspected a great muster of Volunteers, and was
+able to speak to them with gladness of the response to his appeal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;From every part of Ireland I have had assurances from the Irish
+Volunteers that they are ready to fulfil this duty: and from every
+part&mdash;perhaps better and happier still&mdash;evidences of a desire on the
+part of men who in the past have been divided from us to come in at this
+hour of danger.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He told his audience how a battalion of that famous regiment, the
+Inniskilling Fusiliers, had been escorted through the town of
+Enniskillen, in which Orange and Green have always been equally and
+sharply divided, by combined bodies of the Irish and Ulster Volunteer
+Forces. Then turning to the question of equipment, and reminding them
+that the proclamation against importing arms had been withdrawn, he
+announced that he had secured several thousand rifles to distribute.<a name="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4"><sup>[4]</sup></a>
+He went on then to pledge himself&mdash;it must be said with characteristic
+overconfidence&mdash;as to the intentions of the Government: &quot;The
+Government&mdash;which has withdrawn its troops from Ireland and which has
+refused to send English Territorials to take their place&mdash;is about to
+arm, equip and drill a large number of Irish Volunteers.&quot; Very soon, he
+told them, every man in the force would have a rifle&mdash;and this involved
+a grave responsibility, and the need for discipline in the work which
+was laid upon them.</p>
+<a name="Page_145"></a>
+<p>&quot;I wish them God-speed with their work. It is the holiest work that men
+can undertake, to maintain the freedom and the rights and to uphold the
+peace, the order and safety of their own nation. You ought to be
+proud&mdash;you, the sons and the grandsons of men who were shot down for
+daring to arm themselves&mdash;you ought to be proud that you have lived to
+see the day when with the good will of the democracy of England you are
+arming yourselves in the light of heaven.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The note of exultation in this passage rings again and again through his
+utterances. He saw, or thought he saw, the symbol of achieved liberty in
+the muster of young men, ready to take up the sword, and no longer
+branded with the name of felons for so doing. Nor was he alone in his
+rejoicing. The host at that meeting was a great Irish landlord, Colonel
+Sir Hutcheson Poe. He, upon reading Redmond's speech of August 4th had
+written to the Press saying that since he was too old to serve he was
+taking steps to arm and equip a hundred National Volunteers. Now, in
+Redmond's presence, addressing a body of the Volunteers, he told them
+what he thought of Redmond's action.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That five minutes' speech did more to compose our differences, to unite
+all Irishmen in a bond of friendship and good will, than could have been
+accomplished by years of agitation or by a conference, however
+well-intentioned it might be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was a notable tribute from one of the eight men who formed the
+historic Land Conference of 1902; and Sir Hutcheson Poe was not the man
+to rest on complimentary expressions. He set to work at once to promote
+a memorial praying for joint action between Ulster and the Irish
+Volunteers and for settlement of the political question which alone
+prevented such action.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily, this was not easy of accomplishment. When the House
+reassembled after its adjournment of a fortnight, negotiations were
+resumed, with the result that on August<a name="Page_146"></a> 31st the Prime Minister asked
+for a fresh adjournment for ten days, at the end of which time the
+Government hoped to be able to produce satisfactory proposals as to the
+Irish and Welsh Bills. Redmond felt himself obliged to enter a protest.
+It had been agreed that the circumstances of the war should not be
+allowed to inflict political injury on any party in the House; and he
+would give the friendliest consideration to any proposal for giving to
+the Opposition what they might have gained by a discussion on the
+Amending Bill.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But we must emphatically say that any proposal which would have the
+effect of depriving us of the enactment of the Irish measure&mdash;and I
+presume I may say the same with reference to the Welsh measure&mdash;an
+enactment to which we were entitled practically automatically when the
+circumstances of the war arose, would do infinite mischief, and would be
+warmly resented by us.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just let me say one word more. There has arisen in Ireland the greatest
+opportunity that has ever arisen in the history of the connection
+between the two countries for a thorough reconciliation between the
+people of Ireland and the people of this country. There is to-day, I
+venture to say, a feeling of friendliness to this country, and a desire
+to join hands in supporting the interests of this country such as were
+never to be found in the past; and I do say with all respect, that it
+would be not only a folly, but a crime, if that opportunity were in any
+degree marred or wasted by any action which this country might take. I
+ask this House&mdash;and I ask all sections of the House&mdash;to take such a
+course as will enable me to go back to Ireland to translate into
+vigorous action the spirit of the words I used here a few days ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An angry scene followed. Mr. Balfour asked whether &quot;it was possible
+decently to introduce subjects of acute discussion in present
+circumstances&quot;&mdash;in other words, whether all mention of Home Rule must
+not be postponed till after the war. This provoked hot debate, checked
+<a name="Page_147"></a>only by a strong appeal from the Prime Minister. But the general effect
+was not reassuring to Ireland. The contrast with the Tsar's prompt grant
+of autonomy to Poland was sharply drawn. Nobody rated high the chances
+of an amicable agreement. On September 4th Sir Edward Carson outlined
+his views in Belfast. Home Rule &quot;will never be law in our country.&quot; But
+&quot;in the interests of the State and of the Empire we will postpone active
+measures.&quot; This indicated sufficiently that in his judgment the Bill
+might become law, and that they would not be encouraged to set up
+immediate resistance. The Prime Minister, as chief Minister of the
+nation, must be supported in the war at all costs.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, renewing at Coleraine his appeal for recruits, he said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are not going to abate one jot or tittle of our opposition to Home
+Rule, and when you come back from serving your country you will be just
+as determined as you will find us at home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was the answer to Redmond's proposal of fraternization. Clearly Sir
+Edward Carson had made up his mind that he could not prevent the passage
+of the Bill, and he decided upon the strongest course, which was to
+advocate unlimited support to the war. Any other course would have been
+ruinous to his cause, which depended always upon a profession of the
+extremest loyalty. Yet only a strong man, confident in his leadership,
+could have taken this line at a moment when Ulstermen were about to feel
+that all their preparations were wasted and that the game had been won
+against them by a paralysing chance.</p>
+
+<p>Before the House reassembled there was a meeting at the Carlton Club; a
+report communicated to the Press attributed these words to Sir Edward
+Carson&mdash;they are typical of the tone of the time:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We asked for no terms and we got none. We did not object to go under
+the War Office. We did not make <a name="Page_148"></a>speeches calculated to humbug or
+deceive while we meant to do nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On September 15th Government announced its intentions. Both Bills were
+to be placed on the Statute Book, but their operation deferred till the
+end of twelve months, or, if the war were not then over, till the end of
+the war. During the suspensory period Government would introduce an
+Amending Bill. Mr. Asquith made a flattering reference to Sir Edward
+Carson's action in appealing to his organization for recruits, and
+admitted that &quot;it might be said that the Ulstermen had been put at a
+disadvantage by the loyal and patriotic action which they had
+undertaken.&quot;&mdash;This meant that their preparations for resistance to Mr.
+Asquith's Government were disorganized.&mdash;He proceeded to promise that
+they should never have need of such preparations; they should get all
+the preparations aimed at without having to use them.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I say, speaking again on behalf of the Government, that in our view,
+under the conditions which now exist&mdash;we must all recognize the
+atmosphere which this great patriotic spirit has created in the
+country&mdash;the employment of force, any kind of force, for what you call
+the coercion of Ulster, is an absolutely unthinkable thing. So far as I
+am concerned, and so far as my colleagues are concerned&mdash;I speak for
+them, for I know their unanimous feeling&mdash;that is a thing we would never
+countenance or consent to.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This utterance has dominated the situation from that day to this. Ulster
+had organized to rebel, sooner than come under an Irish Parliament; and
+had refrained from rebellion because the Great War was in progress. For
+this reason Ulster should never be coerced, no matter what might happen.
+Sir Edward Carson's line of action had secured an enormous concession:
+he might have gone back to his people and said, &quot;We have won.&quot; But he
+was strong enough to represent it as a new outrage, which they for the
+sake of loyalty must in the hour of <a name="Page_149"></a>common danger submit to endure. By
+this course, risky for himself, he vastly improved their position in all
+future negotiation.&mdash;After a violent speech from Mr. Bonar Law the Tory
+party walked out of the House in a body.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond rose at once. He denounced the view that Ireland had gained an
+advantage, or desired to gain one. The Prime Minister had at every stage
+assured him that the Bill would be put on the Statute Book in that
+session, and therefore it was unjust to say that his loyalty was only
+conditional; he had asked for nothing that was not won in advance. Now,
+instead of an Act to become immediately operative, Ireland received one
+with at least a year's delay. Yet this moratorium did not seem to him
+unreasonable.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When everybody is preoccupied by the war and when everyone is
+endeavouring&mdash;and the endeavour will be made as enthusiastically in
+Ireland as anywhere else in the United Kingdom&mdash;to bring about the
+creation of an Army, the idea is absurd that under these circumstances a
+new Government and a new Parliament could be erected in Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Further, it gave time for healing work. The two things that he cared for
+most &quot;in this world of politics&quot; were: first, that &quot;not a single sod of
+Irish soil and not a single citizen of the Irish nation&quot; should be
+excluded from the operation of Irish self-government; secondly, that no
+coercion should be applied to any single county in Ireland to force
+their submission.</p>
+
+<p>The latter of these ideals was cast up to him by many in Ireland, first
+in private grumblings, afterwards with public iteration. He saw and
+admitted, what these critics urged, that the one aspiration made the
+other impossible of fulfilment, for the moment. Would it be so, he
+asked, after an interval in which Ulstermen and other Irishmen,
+Nationalist and Unionist, would be found fighting and dying side by side
+on the battlefield <a name="Page_150"></a>on the Continent, and at home, as he hoped and
+believed, drilling shoulder to shoulder for the defence of the shores of
+their own country?</p>
+
+<p>On that hint he renewed his appeal to the Ulster Volunteers for
+co-operation and regretted that he had got no response from them. More
+than that, he urged that his appeal to Government had got no response.
+&quot;If they had done something to arm, equip and drill a certain number at
+any rate of the National Volunteers the recruiting probably would have
+been faster than it had been.&quot; Alluding to the taunts at Ireland's
+shirking which had been bandied about in interruptions during the
+debate, he recalled the stories which already had come back from France
+of Irish valour; of the Munster Fusiliers who stood by their guns all
+day and in the end dragged them back to their lines themselves; the
+story told by wounded French soldiers who had seen the Irish Guards
+charge three German regiments with the bayonet, singing a strange song
+that the Frenchmen had never heard before&mdash;&quot;something about God saving
+Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw these men,&quot; said Redmond, &quot;marching through London on their way
+to the station; they marched here past this building singing 'God save
+Ireland!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But he could not rest his claim, and had no intention of resting it,
+merely on the prowess of the Irish regulars already in the army.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Speaking personally for myself, I do not think it is an exaggeration to
+say that on hundreds of platforms in this country during the last few
+years I have publicly promised, not only for myself, but in the name of
+my country, that when the rights of Ireland were admitted by the
+democracy of England, Ireland would become the strongest arm in the
+defence of the Empire. The test has come sooner than I, or anyone,
+expected. I tell the Prime Minister that this test will be honourably
+met. I say for myself that I would feel myself personally <a name="Page_151"></a>dishonoured
+if I did not say to my fellow-countrymen as I say to them here to-day,
+and as I will say from the public platform when I go back to Ireland,
+that it is their duty, and should be their honour, to take their place
+in the fighting-line in this contest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was a clear pledge. The Home Rule Bill received the Royal Assent on
+September 18th. But before the seal was affixed Redmond's manifesto to
+the Irish people was in all the newspapers. It was his call to arms.</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3">[3]</a><div class="note"><p> This fact was verified for me oddly enough. When the 16th
+Division went to France, it was put through the usual period of
+apprenticeship with trained troops, and our brigade was attached for
+training to the Scottish Fifteenth Division. Two companies of our
+battalion of the 6th Connaught Rangers were attached to the 8th and 9th
+K.O.S.B. I met two officers who had been in Dublin on July 26th, and it
+was one of these who told me of the cheering. Perhaps I may add that the
+relations between our Connaught Rangers and the Scots were most
+friendly, and that we found probably a hundred Irish Catholics in that
+battalion&mdash;Irishmen living in the North of England who had at once
+rushed to enlist in the nearest corps available.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4">[4]</a><div class="note"><p> Bought in Belgium by John O'Connor M.P., and T.M. Kettle,
+after the Germans had entered Brussels.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><a name="Page_152"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a><h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RAISING OF THE IRISH BRIGADES</h3>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>At the ending of the long session of Parliament in 1914 there was a
+curious scene in the House of Commons, where members were crowded to
+assist at the formal passing of the Irish and Welsh Bills. On the
+adjournment, Mr. Will Crooks, from his seat on the front bench below the
+gangway, called out, &quot;Mr. Speaker, would it be in order to sing 'God
+save the King'?&quot; and without more ado uplifted his voice and the House
+chimed in. There must have been strange thoughts in the minds of
+Redmond, of Mr. Dillon, and others of the Irish, standing in the places
+where they had fought so long and bitter a battle, where they had been
+so often the object of fierce reproaches, whence they had hurled back so
+many taunts, now to find themselves the centre of congratulation, and
+joined with English members in singing on the floor of the House that
+national anthem which in Ireland had been for decades a symbol of
+ascendancy, rigidly tabooed by every Nationalist.</p>
+
+<p>When the singing ended, Mr. Crooks's genial voice rose again. &quot;God save
+Ireland!&quot; he shouted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And God save England too!&quot; Redmond answered.</p>
+
+<p>That exchange of words outside the period of debate is, contrary to
+usage but very properly, recorded in Hansard.</p>
+
+<p>From this time forth Redmond was on his trial. He had given pledges; he
+must make good to Ireland and make good to Great Britain. For the first,
+since Home<a name="Page_153"></a> Rule could not be brought into operation, he must secure
+recognition of the National Volunteers, must establish and regularize
+their status; for the second, he must obtain recruits as Ireland's
+contribution to the war. The two proposals were in his view&mdash;and indeed
+were in reality&mdash;inseparably connected. For both, in order to succeed,
+he needed to have the cordial support of his fellow-countrymen; for
+both, he needed whole-hearted co-operation from the British Government.
+It would be too much to say that Ireland backed him cordially; but for
+the limitation of Ireland's response the fault lay chiefly and primarily
+with the Government, which failed him completely. The War Office could
+not actually and directly oppose his effort to raise troops; what they
+could do was to hamper him by the adoption of wrong methods and the
+refusal of right ones. Yet in that part of his task which involved
+making good to England, laying England and the Empire under a debt of
+living gratitude, his appeal was made to Ireland, and he succeeded so
+far that only Ireland herself could have destroyed his work. But on the
+other point, which involved gaining satisfaction for Ireland, the appeal
+was made to Government and the refusal was complete. It was worse than
+absolute, for it was tainted with bad faith. Mr. Asquith as Prime
+Minister accepted the mutual covenant which Redmond had proposed, and
+allowed Lord Kitchener to disallow fulfilment of it.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond's view was not limited to Ireland's interest. No man living in
+these islands felt more keenly for the great underlying principles at
+issue in the war. His mission, as he conceived it, was to lead Ireland
+to serve those principles. But it was futile to suppose that he could
+secure for England all that England expected of Ireland if he could
+obtain from England nothing of what Ireland asked. Redmond wanted
+recognition for the Volunteers chiefly as a basis upon which Ireland
+could feel that she was building an Irish army worthy of her <a name="Page_154"></a>record in
+arms; and this army would be no mean assistance to the nations allied
+against Germany's aggression. Considering all the facts which have to be
+set out, the true cause for wonder is not the limitation but the extent
+of his success.</p>
+
+<p>There was neither delay nor uncertainty in his exposition of Ireland's
+duty. Quite literally, he seized the first chance that came to his hand.
+He left London on the evening when the Act was signed, motored to
+Holyhead, as he liked to do, in the big car which his friends had
+presented to him&mdash;it was the only material testimonial which he ever
+received&mdash;and crossed by the night boat, driving on in the morning to
+Aughavanagh. When he reached the Vale of Ovoca he found a muster of the
+East Wicklow Volunteers. These were the nearest thing to him in all the
+force&mdash;his own friends and neighbours from the Wicklow hills. Aughrim,
+his post-town at the foot of his own particular valley, had its company,
+commanded by a friend of his, the local schoolmaster&mdash;typical of what
+was best in the Volunteers, a keen Gaelic Leaguer, tireless in, work for
+the old language and old history. This man, well on in the forties, but
+mountain-bred and hardy, had thrown himself into the new
+movement&mdash;little guessing that a few months would see him a private in
+the British Army, or that he would come with honour to command a company
+of a famous Irish regiment on the battlefields of a European war.</p>
+
+<p>If it had been only for the sake of Captain MacSweeny (he was then, of
+course, only a captain of Volunteers), I think Redmond would have
+stopped. But it was a gathering of many friends, who pressed him to
+speak at a moment when his heart was full. Grave results followed from
+what he said that day; but a week sooner or later he was bound to say
+these things, and the results were bound to follow. Here is the pith of
+his utterance:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;I know that you will make efficient soldiers. Efficient for what?
+     Wicklow Volunteers, in spite of the peaceful <a name="Page_155"></a>happiness and beauty
+     of the scene in which we stand, remember this country at this
+     moment is in a state of war, and the duty of the manhood of Ireland
+     is twofold. Its duty is at all cost to defend the shores of Ireland
+     from foreign invasion. It has a duty more than that, of taking care
+     that Irish valour proves itself on the field of war as it has
+     always proved itself in the past. The interests of Ireland, of the
+     whole of Ireland, are at stake in this war. This war is undertaken
+     in defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and
+     right, and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country, a
+     reproach to her manhood, and a denial of the lessons of her
+     history, if young Ireland confined their efforts to remaining at
+     home to defend the shores of Ireland from an unlikely invasion, or
+     should shrink from the duty of proving on the field of battle that
+     gallantry and courage which have distinguished their race all
+     through all its history. I say to you, therefore, your duty is
+     twofold. I am glad to see such magnificent material for soldiers
+     around me, and I say to you: go on drilling and make yourselves
+     efficient for the work, and then account for yourselves as men, not
+     only in Ireland itself, but wherever the firing-line extends, in
+     defence of right and freedom and religion in this war.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>On the following Thursday Mr. Asquith, as Redmond had publicly urged him
+to do, came to Dublin and spoke at the Mansion House with the Lord Mayor
+in the chair. Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin, as well as Redmond, were on the
+same platform and spoke also. The papers of September 25th, which
+reported the speeches of this notable gathering, contained also a
+manifesto from twenty members of the original Committee of the
+Volunteers, definitely breaking with Redmond's policy and taking his
+speech to the Wicklow Volunteers as their cause of action. Having
+recited a version of the facts which led up to the inclusion of
+Redmond's nominees on the Committee, it continued:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;Mr. Redmond, addressing a body of Irish Volunteers on last Sunday,
+     has now announced for the Irish Volunteers a policy and programme
+     fundamentally at variance with <a name="Page_156"></a>their own published and accepted
+     aims and objects, but with which his nominees are, of course,
+     identified. He has declared it to be the duty of the Irish
+     Volunteers to take foreign service under a Government which is not
+     Irish. He has made this announcement without consulting the
+     Provisional Committee, the Volunteers themselves, or the people of
+     Ireland, to whose service alone they are devoted.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The next paragraph announced the expulsion of Redmond's nominees and the
+reconstitution of the Committee as it existed before their admission.
+Six resolutions followed. It is noteworthy that the attitude taken up
+with regard to autonomy was simply &quot;to oppose any diminution of the
+measure of Irish self-government which now exists as a Statute on
+paper,&quot; and to repudiate any &quot;consent to the legislative dismemberment
+of Ireland.&quot; There was no word of an Irish Republic and no explicit
+claim beyond immediate operation for the Home Rule Act.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland's attitude towards the war was defined by a resolution:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;To declare that Ireland cannot, with honour or safety, take part
+     in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a
+     National Government of her own; and to repudiate the claim of any
+     man to offer up the blood and lives of the sons of Irishmen and
+     Irishwomen to the service of the British Empire while no National
+     Government which could speak and act for the people of Ireland is
+     allowed to exist.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Mr. Asquith, when he spoke on Thursday night, must have been informed
+that this split was imminent, and he spoke with a view to that
+situation. He said:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;Speaking here in Dublin, I address myself for a moment
+     particularly to the National Volunteers, and I am going to ask them
+     all over Ireland&mdash;not only them, but I make the appeal to them
+     particularly&mdash;to contribute with promptitude and enthusiasm a large
+     and worthy contingent of recruits to the second new army of half a
+     <a name="Page_157"></a>million which is now growing up, as it were, out of the ground. I
+     should like to see, and we all want to see, an Irish Brigade&mdash;or,
+     better still, an Irish Army Corps. Don't let them be afraid that by
+     joining the colours they will lose their identity and become
+     absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or what is perhaps equally
+     repugnant, be artificially redistributed into units which have no
+     national cohesion or character.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;We shall, to the utmost limit that military expediency will allow,
+     see that men who have been already associated in this or that
+     district in training and in common exercises shall be kept together
+     and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them.
+     One thing further. We are in urgent need of competent officers, and
+     when the officers now engaged in training these men prove equal to
+     the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly
+     and gratefully retained. But, I repeat, gentlemen, the Empire needs
+     recruits and needs them at once. They may be fully trained and
+     equipped in time to take their part in what may prove to be the
+     decisive field in the greatest struggle of the history of the
+     world. That is our immediate necessity, and no Irishman in
+     responding to it need be afraid he is jeopardizing the future of
+     the Volunteers.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;I do not say, and I cannot say, under what precise form of
+     organization it will be, but I trust and I believe&mdash;indeed, I am
+     sure&mdash;that the Volunteers will become a permanent, an integral and
+     characteristic part of the defensive forces of the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>     &quot;I have only one more word to say. Though our need is great, your
+     opportunity is also great. The call which I am making is backed by
+     the sympathy of your fellow-Irishmen in all parts of the Empire and
+     of the world.... There is no question of compulsion or bribery.
+     What we want, what we ask, what we believe you are ready and eager
+     to give, is the freewill offering of a free people.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>     This was a double pledge as to Redmond's two objects. It promised,
+     first, that every inducement should be given to join a corps
+     distinctively Irish and having national cohesion and character;
+     secondly, that the Volunteers should obtain recognition as part of
+     the defensive forces <a name="Page_158"></a>of the Crown. Over and above this was an
+     assurance of enormous importance. There was to be no question of
+     compulsion. Nothing was asked, nothing would be asked, but &quot;the
+     freewill offering of a free people.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Lord Meath followed, a representative figure of Unionist Ireland and a
+most zealous promoter of recruiting. Then Redmond spoke, and as usual
+dwelt on Ireland's contribution to the forces of the Regular Army so far
+actually engaged, which was fully adequate in numbers. &quot;As to quality,
+let Sir John French answer for that, and let my friend and
+fellow-countryman Admiral Beatty from Wexford speak from
+Heligoland.&quot;&mdash;Nothing gave him more pleasure at all times than to dwell
+on the personal achievement of Irishmen; his voice kindled when he named
+such names.&mdash;He went on to give confident assurance, having in it the
+note of defiant answer to the revolt which had been raised:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tell the Prime Minister he will get here plenty of recruits and of
+the best material. We will maintain here in Ireland intact and inviolate
+our Irish National Volunteers, and in my judgment that body of
+Volunteers will prove to be an inexhaustible source of strength to the
+new army corps and the new army that is being created.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then, with disdainful reference to the &quot;little handful of pro-Germans&quot;
+who had &quot;raised their voices in Ireland,&quot; he declared that it would be
+no less absurd to consider them representative than to take General
+Beyers and not General Botha as expressing the sentiments of South
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, as we know, the danger in South Africa was serious, and South
+Africa possessed freedom, not the promise of freedom. General Botha had
+what Redmond was denied&mdash;power to act and act promptly. In Ireland the
+menace was far less grave at this moment, but it was destined to become
+overpowering because Redmond lacked the power to deal with the situation
+in his own way. Already much had been lost. Between the declaration of
+war and the passage of the Home Rule Bill more than six <a name="Page_159"></a>weeks had been
+allowed to elapse in which nothing was done in response to Redmond's
+proposal, except the purely negative decision that Territorials should
+not be sent to garrison Ireland. This inevitably strengthened the hand
+of those who never liked the offer he had made. From the first an accent
+of dissent from the new policy was plainly distinguishable in what came
+from the Committee of the Volunteers. Mr. Bulmer Hobson says of the
+famous speech of August 4th:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;This statement amounted to an unconditional offer of the services
+     of the Irish Volunteers to the English Government, and was made
+     without any consultation with the Volunteers themselves. The first
+     that members of the Provisional Committee heard of their being
+     offered to the Government was when they read it in the newspapers,
+     and Mr. Redmond's nominees on the Committee were as much surprised
+     as the older members. At the next meeting of the Standing
+     Committee, held a couple of days later, the nominated members
+     strove hard to induce us to endorse Redmond's offer. The utmost
+     they could get, however, notwithstanding their clear party
+     majority, was a statement of 'the complete readiness of the Irish
+     Volunteers to take joint action with the Ulster Volunteer Force for
+     the defence of Ireland.' Further than that the older members of the
+     Committee declined to go. This statement in reality committed, and
+     was meant to commit, the Volunteers to nothing, though it was
+     interpreted by the Press as a complete endorsement of Mr. Redmond's
+     policy.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the war, there were two strong currents of desire in
+the Volunteer body and its backers. One sought that the Volunteers
+should retain complete freedom of action and in no way be brought under
+the War Office. The other craved to see them trained and armed with the
+least possible delay. Colonel Moore,<a name="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5"><sup>[5]</sup></a><a name="Page_160"></a> who was the chief of their
+military staff at this time, says Mr. Hobson, saw no way of
+accomplishing the latter object without the assistance of the military
+authorities. Other men, who had come in since Redmond's speech,
+impressed on the public that without legal recognition from the Crown no
+Volunteer could act against the Germans in case of a landing without
+exposing himself and others to the penalties which Germany was
+inflicting in Belgium wherever the civilian population fired a shot. As
+a result, negotiations were opened in August 1914 with the Irish
+Command, and Colonel Moore, in concert with General Paget's staff, drew
+up a scheme for training the Irish and Ulster Volunteers and for using
+them when trained for a short term of garrison duty in Ireland. The
+scheme was submitted to the Provisional Committee, who added conditions
+designed to lead to rejection by the War Office; and in the upshot
+Colonel Moore's proposals were refused by Lord Kitchener on one side and
+by the Standing Committee of Volunteers on the other.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond was of course aware of the failure of this scheme, and took up
+the matter personally. He wrote to the Chief Secretary:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>HOUSE OF COMMONS,</p>
+
+<p>     <i>September</i> 9, <b>1914. <i>Private</i>.</b></p>
+
+<p>     MY DEAR MR. BIRRELL,</p>
+
+<p>     I am very anxious to put shortly before you on paper my views with
+     reference to the Volunteer question, which we discussed with the
+     Prime Minister to-day. I take so strong a view on the subject that
+     I think I must ask you to show him this letter and to urge upon him
+     the importance of getting the War Office to move. I know the
+     influences that are at work in the War Office throwing cold water
+     on the Volunteers and causing intense dissatisfaction in Ireland by
+     unnecessary delays.</p>
+
+<p>     What I suggest should be done is this: There are two separate
+     questions: (1) Recruits; and (2) Volunteers for Home Defence.</p><a name="Page_161"></a>
+
+<p>     The first absolutely depends upon the way in which the second is
+     treated. If the existing Volunteer organization is ignored and
+     sneered at and made little of, recruiting in the country will not
+     go ahead.</p>
+
+<p>     On the other hand, if the Volunteers are properly treated, I
+     believe that recruiting will go ahead.</p>
+
+<p>     Now, my suggestion is this: that an announcement should be made
+     immediately that the War Office are taking steps to assist in the
+     equipment and arming and instructing of a certain number of the
+     Irish Volunteers for Home Defence, and that this will be done
+     without interfering in any way with the character or organization
+     of the existing Volunteer Force.</p>
+
+<p>     Carrying out this programme will really not stand in the way of the
+     preparing of the new Army. All that is required is a few thousand
+     rifles, and there are plenty of them in the military stores in
+     Ireland at this moment which are not being used and will not be
+     used, because they are too old, in the training of the recruits,
+     but which would be quite suitable for making a beginning at any
+     rate in the drilling of the Volunteers. It might be stated that
+     they would be replaced by better weapons gradually, as soon as the
+     rush was over.</p>
+
+<p>     A few instructors should be placed at the disposal of the
+     Volunteers.<a name="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6"><sup>[6]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>     If this is done, intense satisfaction will be given all through the
+     country, and the pride and sentiment of the Volunteers will be
+     touched, and the appeal for recruits generally through the country,
+     and even in the ranks of the Volunteers themselves, will, I am
+     confident, be responded to.</p>
+
+<p>     But, as I have said, if this course is not taken, inevitably
+     recruiting will flag.</p>
+
+<p>     I would earnestly beg of you to take this matter vigorously in
+     hand, so that some satisfactory announcement may be made before I
+     return to Ireland next week.</p>
+
+<p>     Very truly yours,</p>
+
+<p>     RIGHT HON. A. BIRRELL, M.P. J.E. REDMOND.</p></blockquote>
+<br /><a name="Page_162"></a>
+
+<p>Mr. Asquith's speech on September 24th was at least an indication that
+the Prime Minister desired to act in the spirit of Redmond's
+suggestions. The Chief Secretary was of the same disposition. But
+neither of them was able to control the imperious colleague who now had
+taken charge of the Army, and who in the most critical moment thwarted
+effectually the designs of Liberal statesmanship in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>After Redmond's death an &quot;Appreciation&quot; published in <i>The Times</i> (with
+the signature &quot;A.B.,&quot;) by Mr. Birrell, contained this passage:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;He felt to the very end, bitterly and intensely, the stupidity of
+     the War Office. Had he been allowed to deflect the routine
+     indifference and suspicion of the War Office from its old ruts into
+     the deep-cut channels of Irish feelings and sentiments, he might
+     have carried his countrymen with him, but he jumped first and tried
+     to make his bargain afterwards and failed accordingly. English
+     people, as their wont is, gushed over him as an Irish patriot and
+     flouted him as an Irish statesman. Had he and his brother been put
+     in charge of the Irish Nationalist contingents, and an Ulster man,
+     or men, been put in a corresponding position over the Irish
+     Protestant contingents, all might have gone well. Lord Kitchener,
+     who was under the delusion that he was an Irishman no less than
+     Redmond, was the main, though not the only obstacle in the path of
+     good sense and good feeling.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Yet it is, to say the least, not clear why Lord Kitchener should have
+been allowed to be an obstacle. Redmond was not fortunate in his allies.
+He had set an example of generous courage; it was not followed by
+British statesmen.</p>
+
+<p>From the very outset of his campaign in Ireland he had two hostilities
+to meet. The first was that of the section which had always been opposed
+to him&mdash;the Unionist party. Into this block he had already driven a
+wedge. The <i>Irish Times</i>, its principal organ in the South and West, was
+now backing him heartily, and, as <a name="Page_163"></a>has been seen, not a few leading
+Unionists were doing their utmost to assist. But the real opposition,
+that of Ulster, was in no way conciliated. On September 28th, &quot;Covenant
+Day,&quot; a great meeting was held at which the Ulstermen denounced what
+they called the Government's treachery, and declared their implacable
+determination never to submit to Home Rule. Mr. Bonar Law for the
+British Unionists proclaimed that whereas heretofore his party were
+willing to be bound by the verdict of a general election, they now
+withdrew that condition, and without any reservation would support
+Ulster in whatever course it chose to adopt.</p>
+
+<p>In a purely partisan sense these speeches, and this attitude, did
+Redmond no harm in his campaign with Nationalists. When a certain
+section of Home Rulers were clamouring that he had been tricked and
+betrayed by the Government, had given all and got nothing, it was a good
+rejoinder to point to the fact that in Ulster's opinion the opportunity
+had been used to gain an unfair victory for Home Rule. But Redmond from
+the outbreak of the war had no concern with party or partisan arguments.
+He wanted a real truce, an end of bitterness, in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>There was, moreover, a feature of the Ulster propaganda in these days
+which disturbed him. General Richardson, a retired Indian officer, who
+had chief command of the Ulster Volunteer Force, in appealing for
+recruits, urged the Volunteers &quot;to recollect the events of March last
+and what the Navy and Army did for Ulster. They came to the help of
+Ulster in the day of trouble, and would come again.&quot; He added his
+assurance to the Volunteers that &quot;when the war was over, and their ranks
+were reinforced by some 12,000 men, thoroughly well trained and with
+vast field experience, they would return to the attack and relegate Home
+Rule to the devil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It did not assist Redmond in gaining recruits for the Army that a
+general officer should represent the services <a name="Page_164"></a>as trusty and proven
+allies of gentlemen whose leading idea in life was to relegate Home Rule
+to such a destination The average Nationalist civilian did not easily
+discriminate between what was said by a retired officer out of
+commission and what was said by officers in uniform. There was a
+tendency to regard General Richardson as speaking of right for the
+Army&mdash;for which Nationalist recruits were desired.</p>
+
+<p>The Liberal Government could not help Redmond to allay Ulster or
+Unionist hostility. One thing they could do; they could ensure that
+whatever concession or privilege was extended to those who followed Sir
+Edward Carson should be equally accorded to those who followed Redmond.
+This one thing which they could have done they did not do. They allowed
+the War Office to increase the arrogance of the Ulstermen and to weaken
+Redmond's hand, giving Ulster special privileges, which inevitably
+created jealousy and suspicion in Nationalist Ireland&mdash;as shall be shown
+in detail.</p>
+
+<p>But first it is necessary to indicate the other element of
+hostility&mdash;far more serious than that of Ulster, because it challenged
+Redmond's leadership. It was that of the extremist group, which rapidly
+began to welcome German successes, not for any love to Germany but
+because it could not conceive of any hope for Ireland except in the
+weakening or Destruction of British power. These men, as been already
+seen, had acquired an influence in the Volunteer Force out of all
+proportion to their numbers, owing to the fact that the Irish party had
+stood aloof from the movement in its early stages. Professor MacNeill
+said later that but for the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic
+Association there would have been no Irish Volunteers. The bulk of both
+these bodies was always antagonistic to the parliamentary movement. When
+their opposition openly declared itself, in consequence of the East
+Wicklow speech, Redmond was not sorry to have a clear issue raised,
+involving a <a name="Page_165"></a>formal breach. In a public letter to Colonel Moore he wrote
+that he read &quot;this extraordinary manifesto with feelings of great
+relief,&quot; because communications from all parts of the country had forced
+him to the conclusion that so long as the signatories to this document
+remained members of the governing body, &quot;no practical work could be done
+to put the Volunteer organization on a real business basis.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By a real &quot;business basis&quot; he meant that the Volunteers should be made a
+defensive force to act in concert with the troops engaged in the war.
+That was the clear issue. You must be for the troops or against them. In
+these days the official attitude of those who signed the dissenting
+manifesto was that Ireland should be neutral. But at such a crisis, as
+Mr. Dillon said in a telling phrase, a man who calls himself a neutral
+&quot;is either an enemy or a coward.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It became only too clear later that we had to do with a body of men who
+were enemies and were certainly not cowards. Their number at this moment
+was difficult to determine. What immediately revealed itself was that
+the vast majority of the Volunteers, when choice was forced on them,
+adhered to Redmond.</p>
+
+<p>The case of my own constituency, Galway City, may be given as typical,
+though rather of the towns than of the country. The country-side was
+apathetic; the towns were both for and against Redmond's policy. In
+Galway, Sinn Fein had a strong hold on the college of the National
+University, but, on the other hand, the depot of the Connaught Rangers
+was just outside the city at Renmore, and that famous corps had many
+partisans; while in the fishing village of the Claddagh nearly every man
+was a naval reservist.</p>
+
+<p>I came to Galway on the day the Home Rule Bill was signed and attended a
+couple of Volunteer drills, where I noted the activity of some young men
+going round with a password: &quot;For whom will you serve?&quot; &quot;For<a name="Page_166"></a> Ireland
+only.&quot; After the publication of the dissenting manifesto a Committee was
+called, and I obtained leave to be present. There was a sharp
+discussion, and at the finish the vote was a tie, whether to support
+Redmond or the dissentients. This did not at all please me or my
+friends, so we determined to have a big general meeting to see on which
+side public support really lay. Everybody was invited, and a great many
+people could not get into the hall; this mattered the less because the
+Sinn Feiners cut the electric wires leading to the building and plunged
+us in darkness; luckily, it was a fine night, and we took the meeting
+outside with great success. A couple of interruptions were drastically
+dealt with, and complete peace then prevailed. Two of the four county
+members were among the many speakers, and the last man to address the
+meeting was a wounded Connaught Ranger back from the line. We cheered
+for the Rangers, and then we cheered for the King; the local band was
+present, but unable, though quite willing, to assist at this point.
+&quot;Isn't it a pity,&quot; the chief bandsman said to me, &quot;there was three of us
+knew the tune well, but they've all gone to the front, and not a one of
+us ever heard it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But as a net result the original Volunteer organization was killed. The
+pick of the young and keen who were with us went off to the war; the
+young and keen who stayed kept up an organization with very different
+purposes. There was plenty of material in Galway and everywhere else to
+build up a volunteer corps such as Redmond desired to see; but the
+organizing spirits were in the opposite camp, and our friends did not
+interest themselves in what seemed to be a kind of play-acting when such
+serious business was afoot in the world. Had they been set to duties of
+coast patrol, under officers who were available on the spot, and given
+clear recognition as part of the defensive forces, their body would have
+been alive and active; as it was, it atrophied and <a name="Page_167"></a>grew inert. Broadly
+speaking, the same was true all over the country. Redmond was willing to
+make bricks for the War Office to build with; they insisted that he
+should make them without straw.</p>
+
+<p>Facts directly connected with recruiting ultimately convinced the
+British public that the War Office had spoilt a great opportunity in
+Ireland. But the fundamental blunder, the deep-seated cause which
+undermined the force of Redmond's appeal, was the refusal of recognition
+to the National Volunteers and the failure to fulfil the promise held
+out in Mr. Asquith's Dublin speech.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The other respects in which the War Office crippled the Nationalist
+efforts after recruiting were matters of detail, not of principle. The
+first and best help which Redmond might expect would have come from his
+colleagues in the party; and all the recruiting authorities in Ireland
+should have been directed to secure that help locally. No such step was
+taken. No attempt was made to enlist Nationalists of position as patrons
+of the recruiting campaign. In Catholic Nationalist districts it was the
+rule rather than the exception to select gentlemen of the Protestant
+Church, and of strong Unionist opinions, as recruiting officers. If
+Catholic Nationalists had been selected as the official agents to assist
+in raising the Ulster Division, there would have been an outcry, and
+very rightly; it would have been contrary to common sense. But the War
+Office, always even obsequiously ready to consider the Ulstermen's point
+of view, completely lacked sympathy for that of the majority in Ireland.
+In some cases the choice of a man locally unpopular on public grounds
+afforded&mdash;to speak plainly&mdash;an excuse for those leading Nationalists
+who were <a name="Page_168"></a>loath to depart from all the tradition of their lifetime. Some
+of Redmond's colleagues held that they had been &quot;extreme men&quot; all their
+lives, and they thought it too hard that they should be expected to ask
+Irishmen to join the English Army. Yet these same men would have worked
+enthusiastically for the Volunteers, and by sympathy for their comrades
+who went out could have been led into a very different attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Many of them, too, felt an honourable scruple about asking others to do
+what they could not do themselves. As a parliamentary group we were
+under a singular disability. In its early days the Irish party had been,
+what Sinn Fein is now, a party of the young. But so strong was the tie
+of gratitude that service in its ranks became an inheritance, and in
+most cases a man once elected stayed on till he died or resigned. By
+1914, of all parties in the House we had by far the largest proportion
+of men over military age. I question whether three out of the seventy
+could have passed the standard then exacted&mdash;for two or three of the
+younger men were medically unfit. In these circumstances the War Office
+would have been well advised to waive a regulation or two to facilitate
+matters; but the rigour of the rules was maintained. One of my
+colleagues, a man in the early forties, offered to join as a private; he
+was refused. In my own case a similar refusal was based on Lord
+Kitchener's personal opinion against that of the Under-secretary for
+War, to whom, as a personal friend, I had written; it took nearly six
+months to get the decision altered; and by that time the value of
+example was much depreciated. The beginning was the chance to give a
+lead.</p>
+
+<p>Far graver was the intolerable delay in forming a corps which should
+appeal definitely to Irish national and Nationalist sentiment. The First
+Army included one Irish Division&mdash;the Tenth, destined to a splendid
+history, under a popular commander, Sir Bryan Mahon; <a name="Page_169"></a>but it had no
+specially Nationalist colour, so to say, and no connection with the
+Irish Volunteers. Redmond wanted the counterpart of what had been
+readily granted to Sir Edward Carson; and this was what Mr. Asquith had
+outlined in his speech at Dublin. The Sixteenth Division already
+existed; its commander was appointed on September 17th. But the first
+step to give it the desired character was not taken without long delay,
+and much heart-burning and confusion resulted.</p>
+
+<p>Part of the confusion is attributable to the fact that Redmond, in his
+desire to touch the historic memories connected with the famous corps
+which attained its crowning glory at Fontenoy, always spoke of &quot;a new
+Irish Brigade.&quot; But at the Mansion House meeting Mr. Asquith spoke of
+something more than a brigade&mdash;an army corps; and Redmond, following
+him, instantly accepted the idea. &quot;I used the word 'brigade' in my
+ignorance&mdash;I meant an Irish army corps.&quot; There was always present to his
+mind the hope that in some larger formation the Ulster Division might
+find itself shoulder to shoulder with other Irish troops.</p>
+
+<p>Yet intending recruits were puzzled, and Lord Meath, writing to Redmond
+on October 10th that he had formed a Recruiting Committee in Dublin &quot;for
+the purpose of endeavouring to raise the Irish Army Corps for which you
+spoke,&quot; reported that men came in asking to know where was the Irish
+Brigade, and refused to join anything else. Lord Meath suggested that
+Redmond should obtain from Lord Kitchener &quot;an official declaration
+sanctioning the enlistment of Irishmen in an Irish Brigade, or Irish
+Army Corps, consisting exclusively of Irish officers and men.&quot; He wrote
+again on the 14th, asking that the Prime Minister himself should be
+approached, and on the 17th, in reply to some communication from
+Redmond: &quot;I hope you will insist on some official and unmistakable
+statement that your request has been granted.&quot;</p><a name="Page_170"></a>
+
+<p>The tone of these letters, coming from no fire-eating Nationalist but
+the staunchest of Unionist peers, is sufficient proof that Lord
+Kitchener's action or inaction was resented by those who knew Ireland
+and had the best interests of Ireland at heart. The <i>Irish Times</i> wrote
+in the same sense; and on October 19th a formal attack was launched in
+the <i>Daily Chronicle</i>, which drew a sharp contrast with the treatment
+accorded to Ulster. &quot;Up to this hour,&quot; the writer said, &quot;the Irish
+Division asked for by Mr. Redmond has been refused sanction by the War
+Office.&quot; This was an overstatement, but it was true that up to this time
+such a belief naturally prevailed, because the War Office could not be
+induced to make the desired announcement that sanction had been given.
+Moreover, although the concession had been made, it was made in a very
+different way from that used in dealing with Sir Edward Carson. Redmond
+had no voice whatever in the organization. The choice of a divisional
+commander was of infinite importance; and it fell upon
+Lieutenant-General Sir Lawrence Parsons, K.C.B., an artillery officer of
+great distinction, a man of wide general knowledge and culture and of
+strongly marked individuality. Yet his individuality did not make him
+easy for Redmond to work with. He was not simply a typical professional
+soldier of the old Army; he was an idealist in his profession; and part
+of the professional soldier's idealism is to resent and despise
+political considerations. He recognized that Redmond had spoken and
+acted with a statesman's vision; he failed to recognize that in many
+matters political tactics are necessary to carry out a statesman's plan.
+Also, it was very difficult for him or for any other professional
+soldier to realize that recruiting, under such conditions as then
+prevailed, was a politician's task, not a soldier's, even in Great
+Britain; and that this was tenfold more true of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The point requires to be emphasized, because it applies <a name="Page_171"></a>to a greater
+personage&mdash;Lord Kitchener himself. I believe that Lord Kitchener
+honestly desired the success of Redmond's mission. To my personal
+knowledge he sent for one officer long known to him and took him from a
+command in which he was comfortably placed and sent him, against his
+will, to raise one of our battalions in a difficult area. The choice was
+absolutely sound, and success was achieved by methods which did not
+always follow strictly the letter of King's Regulations. But these
+departures from rule were quite in accordance with the spirit of the old
+Army, and Lord Kitchener was ready to stand over any of them. He would
+do the best he could for our division on the old lines. He would, I am
+certain, have said that he had done the best thing possible for it in
+appointing to the command an Irishman who was a first-rate soldier and a
+first-rate man to supervise the training of troops. So far as my
+judgment is able to go, the credit for making the Sixteenth Division
+what it was when we went to France belongs chiefly to the divisional
+general under whom we trained.</p>
+
+<p>General Parsons had the gift, which appears to be rare in soldiers, of
+imparting ideas not merely about discipline but about the art of war;
+and he had an enthusiasm which communicated itself. But these were the
+qualities of the soldier in his own sphere, with which Redmond had no
+contact. What Redmond knew was the writer of letters which now lie
+before me. Running through them all is the tone of a soldier in
+authority who accepts assistance from a friendly, influential,
+well-meaning but imperfectly instructed civilian. There is no
+recognition of the fact that Redmond was the accepted leader of a
+Volunteer Force numbering over a hundred thousand men; no glimpse of any
+perception that morally, and almost officially, Redmond was the
+accredited head of the nation in whose name the division was being
+raised&mdash;a nation to which the statutory right of self-government had
+just been accorded.</p><a name="Page_172"></a>
+
+<p>The whole position was extraordinary. Legally and theoretically, Redmond
+was a simple member of Parliament. Practically and morally, he was the
+head of Ireland, exactly as Botha was of South Africa; and he was trying
+to do without legal powers what Botha was doing by means of them. He was
+far more than the Leader of the Opposition in Great Britain; for in
+Ireland there really was no Government. Moral authority, which must
+proceed from consent of the governed, the Irish Government had not
+possessed for many a long day; but its legal status had been
+unimpeachable. Now even that was gone; it was merely a stop-gap
+contrivance, carrying on till the Act of Parliament should receive
+fulfilment; and, as a bare matter of fact, it was powerless. No
+operative decision of any moment was taken or could be taken at this
+moment in Ireland. Everything was referred to the Cabinet, and that body
+had no power to carry out a popular policy in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond had put forward a policy which they had accepted in principle.
+It could only be carried out through him, and for success he must be
+consulted in detail. Neither Lord Kitchener nor General Parsons in fact
+recognized the status which this implied. They were prepared to listen
+to suggestions from him; they were not prepared to accept guidance, as
+they must have done had he been Prime Minister of the country.</p>
+
+<p>It was impossible that Redmond's attitude in dealing with General
+Parsons should not imply some sense of the position which he held;
+equally impossible, from the temper and mentality of the man, that there
+should not be in General Parsons's letters an underlying assertion that
+in military matters the military must decide.</p>
+
+<p>The correspondence between the two men opened by a letter from Sir
+Lawrence Parsons, who had just established his headquarters at Mallow;
+and its chief purpose was to direct Redmond's attention to the fact that
+an Irish Division was a much finer and nobler unit than an<a name="Page_173"></a> Irish
+Brigade. Two points in it, however, are of interest. &quot;I have been
+appointed by Lord Kitchener,&quot; said General Parsons, &quot;because I am an
+Irishman and understand my countrymen.&quot; Also, &quot;I have had a considerable
+share in selecting the officers of the Division, almost all Irishmen of
+every political and religious creed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What lay behind the first of these sentences was a profound conviction
+that the writer thoroughly understood the necessities of the situation.
+That was a disastrous mistake. To understand Ireland at such a moment
+was difficult for anyone, impossible for a man who had not been in close
+touch with the mental condition produced by all these extraordinary
+happenings. The effect of the preparations for rebellion in Ulster, of
+the Curragh incident, and of the collision between troops and people in
+Dublin&mdash;the effect of the existence of a permitted Nationalist Volunteer
+Force&mdash;the effect of Redmond's appeal: these were three completely novel
+and conflicting currents in the stream of Irish life. Nobody could hope
+to estimate these developments from a general view, however intelligent,
+of Irish history and character, nor even from the most intimate and
+sympathetic acquaintance with Irish troops of the old Army.</p>
+
+<p>A proof of the unhappy lack of comprehension is furnished by the second
+sentence I have quoted. General Parsons had been most rightly allowed by
+the War Office to assist in selecting officers for the Division. But it
+had never occurred to either party to consult Redmond on this critical
+matter. Does anyone suppose that Sir Edward Carson had no voice in the
+staffing of the Ulster Division? He had at all events received from the
+first a clear promise that all professional soldiers who had been
+officers in the Ulster Volunteers would be officers in the Division, and
+that any who had been mobilized should be restored to their associates
+in the Division.</p>
+
+<p>General Parsons brought to this whole matter the <a name="Page_174"></a>fine principle that no
+man's religious or political beliefs should stand in his way. He omitted
+to consider the effect produced on the situation by the fact that the
+Ulster Division had been actually allowed to exclude all Catholics, as
+such, and to accept no officer who was not politically in sympathy with
+Unionist Ulster. Redmond had not the least wish to exclude either
+Protestants or Unionists; he wanted all Irishmen on an equality. But he
+was bound by common sense and by a perception of realities to desire
+that Protestants and Unionists should not appear to monopolize the
+command.</p>
+
+<p>Not one of the three brigadiers appointed was generally known in
+Ireland, personally or by his connections. One was an Englishman. Of the
+officers originally appointed not one in five was a Catholic. No
+Catholic commanded a battalion, scarcely half a dozen were field
+officers. The only Catholic field officer appointed to the Division who
+had been prominently connected with the Volunteers was Lord Fingall, and
+he had severed his connection with that body.</p>
+
+<p>All this was a terrible blunder. Whether it was wise or unwise to allow
+the formation of a division having the peculiar character of the Ulster
+Division may be argued&mdash;but certainly Redmond never took exception to
+it, and no man who ever saw these Ulstermen in the field can regret its
+inception. But once it was formed, its existence created a situation
+which had to be recognized. An equivalent ought to have been given; but
+no genuine attempt to do this was made.</p>
+
+<p>In replying to Sir Lawrence Parsons, Redmond raised no controversy as to
+what had been done; he was, indeed, not cognizant of the facts. But he
+addressed himself from the first to making friendly suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst other things he referred to an appeal which Sir Lawrence Parsons
+had addressed to the women of Ireland, that they should provide
+regimental colours for the battalions of the Division. This appeal was
+promptly <a name="Page_175"></a>met, to Redmond's great delight&mdash;delight which was soon
+changed into vexation, for the War Office stepped in, declared the
+proceeding irregular, and prohibited the holding of colours by any
+temporary battalion. General Parsons was obliged to publish an
+explanation which must have been galling to himself, and which went far
+to confirm the impression that the War Office, with all its
+preoccupations, had time to keep an unfriendly eye on the Nationalist
+recruiting effort.</p>
+
+<p>Another trivial matter led to prolonged and irritating controversy.
+Towards the end of October the Belfast and Dublin papers announced that
+the Army Council had approved of &quot;an Ulster badge similar to that worn
+by Ulster Volunteers&quot; as a cap badge for all troops in the Ulster
+Division. It was pointed out that this would have the effect of
+preserving the identity of the Ulster Division. Immediately, and not
+unnaturally, the demand for a similar concession was put forward on
+behalf of the Sixteenth Division. General Parsons was opposed, as any
+old soldier would be, to a variation in the distinguishing marks of old
+and famous regiments. He did not allow for the fact that we needed to
+attract new soldiers in masses&mdash;men who as yet knew nothing of
+regimental tradition. Still, he co-operated in forwarding Redmond's
+desire, which was to meet a widely spread sentimental demand. Now that
+the war is over, many soldiers argue that there is no reason in the
+nature of things why Irish regiments should not have a clearly
+distinguishing uniform, as the Scots or the Colonials do. In the last
+months, when recruiting was a matter of urgency, Colonel Lynch induced
+the War Office to consent to equipping an Irish Brigade with a
+completely distinctive dress; unhappily the pattern was (after several
+months) still under discussion when the war ended. I have little doubt
+that from the point of view of recruiting even the badge, to say nothing
+of a distinctive uniform, would have been an asset; I have no doubt at
+all that <a name="Page_176"></a>the refusal of it was a set-back, because it was a refusal
+given after a discussion and correspondence which lasted from November
+till February. The most interesting point, however, is that Lord
+Kitchener found time to occupy himself repeatedly with this question in
+the period between the first and second battles of Ypres. If his
+intervention had been judicious, it would have been as impressive as the
+spectacle of a battery elephant stopping in action to pick up a pin with
+his trunk.</p>
+
+<p>On one point Redmond's representations, heartily backed by General
+Parsons, were successful. Catholic chaplains, of whom no adequate number
+were at first provided for Irish troops, were secured. It is pleasant to
+note that Lord Roberts, who before the war had been vehement on the
+Ulster side, used his personal influence to support this application. A
+month or two later, when death came to the veteran, dramatically, among
+the troops in France, Redmond told the House of Commons how on that
+question Lord Roberts had met him in the friendliest way and endeavoured
+to arrange for attending the great meeting at the Dublin Mansion House.</p>
+
+<p>On another matter Redmond was able to assist the equipment of the
+Division. He suggested, and General Parsons fully admitted the value of,
+regimental bands; but the War Office made no grants for them. Redmond
+drew upon a large sum which had been placed at his disposal by a private
+individual to further his campaign, and all our battalions were indebted
+to him for their fife and drum equipment. There was, in short, no detail
+in which he was not willing and anxious to assist the Division and its
+commander. But the friction between the two men was unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>The most serious cause of it was the line taken by General Parsons about
+the appointment of officers. He laid down a rule, which I think would
+have had excellent results if enforced throughout the whole of the new
+armies, that no man should be recommended for a <a name="Page_177"></a>commission without
+previous military experience, and that candidates lacking that
+experience must put in a period of service in the ranks. He set apart a
+special company in one battalion, the 7th Leinsters, to which such men
+should be sent, so that while drilling and exercising with the rest of
+the battalion, and enjoying no special privilege, they ate and slept and
+lived together in their own barrack rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the obstacle thus set up deterred a good many of the less zealous,
+who could not understand why that should be made a condition in the
+Irish Division which was not so in the Ulster Division&mdash;nor, indeed, so
+far as I know, anywhere else at that time. Men who had been officers of
+Ulster Volunteers got their commissions as a matter of course; the
+officer of National Volunteers had to prove his competence in the cadet
+company. General Parsons fully admitted this difference of treatment,
+and justified it by saying to Redmond that in consequence of it he would
+be very sorry to change officers with the Ulster Division. One cannot
+refuse to admire such a spirit; but he ought to have asked himself
+whether it was fair to impose a handicap on Redmond's efforts.
+Everything turned on getting representative young men from the
+Volunteers, and from the correspondence it appears that few were coming
+from the South and West. From the North they poured in. In our 47th
+Brigade, the 6th Royal Irish Regiment was mainly composed of Derry
+Nationalists; the 7th Leinsters and the 6th Connaught Rangers were
+almost to a man followers of Mr. Devlin from Belfast.</p>
+
+<p>Next after Redmond, Mr. Devlin was the man to whom our Division owed
+most. But the first and the main impetus came from Redmond himself. He
+spoke on October 4th at Wexford, the capital of his native county; on
+the 11th at Waterford, his own constituency; on the 18th at Kilkenny,
+the constituency of his close friend Pat O'Brien. A week later he was at
+Belfast <a name="Page_178"></a>and in the glens of Antrim, among the Nationalists of Ulster.
+Then Parliament kept him for a few weeks; in December he was back, and
+spoke at Tuam and in Limerick. Everywhere the Volunteers turned out in
+great numbers to receive him; and to them his appeal was primarily
+addressed.</p>
+
+<p>At Wexford he laid stress on Mr. Asquith's pledge that the Volunteers
+should remain as a recognized permanent force for the defence of the
+country, and this led him to raise frankly the question of control. Who
+should have authority over Volunteers in a State? Surely the elected and
+responsible government. But pending Home Rule, &quot;the policy and control
+of the Volunteers must rest with the elected representatives of the
+country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>More generally, he reminded them that he had always spoken of the
+possibility of some great political convulsion that might destroy their
+plans. &quot;Nothing but an earthquake can now prevent Home Rule,&quot; he had
+said. &quot;The outbreak of this overwhelming war might easily have
+overwhelmed Home Rule. But we have survived it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he went on to argue that the delay might be a blessing in disguise.
+Civil war between Irishmen had always seemed to him an impossibility.
+That impossibility was now universally admitted. In a passage of unusual
+heat he denounced the &quot;so-called statesmen&quot; who came over unasked to our
+country to inflame feelings&mdash;as Mr. Bonar Law had done; and he appealed
+to all sections &quot;to enable us to utilize the interval before a Home Rule
+Parliament assembles to unite all Irishmen under a Home Rule
+Government.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At Waterford he was largely occupied with repelling the charge that he
+and his colleagues had made a bargain with the Government to ship Irish
+Volunteers overseas to fight whether they would or no. This was the line
+on which opposition was developing, and it was assisted by <a name="Page_179"></a>articles in
+the English Press, which laid it down that unless the Irish furnished a
+sufficiency of recruits, Home Rule should be repealed.</p>
+
+<p>An extension of this argument, that Redmond was buying Home Rule with
+the blood of young Irishmen, raised the question whether Home Rule was
+worth the price. While the Bill was not yet law, it was a flag, a
+symbol. Once it became an Act, men's attitude changed; they turned to
+criticizing what they had got; and one powerful newspaper, bitterly
+hostile to the Parliamentary party, expended much ingenuity in
+exaggerating the limitations of what had been gained. While one set of
+critics endeavoured to show how miserable was the price obtained,
+another dwelt on the unrighteousness of making such a bargain without
+Ireland's consent. In Redmond's speech at Kilkenny there was a note of
+resentment. He refused at any great crisis to consider &quot;what might
+please the gallery or the crowd, or might spare him the insults of a
+handful of cornerboys.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But the kernel of all his thought was put into one sentence by him at
+Belfast. &quot;The proper place to guard Ireland is on the battlefields of
+France.&quot; It was from Belfast after this meeting that the first striking
+demonstration of response came&mdash;organized and inspired by Mr. Devlin. On
+November 20th nearly a full battalion of recruits, many National
+Volunteers, entrained for Fermoy; a week later they were followed by
+another great detachment. The example spread; and when Redmond spoke at
+Limerick on December 20th, the <i>Irish Times</i> in a friendly leading
+article admitted that &quot;the National Volunteers were now coming forward
+in large numbers and the Irish Brigade was going to be a credit to the
+country.&quot; This was a very different note from that which had come from
+Unionist quarters at earlier stages.</p><a name="Page_180"></a>
+<br />
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>So far as recruiting went, Redmond had won. He was sure of making good
+to England. But in what concerned making good to Ireland, he had no
+progress to report. He stated that already nearly 16,500 men from the
+Volunteers had joined the Army, and he could not understand why
+Government was so chary of giving assistance to train and equip this
+force. There was no doubt as to the mass of men available. Figures
+supplied by the police to the Chief Secretary estimated that between
+September 24th, when the split took place, and October 31st, out of
+170,000 Volunteers, only a trifle over 12,000 adhered to Professor
+MacNeill.</p>
+
+<p>But in Dublin the opponents were nearly 2,000 out of 6,700; and two
+strong battalions went almost solid against Redmond. These battalions,
+along with the Citizens' Army, were destined to alter the course of
+Irish history. It was specially true of them, but true generally of all
+the minority who left Redmond, that they were kept together by a
+resolute and determined group who had a clear purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The &quot;Irish Volunteers,&quot; as the dissentients called themselves, were made
+to feel that they were a minority, and an unpopular minority in more
+than one instance. In Galway, when they turned out to parade the
+streets, they were driven off with casualties&mdash;retaliation for their
+interference with our meeting in September. In Dundalk there was a
+somewhat similar occurrence. But they got more than their own back one
+day in November by a bold <i>coup</i>&mdash;forerunner of many. Ninety rifles
+belonging to the National Volunteers were being moved in a cart from one
+place to another. Half a dozen men armed with revolvers held up the cart
+and its driver and carried off the rifles. At their Convention, held in
+the end of October, Professor MacNeill said: &quot;They would <a name="Page_181"></a>go on with the
+work of organizing, training and equipping a Volunteer force for the
+service of Ireland in Ireland, and such a force might yet be the means
+of saving Home Rule from disaster, and of compelling the Home Rule
+Government to keep faith with Ireland without the exaction of a price in
+blood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That forecast has not as yet realized itself; and many of us think that
+the chief achievement of this section has been to turn to waste a heavy
+price that was paid in blood by other men for the sake of Ireland. But
+unquestionably they were, though the minority, far more of a living
+reality than the mass of the original force&mdash;and for a simple reason.
+Their purpose, whether good or bad, was within their own control. The
+purpose of the majority was to carry out Redmond's policy&mdash;which was to
+make the Volunteers part of an Irish army of which the striking force
+was designed to defend Ireland on the battlefields of Flanders. But to
+carry out that policy the National Volunteers must be accepted as a
+purely local Irish military organization for home defence&mdash;controlled,
+in the absence of a popularly elected Irish Government, by the elected
+Irish representatives. The War Office thwarted that policy. Lord
+Kitchener would not accept it. He continued to be of the opinion that by
+equipping Redmond's followers he would be arming enemies.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth noting that one of the ablest and most detached students of
+Irish affairs was wholly on Redmond's side. Lord Dunraven, appealing on
+behalf of &quot;the new Irish Brigade,&quot; pointed out that both sides of
+Redmond's policy must be accepted. &quot;No scheme which fails to take some
+account of the National Volunteer Force can do justice to what Ireland
+can give,&quot; he wrote. But was there everywhere a desire to do justice to
+what Ireland could give&mdash;and was willing to give? Redmond was warned in
+those days by an influential correspondent in England that a deliberate
+policy was being pursued <a name="Page_182"></a>by the opponents of Home Rule, who undoubtedly
+had strong backing in the War Office. The National Volunteers were to
+become the objects of derision and contempt, which would extend to
+himself. By keeping the Volunteers out of active participation in war
+service, it could be proved that Redmond did not speak for Ireland or
+represent Ireland; that the Irish were raising unreal objections so as
+to keep an excuse for avoiding danger. It was urged on him that he
+should press for the extension of the Territorial Act to Ireland and
+endeavour to bring his men in on this footing.</p>
+
+<p>There were two difficulties in the way of this scheme which nevertheless
+attracted him strongly. The first was that enlistment in the
+Territorials for home service had been stopped&mdash;so that the proposal had
+little advantage, if any, over enlistment in the Irish brigades. The
+second was due to the Volunteers themselves, many of whom, though
+willing to serve in the war, were unwilling to take the oath of
+allegiance.</p>
+
+<p>There were limits to the length to which Redmond felt himself able to
+go, and he never dealt with this objection by argument. The example
+which he set was plain to all. He joined in singing &quot;God save the King,&quot;
+in drinking the King's health, and at Aughavanagh now he flew the Union
+Jack beside the Green flag. He was willing to take part in any
+demonstration which implied that Nationalist Ireland under its new legal
+status accepted its lot in the British Empire fully and without reserve.
+It was superfluous for him to argue that Nationalists might consistently
+take the oath of allegiance when Nationalists were pledging their lives
+in the King's service beside every other kind of citizen in the British
+Empire. Over and above his own example was the example of his brother
+and his son. On November 23rd Willie Redmond addressed a great meeting
+in Cork and told them, &quot;I won't say to you go, but come with me.&quot; He was
+then fifty-three&mdash;and for most men it would have <a name="Page_183"></a>been &quot;too late a
+week.&quot; But no man was ever more instinctively a soldier, and to
+soldiering he had gone by instinct as a boy. He was an officer in the
+Wexford Militia for a year or two, till politics drove him out of that
+service and drew him into another. Now he went to the war gravely but
+joyfully. I think those days did not bring into relief any more
+picturesque or sympathetic figure.</p>
+
+<p>One thing ought to be said. Mr. Devlin wished to join also, but Redmond
+held that he could not be spared from Ireland, where his influence was
+enormous; and he was placed in a somewhat unfair position, even though
+everyone who knew him knew that his chief attribute was personal
+courage. But he was indispensable for the work which had to be done, of
+helping at this strange crisis to keep Ireland peaceful and united at a
+time when Government was at its lowest ebb of authority.</p>
+
+<p>Trouble threatened. On October 11th, the anniversary of Parnell's death,
+three bodies of Volunteers turned out in Dublin&mdash;the National
+Volunteers, the Irish Volunteers, and the Citizen Army. A collision
+occurred which might easily have become serious. This passed off, but
+early in December the Government suppressed three or four of the openly
+anti-British papers, which were, of course, still more virulent against
+Redmond. They reappeared under other names. But a meeting of protest
+against the suppression was held outside Liberty Hall. Mr. Larkin had,
+by this time, gone to America. His chief colleague, Mr. James Connolly,
+who was the brain of the Irish Labour Movement, presided, and at the
+close declared that the meeting had been held under the protection of an
+armed company of the Citizen Army posted in the windows and on the roof
+of Liberty Hall. Had the police or military attempted to disperse the
+meeting, he said, &quot;those rifles would not have been silent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ulster was not the only place where armed men thought themselves
+entitled to resist coercion.</p><a name="Page_184"></a>
+
+<p>Dublin was the more dangerous because the war, which created so much
+employment in Great Britain, brought no new trade to Ireland, outside of
+Belfast. Agriculture prospered, but the towns knew only a rise of
+prices. Redmond began with high hopes, which Mr. Lloyd George fostered,
+of rapidly-developing munition works, which would at the close of
+hostilities leave the foundation for industrial communities. Here again,
+however, Redmond's representations were in vain. When the heavy extra
+tax on beer and spirits was levied by the first supplementary Budget, he
+opposed it angrily:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;You are doing some shipbuilding at Belfast, you are making a few
+     explosives at Arklow, you are buying some woollen goods from some
+     of the smaller manufacturers, but apart from that, the bulk of the
+     hundreds of millions of borrowed money which you are spending on
+     the war is being spent in England and in increasing the income of
+     your country.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This tax on alcohol would curtail the most important urban industry of
+the South and West of Ireland, and he feared that it was the old story
+of crushing Ireland's trade under the wheel of British interests.</p>
+
+<p>Here again Redmond could only plead with the Irish Government that they,
+in their turn, should plead with the Imperial authorities. He should
+have been able to act in his own right as the head of an Irish Ministry,
+knowing the importance of providing employment at such a time. He saw
+the need and how to meet it; but he had none of the resources of power.
+As compared with the other men who occupied, in the public eye, a rank
+equivalent to his&mdash;with General Botha, for instance&mdash;he was like a
+commander of those Russian armies which had to take the field against
+Germans with sticks and pikes.</p>
+
+<p>Yet power he had&mdash;power over the heart and mind of Ireland&mdash;the power
+which was given him by the response <a name="Page_185"></a>to his appeal. From January onwards
+the Sixteenth Division grew steadily and strongly. Recruiting began to
+get on a better basis. The appointment of Sir Hedley Le Bas in charge of
+this propaganda brought about a healthy change in methods. Appeals were
+used devised for Ireland, and not, as heretofore, simple replicas of the
+English article. Heart-breaking instances of stupidity were still of
+daily occurrence, but imagination and insight began to have some play;
+and there was no longer the complete separation which had existed
+between the effort of Redmond and his colleagues and the effort of men
+like Lord Meath. In January Willie Redmond was posted to his battalion,
+the 6th Royal Irish, at Fermoy, where the 47th Brigade had its
+headquarters. In his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable
+and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the Division was worth
+an immense deal. There was delay also about his younger namesake, John
+Redmond's son&mdash;who was for a long time refused a commission in the
+Division in whose formation his father had played so great a part.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, trained speakers who had joined the Division were utilized
+for recruiting purposes. Willie Redmond did comparatively little of this
+work. It is no light job to take over command of a company, if you mean
+really to command it; and with him, from the moment he joined everything
+came second to his military duty. But private soldiers have a less
+exacting time, and there was scarcely one week of my three months in the
+7th Leinsters in which I did not spend the Saturday and Sunday on this
+business&mdash;generally in company with the most brilliant speaker, taking
+all in all, that I have ever heard. Kettle, then a lieutenant in the
+battalion, was wit, essayist, poet and orator: whether he was most a wit
+or most an orator might be argued for a night without conclusion; but as
+talker or as speaker he had few equals. He was the son of a veteran
+Nationalist, who had taken a lead in Parnell's day; but the farmer's son
+had become the <a name="Page_186"></a>most characteristic product of Ireland's capital, which,
+rich or poor, squalid or splendid, is a metropolis&mdash;a centre of many
+interests, a forcing-house of many ideas. Nothing in Ireland is less
+English than Dublin, and its tone differs from that of England in having
+active sympathy with the continental mind.</p>
+
+<p>Kettle was always to some extent in revolt against the theories of the
+Gaelic League, which he thought tended to make Ireland insular morally
+as well as materially. He was a good European because he was a good
+Irishman; and because he was both, he was, though largely educated in
+Germany, a fierce partisan of France.</p>
+
+<p>More than all this, he had seen with his own eyes the actual martyrdom
+of Belgium. Sent out by Redmond to purchase rifles, he was in the
+country when Antwerp was occupied, and he wrote with passion of what he
+heard, of what he saw. Louvain to him was more than a mere name. All the
+Catholic in him, and all the Irish Catholic, for Ireland's association
+with Louvain was long and intimate, rose up in fury; he went through
+Ireland carrying the fiery cross.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere we went we had friendly and even enthusiastic audiences; the
+only place where I met any suggestion of hostility was at Killarney, and
+there it took the form of avoiding our meeting. We were cheered and
+encouraged&mdash;but we did not get many recruits, so to say, on the nail.
+Yet they came, generally dribbling in afterwards. From one small meeting
+in county Waterford we came away badly disappointed, having thought an
+effect was made, yet we did not take a single man. I heard later that
+within the next fortnight thirty men from that parish had come in by
+ones and twos to sign on&mdash;but at a town several miles away. Local
+pressure, personal not political, was against us, especially that of the
+mothers; and there was a shyness about taking this plunge into the
+unknown.</p>
+
+<p>One exception stands out, in my mind, unlike the <a name="Page_187"></a>general run of these
+gatherings. It was the first field day of our brigade, when, dressed in
+the khaki that had at last been served out, we mustered on the
+race-course at Fermoy, five thousand strong; and I went from the review
+to the train for Waterford. There was no mistaking the temper of
+Redmond's constituency; we got men there in hundreds, including a score
+or so of cadets&mdash;young men of education&mdash;for our special company of the
+Leinsters, which was filling up fast.</p>
+
+<p>At that meeting we had one force with us which was not often active on
+our side. The Bishop of Waterford was strong for the war; the leading
+parish priest of the town took the chair and spoke straight and plain,
+while one of the Regulars, a Carmelite friar, made a speech which was
+among the most eloquent that I have ever listened to.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of April I was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the 6th
+Connaught Rangers, and began to know the Division from another aspect.
+Broadly speaking, the men with whom I had been sharing a hut were
+Nationalist by opinion and by tradition&mdash;though by no means all
+Catholics. There were Unionists, but they were few. In the society which
+I now joined&mdash;a joint mess of the Royal Irish and the Rangers&mdash;matters
+were different.</p>
+
+<p>The personnel of the 6th Royal Irish was strongly characteristic of the
+old Army. The commanding officer, Curzon, was of Irish descent, but of
+little Irish association; his second in command was an Irish Protestant
+gentleman of a pleasant ordinary type. The senior company commander was
+an Englishman. As an offset, Willie Redmond had one company, and another
+was commanded by an ex-guardsman, who had been a chief personage in the
+Derry Volunteers, and brought so many of them with him that General
+Parsons gave him a captaincy straight off.</p>
+
+<p>In my own battalion, no Catholic had then the rank of captain. The
+colonel and the adjutant belonged to well-<a name="Page_188"></a>known families in the North
+of Ireland, deeply involved in Covenanting politics. My own company
+commander was a very gallant little Dublin barrister, who, before the
+war, had exerted on English platforms against Home Rule the gift of racy
+eloquence which he now devoted to recruiting. Not half a dozen of the
+subalterns would have described themselves as Nationalists.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was
+represented, to the outside public of Ireland. From the inside, one
+thing was clear. In our battalion every man desired the success of the
+Division, and more particularly of the Connaught Rangers, absolutely
+with a whole heart. Anything said or done that could have offended the
+men&mdash;practically all Catholic and Nationalist&mdash;would have drawn the most
+condign chastisement from our commanding officer. I never heard of any
+man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its
+colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it. There was very little
+political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question
+how far Redmond might be held to speak for Ireland. So far as Redmond
+himself was concerned, I think there were few, if any, who did not count
+it an honour to meet him&mdash;and some who had never been won to him before
+were won to him for his brother's sake.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself
+in that society. I do not know one survivor of those men who does not
+desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom
+they led. In not a few cases one might put the change higher; some
+opinions as to what was good for Ireland were profoundly affected.</p>
+
+<p>Yet this also is true. The atmosphere of the mess was one in which
+Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger. He had lived all his
+life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief. Knowing the other side
+in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends <a name="Page_189"></a>and the men
+he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were
+political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in
+agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the
+atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which
+every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never
+really was himself. He was only himself with the men.</p>
+
+<p>In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a
+counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that
+the other was Ulster. No attempt was made to make it so, and General
+Parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal&mdash;though less
+fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man
+for his opinions or his creed. Yet many persons without design, and some
+with a purpose, spread broadcast the belief that Catholics and
+Nationalists as such were relegated to a position of inferiority in the
+command of this Catholic and Nationalist Division.</p>
+
+<p>The worst of our difficulties lay in the long inherited suspicions of
+the Irish mind. At a recruiting meeting one would argue in appealing to
+Nationalists that the Home Rule Act was a covenant on which we were in
+honour bound to act, and that every man who risked his life on the faith
+of that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded.
+The listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would
+come up privately and say: &quot;Are you sure now they aren't fooling us
+again?&quot; The Sinn F&eacute;in propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not
+fail to emphasize the pronouncement of the Tory Press that there should
+be no Home Rule because Ireland had failed to come forward; or to point
+the moral of Mr. Bonar Law's excursion to Belfast, with its violent
+asseveration that Ulster should be backed without limit in opposition to
+control by an Irish Parliament. Ireland, always suspect, <a name="Page_190"></a>has learnt to
+be profoundly suspicious; and suspicion is the form of prophecy which
+has most tendency to fulfil itself.</p>
+
+<p>In one part of the Irish race, however, this cold paralysis of distrust
+had no operation. The Irish in Great Britain, always outdoing all others
+in the keenness of their Nationalism, were nearer the main current of
+the war, and were more in touch with the truth about English feeling.
+They had a double impulse, as Redmond had; they saw how to serve their
+own cause in serving Europe's freedom; and their response was
+magnificent. Mr. T.P. O'Connor probably raised more recruits by his
+personal appeal than any other man in England.</p>
+
+<p>A great part of Redmond's correspondence in these months came from
+Irishmen in England who were joining as Irishmen, and who had great
+difficulty in making their way to our Division. Many thousands had
+already enlisted elsewhere; hundreds, at least, tried to join the
+Sixteenth Division, and failed to get there. But there was one instance
+to which attention should be directed. In Newcastle-on-Tyne a movement
+was set on foot to raise Tyneside battalions, including one of Irish.
+Mr. O'Connor went down, and the upshot was that four Irish battalions
+were raised. They were in existence by January 1, 1915, when General
+Parsons was already writing that unless Irishmen could be found to fill
+up the Division, we must submit to the disgrace of having it made up by
+English recruits. The obvious answer was to annex the Tyneside Irish
+Brigade. Redmond, moreover, held that to bring over this brigade to
+train in Ireland, and to incorporate it bodily in the Sixteenth
+Division, would please the Tyneside men&mdash;for a tremendous welcome would
+have greeted them in their own country&mdash;and would have an excellent
+effect on Irish opinion generally. But the proposal was rigorously
+opposed by the War Office. It was argued that these men had enlisted
+technically as Northumberland Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers
+they must remain.<a name="Page_191"></a> In reality, as far as one can judge, the War Office
+were penny wise and pound foolish. &quot;We have got these men,&quot; they said,
+&quot;and we have a promise from Redmond to fill a Division. Why relieve him
+of one-third of his task?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Redmond knew, and we all knew, that the essential was to get our
+Division complete and into the field at the earliest possible moment. He
+had confidence that once they got to work they would make a name for
+themselves, which would be the best attraction for recruits. Let it be
+remembered that at this moment popular expectation put the end of the
+war about July. When I joined the Rangers in April 1915, our mess was
+full of young officers threatening to throw up their commissions and
+enlist in some battalion which would give them the chance of seeing a
+fight. We could not expect to move to France before August, and by that
+time all that we could hope would be to form part of the army of
+occupation. Rumour was rife, too, that the Division would be broken up
+and utilized for draft-finding, that it would never see France as a
+unit. All this talk came back to Redmond and increased his anxiety to
+make the work complete.</p>
+
+<p>He held, and I think rightly, that the whole machinery of recruiting
+worked against us; that every officer had instructions to send no man to
+the Sixteenth Division who could be got into a draft-finding reserve
+battalion. Knowing what we know, I cannot blame them; but the game was
+not fairly played. A man would come in and say he wanted to join the
+Irish Brigade. &quot;Which regiment?&quot; Often he might not realize that a
+brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for
+instance, &quot;The Dublins,&quot; he was more likely than not to be shipped off
+to the Curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept,
+instead of to Buttevant, where our Dublins were in training.</p>
+
+<p>Still, with all our troubles, things were marching ahead in that April
+of 1915; recruits were coming in to the <a name="Page_192"></a>tune of 1,500 a week. Then came
+a political crisis and the formation of a Coalition Government. Redmond
+was asked to take a post in it. The letter in which the invitation was
+conveyed made it clear that the post could not be an Irish office.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond refused. He said to me afterwards that under no conditions did
+he think he could have accepted. But he added, &quot;If I had been Asquith
+and had wished to make it as difficult as possible to refuse, I should
+have offered a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio and without
+salary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was well aware how many and how unscrupulous were his enemies in
+Ireland; he was not prepared to give them the opportunity of saying that
+he had got his price for the blood of young Irishmen and the betrayal of
+his principles. Even apart from the question of salary, the tradition
+against acceptance of office under Government till Ireland's claim was
+satisfied would have been very hard to break. Yet Redmond saw fully how
+disastrous would be the effect on Irish opinion if he were not in the
+Government and Sir Edward Carson was.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing Ireland as he did, he knew that the acceptance of Sir Edward
+Carson as a colleague would be taken in Ireland to imply that the
+Government had abandoned its support of Home Rule. Ireland would assume
+that the Ulster leader would not come in except on his own terms.
+Redmond made the strongest representations that he could to the Prime
+Minister to exclude both Irish parties to the unresolved dispute. But
+Sir Edward Carson in those days was making himself very disagreeable in
+the House of Commons and Mr. Asquith, as usual, followed the line of
+least resistance.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of the Coalition as formed was seen when recruiting in
+Ireland dropped from 6,000 in April-May to 3,000 in May-June. It stayed
+at the lower figure for several months, till it was raised again by
+efforts for which Redmond was chiefly responsible. I do not know
+<a name="Page_193"></a>whether Sir Edward Carson's presence in the Attorney-General's office,
+or his absence from the Opposition benches in debates, was worth ten
+thousand men; but that is a small measure of what was lost in Ireland by
+his inclusion.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>The formation of the Coalition Government marks the first stage in the
+history of Redmond's defeat and the victory of Sir Edward Carson and
+Sinn F&eacute;in.</p>
+
+<p>Of what he felt upon this matter, Redmond at the time said not a word in
+public. Six months later, on November 2, 1915, when a debate on the
+naval and military situation was opened, he broke silence&mdash;and his first
+words were an explanation of his silence. He had not intervened, he
+said, in any debate on the war since its inception. &quot;We thought a loyal
+and as far as possible silent support to the Government of the day was
+the best service we could render.&quot; This silence had been maintained
+&quot;even after the formation of the Coalition&quot;&mdash;when the Irish view had
+been roughly set aside, and when the personal tie to the Liberal
+Government with which he had been so long allied had been profoundly
+modified. He claimed the credit of this loyalty not merely for himself
+but for the whole of his country. &quot;Since the war commenced the voice of
+party controversy has disappeared in Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was pushing generosity almost to a stretch of imagination, for the
+voice of party controversy had not been absent from the Belfast Press,
+nor had it spared him. But he was speaking then, and he desired that the
+House should feel that he spoke, as Ireland's spokesman; he claimed
+credit for North and South alike in the absence of all labour troubles
+in war supply. &quot;The spectacle of industrial unrest in Great Britain, the
+<a name="Page_194"></a>determined and unceasing attacks in certain sections of the Press upon
+individual members of the Government and in a special way upon the Prime
+Minister, have aroused the greatest concern and the deepest indignation
+in Ireland,&quot; he said. &quot;Mr. Asquith stands to-day, as before the war,
+high in the confidence of the Irish people.&quot; The &quot;persistent pessimism&quot;
+had effected nothing except to help in some measure &quot;that little fringe
+which exists in Ireland as in England, of men who would if they could
+interfere with the success of recruiting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No doubt there was an element of policy, of a fencer's skill, in all
+this. Sir Edward Carson had not maintained silence and certainly had not
+spared the Prime Minister. But in essence Redmond was relying on the
+plain truth. He had pledged support and he gave it to the utmost of his
+power, even at his peril. Mr. Birrell in the posthumous &quot;Appreciation&quot;
+which has been already quoted has this passage:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Although it was not always easy to do business with him, being very
+justly suspicious of English politicians, he could be trusted more
+implicitly than almost every other politician I have ever come in
+contact with. He was slow to pass his word, but when he had done so, you
+knew he would keep it to the very letter, and what was almost as
+important, his silence and discretion could be relied upon with
+certainty. He was constitutionally incapable of giving anybody away who
+had trusted him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing but considerations of loyalty had kept him publicly silent in
+the months of this year when so much was done, and so much left undone,
+against his desire and his judgment. In June, the Sixteenth Division was
+within 1,000 of completion. The shortage existed in one brigade&mdash;the
+49th&mdash;which had been formed of battalions having their recruiting areas
+in Ulster&mdash;two of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, one of the Inniskillings
+and one of the Royal Irish Rifles. The conception had undoubtedly been
+to provide for the Nationalists of Ulster. But, as <a name="Page_195"></a>it proved, these men
+vastly preferred to enlist in units which were not associated with the
+avowedly Unionist Division, all of whose battalions belonged to one or
+other of these three regiments; and the 49th Brigade was not nearly up
+to strength. The Tenth Division was now on the point of readiness for
+the field; but when the final weeding out of unfit or half trained men
+was completed its ranks were 1,200 short. The War Office decided to
+draw, not on both the other Irish Divisions, but on the Sixteenth only,
+and only upon the deficient brigade. When the offer of immediate service
+was made, every man in its four battalions volunteered, and the Tenth
+Division was completed; but the Sixteenth was thrown back, and the
+discouraging rumour that it was to be only used as a reserve gained a
+great impetus. Redmond was very angry. He wrote to Mr. Tennant demanding
+that at least the Division's deficiency should at once be made up, by
+giving to us the full product of one or two weeks' recruiting in
+Ireland. Nothing of the kind was done to meet his request.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, some compensation to think that at least one of our
+purely Irish formations was going to take the field; and we hoped that
+its fortunes might remedy a complaint which began to be loudly
+made&mdash;that credit was withheld from the achievements of Irish troops.</p>
+
+<p>The main source of this grievance was the publication of Admiral de
+Robeck's despatch concerning the first landing at Gallipoli. In the
+original document, a schedule was given showing the detail of troops
+told off to each of the separate landings; and the narrative, in which a
+sailor spoke with frank enthusiasm of the desperate valour shown by
+soldiers, was written with constant reference to the detail given. As
+some evil chance willed, the narrative mentioned by name several of the
+regiments engaged; but when it came to describe the forlorn hope at &quot;V&quot;
+Beach, it dealt fully with the special difficulties, <a name="Page_196"></a>and said in brief
+but emphatic phrase, &quot;Here the troops wrought miracles.&quot; The War Office,
+in editing the despatch for publication, suppressed the schedule, as
+likely to give information to the enemy, so that in this case it did not
+appear to whom the praise applied.</p>
+
+<p>Certain things are unbelievable. No officer and no man that ever lived
+could from a partisan feeling against Ireland have sought to rob
+regiments who had done and suffered such things as the Dublins and
+Munsters did and suffered at &quot;V&quot; Beach of whatever credit could be given
+to them. Yet in such times as we were living in, the unbelievable is
+readily believed, and men saw malice in the suppression of what could
+not long be secret: Ireland had too many dead that day. What made the
+suggestion more incredible only gave a poignancy to resentment, for
+Admiral de Robeck was an Irishman, with his home some few miles from the
+regimental depot of the Dublins.</p>
+
+<p>Two things, however, should be said. If only in fairness to Admiral de
+Robeck, the explanation should instantly have been given: it was never
+given in full until he came before the Dardanelles Commission, many
+months later, and it has not been officially published to this hour. And
+further, whoever edited the despatch was presumably a soldier, and knew
+how jealous soldiers are, and how jealous their friends are for them, of
+every word that goes to the recognition of such service. The effect of
+omitting the schedule ought to have been foreseen.</p>
+
+<p>Even before the middle of August, when angry letters over this despatch
+were appearing in the Irish Press, other news began to come to Ireland,
+ill calculated to help recruiting. The Tenth Division had come into
+action, but under the unluckiest conditions. When the great attempt was
+made to cut across the peninsula by a renewed push from Anzac and by a
+new landing at Suvla Bay, the Irish were among the reinforcements <a name="Page_197"></a>told
+off for that surprise. But from lack of room on the island bases it was
+considered impossible to keep them together as a division, and one
+brigade, the 29th, lay so far off that it could not be brought into the
+concerted movement on Suvla. It was therefore sent separately to Anzac,
+and joined in with the Australians. Broken up by regiments and not
+operating as a unit, it furnished useful support; but no credit for what
+the men did could go to Ireland. The other two brigades, the 30th and
+31st, were left under the command of their divisional general and were
+to attack on the left of the bay. But owing to some defect in
+exploration of the coast-line, the movement was not so carried out; six
+battalions out of the eight were landed on the south of the bay and were
+attached to the right-hand force. Thus, in the actual operations Sir
+Bryan Mahon had under his command only two battalions of his own men.
+The remaining six operated under the command of the divisional general
+of the Eleventh Division, who delegated the conduct of the actual attack
+to one of his brigadiers. It is sufficient to say that immediately after
+the action both these officers were relieved of their commands. The same
+fate befell the corps commander under whose directions this wing of the
+concerted movement was placed.</p>
+
+<p>In face of these facts it would be absurd to deny that the troops were
+badly handled. They suffered terribly from thirst, and the suffering was
+in large measure preventible. The attack was a failure. All the success
+achieved was the capture of Chocolate Hill, and the Irish claim that
+success. It is disputed by other regiments. This much is certain: the
+Irish were part of the troops who carried the hill, and at nightfall,
+when the rest were withdrawn to the beach, the Irish were left holding
+it.</p>
+
+<p>But they had paid dearly, and in the days which followed many more were
+sacrificed in the hopeless effort <a name="Page_198"></a>to retrieve what had been lost when
+the surprise attack failed. The loss fell specially on a picked
+battalion, the 7th Dublins, which had grown up about a footballers'
+company, the very flower of young Irish manhood. Grief and indignation
+were universal when tales of what had happened began to come through.</p>
+
+<p>But of all this Redmond said no word in public. He threatened disclosure
+in debate at one period; yet on a strong representation from Mr.
+Tennant&mdash;in whose friendliness, as in the Prime Minister's, he had
+confidence&mdash;he refrained. To this abstention he added the most practical
+proof of good will. Lord Wimborne, now Lord-Lieutenant, seriously
+concerned at the continued drop in recruiting, which had not shown any
+sign of recovery since the Coalition Government was formed, came to him
+with the proposal for a conference on the subject. In pursuance of this
+suggestion Redmond went to London, where an interview took place between
+him and Lord Kitchener, Mr. Birrell and Mr. Tennant assisting. Redmond
+put in a memorandum stating his complaints, and thrashed out the subject
+to satisfactory conclusions on all points that directly affected
+recruiting. The conference ultimately met at the Viceregal Lodge on
+October 15th. It included the Primate of All Ireland, Lord Londonderry,
+Lord Meath, Lord Powerscourt, Sir Nugent Everard, the O'Conor Don and
+Colonel Sharman Crawford, the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork,
+and Redmond. The military were represented by Major-General Friend,
+commanding the troops in Ireland, with whom Redmond always had the most
+cordial relations.</p>
+
+<p>Only those who understand something of Irish tradition will realize how
+great a departure from established usage it was for Parnell's lieutenant
+and successor to take part formally in a meeting at the Viceregal
+Lodge&mdash;or indeed to cross its threshold for any purpose. But Redmond
+always had the logic of his convictions. As part of a compact, he was
+helping to the best of his power the<a name="Page_199"></a> Government which must carry on
+till Home Rule could come into operation; and here as elsewhere he was
+ready to mark his conviction that the enactment of Home Rule had made
+possible a complete change in his attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Among his papers is a very full note of what passed on this occasion. It
+is confidential, but one may note the extreme friendliness of attitude
+as between Redmond and the Ulster representatives, and also the fact
+that the operative suggestions agreed on were proposed first by Redmond
+himself. They were the result of his interview with Lord Kitchener.
+Recruiting in Ireland should no longer be left to voluntary effort, but
+a Department should be formed corresponding to that over which Lord
+Derby had been appointed to preside in Great Britain; and the
+Lord-Lieutenant himself should accept the position of its official head,
+and should appoint or nominate some man of known business capacity to
+preside over the detail of organization. Redmond pressed also that the
+country should be told definitely what Lord Wimborne had told the
+conference, that the need was for a total of about 1,100 recruits per
+week.</p>
+
+<p>He insisted also very strongly on the publication of a letter which Lord
+Kitchener at his instance had written to the conference. Its last
+paragraph read:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Irish are entitled to their full share of the compliments paid to
+the rest of the United Kingdom for their hitherto magnificent response
+to the appeal for men: but if that response is to reap its due and only
+reward in victory, the supply must be continued.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Over 81,000 recruits had been raised in Ireland since the war started&mdash;a
+period of eighty-two weeks. Viewed in comparison with Lord Kitchener's
+original anticipations, the result might well be called &quot;magnificent.&quot;
+But it was necessary to maintain the same weekly average, and for four
+months the figure had been much below this. The result of the new
+campaign was to raise nearly 7,500 men in seven weeks.</p><a name="Page_200"></a>
+
+<p>In the campaign thus launched, as Redmond so keenly desired, under the
+joint auspices of Ulstermen, Southern Unionists and Nationalists, one
+circumstance attracted attention. It was proposed to hold a great
+meeting at Newry, the frontier town where Ulster marches with the
+South&mdash;a centre in which recruiting had been singularly keen and
+successful. The scheme was to unite on one platform the Lord-Lieutenant,
+Redmond and Sir Edward Carson. Sir Edward Carson, however, &quot;did not
+think the proposal would serve any useful purpose,&quot; and the meeting was
+held without him, in December 1915.</p>
+
+<p>By this time the Sixteenth Division was under orders for France. We had
+been since September in training at Blackdown, near Aldershot; and here
+Redmond was one of several distinguished visitors who came to see us and
+address the troops. He came down also unofficially more than once, for
+his brother had a pleasant house among the pine-trees&mdash;where he guarded,
+or was guarded by, the brigade's mascot, the largest of three enormous
+wolfhounds which, through John Redmond, were presented to the Irish
+Division.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of the year new rumours were afloat. The 49th Brigade
+had never been made up to strength, and there were stories that a
+non-Irish brigade was to be linked up with us. Letters from two
+commanding officers of the 49th Brigade illustrate the extent to which
+Redmond had come by all ranks to be regarded as our tutelary genius; to
+him they appealed for redress, fearing that they would be turned into a
+reserve brigade. The matter was settled at last to his content and
+theirs by a decision that the two brigades which were ready should go
+out in advance, to be followed by the 49th; and we entrained accordingly
+on December 17th.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Lawrence Parsons wrote to Mr. Birrell: &quot;As the last train-load moved
+out of Farnborough station the senior Railway Staff Officer came up to
+me and said,<a name="Page_201"></a> 'Well, General, that is the soberest, quietest, most
+amenable and best disciplined Division that has left Aldershot, and I
+have seen them all go.'&quot; The compliment was well paid to General
+Parsons, and it may have been some consolation for a sore heart: that
+keen spirit had to be content to be left behind. Major-General W.B.
+Hickie, C.B., who had greatly distinguished himself in France, now took
+over command. It would be disingenuous to say that John Redmond was not
+content with this change; but his brother was deeply impressed by the
+hardship inflicted on a gallant soldier.</p>
+
+<p>The Ulster Division had preceded us by three months. All three Irish
+Divisions were now in the field, and reserve brigades were established
+to feed them. Redmond could feel that in great measure his work was
+done, and that he could await the issue in confidence.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote at this time, in a preface contributed to Mr. MacDonagh's book
+<i>The Irish at the Front</i>, a passage of unusual emotion which tells what
+he thought and felt upon this matter.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;It is these soldiers of ours, with their astonishing courage and
+     their beautiful faith, with their natural military genius, carrying
+     with them their green flags and their Irish war-pipes, advancing to
+     the charge, their fearless officers at their head, and followed by
+     their beloved chaplains as great-hearted as themselves&mdash;bringing
+     with them a quality all their own to the sordid modern
+     battlefield&mdash;it is these soldiers of ours to whose keeping the
+     Cause of Ireland has passed. It was never in holier, worthier
+     keeping than with these boys offering up their supreme sacrifice of
+     life with a smile on their lips because it was given for Ireland.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>He wrote this when fresh from a sight of troops in the field. This visit
+took place in November 1915, and he was full of the experience when he
+came down to say good-bye before we went out. Nothing in all his life
+had approached it in interest, he said to me. The diary of <a name="Page_202"></a>his tour is
+prefixed to Mr. S.P. Ker's book, <i>What the Irish Regiments Have
+Done</i>&mdash;but it conveys little, except this dominant impression: &quot;From the
+Irish Commander-in-Chief himself right down through the Army one meets
+Irishmen wherever one goes.&quot; On that journey he got the same welcome
+from Ulstermen as from his own nearest countrymen in the Royal Irish
+Regiment.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>One thing at least Redmond gained, I think, from his visit to the
+front&mdash;the sense that with the British Army in the field he was in a
+friendly country. He never had that sense with regard to the War Office.
+Running all through this critical year 1915 is the history of one long
+failure&mdash;his attempt to secure the creation of a Home Defence force in
+Ireland. Given that, he would be confident of possessing the foundation
+for the structure of an Irish Army&mdash;an army which would be regarded as
+Ireland's own. Without it, the whole fabric of his efforts must be
+insecure. He desired to build, as in England they built, upon the
+voluntary effort of a people in whom entire confidence was placed. In
+the War Office undoubtedly men's minds were set upon finding a regular
+supply of Irish troops by quite other methods&mdash;by the application of
+compulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond saw to the full the danger of attempting compulsion with an
+unwilling people; it was a peril which he sought to keep off, and while
+he lived did keep off, by securing a steady flow of recruits, by gaining
+a reasonable definition of Ireland's quota, and by exerting that
+personal authority which the recognition of his efforts conferred upon
+him. I do not think he was without hope of a moment when Ireland might
+come, as Great Britain had come by the end of this year, to <a name="Page_203"></a>recognize
+that the voluntary system levied an unfair toll on the willing, and that
+the community itself should accept the general necessity of binding its
+own members. But before this could be even dreamed of as practicable,
+the whole force of Volunteers, North and South, must feel that they were
+trusted and recognized, a part in the general work.</p>
+
+<p>The practical organization of the great body at his disposal was under
+discussion between him and Colonel Moore from February 1915 onwards; and
+the idea was mooted that by introducing the territorial system Ulster
+Volunteers and National Volunteers might be drawn into the same corps.
+This, however, was for the future; the immediate need was to extend the
+arming and training under their own organization. Redmond learnt at once
+that Lord Kitchener was against this; that he pointed to the existence
+of another armed force in the North of Ireland and argued that to create
+a second must mean civil war; that he believed revolutionary forces to
+exist in Ireland which Redmond could not control and perhaps did not
+even suspect. Those who then thought with Lord Kitchener can say now
+that events have justified his view. They omit to consider how far those
+events proceeded from Lord Kitchener's refusal to accept Redmond's
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Of the danger Redmond was fully aware. &quot;I understand your position to
+be,&quot; Mr. T.P. O'Connor wrote to him in January 1915, &quot;that unless your
+plan as to the Irish Volunteers is adopted we are face to face with a
+most critical and dangerous situation in Ireland.&quot; Just as fully was he
+convinced of the way to meet it. In February, replying indignantly to
+Sir Reginald Brade, who had complained that Irish recruiting was
+&quot;distinctly languid,&quot; he enumerated the points at which the War Office
+had failed to act on his own advice, and urged once more, in the first
+instance, his original policy of employing both Ulster and Nationalist
+Volunteers for Home Defence.<a name="Page_204"></a> &quot;If the two bodies of volunteers were
+trusted with the defence of the country under proper military drill and
+discipline, the result would unquestionably be that a large number of
+them would volunteer for the front. Recruiting can best be promoted by
+creating an atmosphere in which the patriotism of the younger men of the
+country can be evoked, and we have done a good deal already in this
+direction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On April 4th a display was made of the force available. A review was
+held in the Phoenix Park of 25,000 men&mdash;splendid material, but half of
+them with neither arms nor uniform. The Unionist Press was friendly in
+its comments upon the statement which Redmond supplied after the parade,
+claiming that these men should be utilized for Home Defence. That day
+was Easter Sunday of 1915. No one guessed then what the next Easter was
+going to bring about.</p>
+
+<p>On April 19th I find him writing officially to Mr. Birrell, seeking the
+Chief Secretary's influence with the War Office, and claiming, what was
+the truth, that the Irish Command shared his view. But at the moment
+recruiting was increasing weekly and the War Office were in no mood to
+make further concessions than those by which the improvement had been
+brought about. Then came the Coalition, and the consequent reduction of
+recruiting from close on 7,000 to 3,000 a month; and in July the
+Adjutant-General, Sir Henry Sclater, of his own motion approached
+Redmond. He suggested a meeting between Redmond and the War Office, with
+Sir Matthew Nathan and General Parsons in attendance. Redmond agreed to
+the proposal, but formulated his views in a lengthy memorandum. The
+first three points dealt with matters directly concerning the Sixteenth
+Division, but in the fourth, weighty emphasis was laid on the suggestion
+of recruiting Volunteers for Home Defence. Sir Henry Sclater's reply
+omitted completely all reference to this last&mdash;an omission on which
+Redmond <a name="Page_205"></a>commented sharply. He elicited the official answer that by
+urging men to join on a special enlistment for home service the numbers
+who would join for general service would be reduced. This was
+diametrically opposite to Redmond's view, and he said so, and urged
+again that the Irish Command was of his opinion.</p>
+
+<p>The proposed conference resolved itself&mdash;to Redmond's indignation&mdash;into
+a discussion of Redmond's memorandum between the Adjutant-General and
+Sir Lawrence Parsons. Only in September, when at Lord Wimborne's
+instance he interviewed Lord Kitchener, did he have the opportunity of
+raising the matter by direct speech. Lord Kitchener then declared
+himself willing to admit that on the question whether enlistment for
+Home Defence would promote or retard recruiting, Redmond's judgment was
+probably more valuable than his own, and he promised to review the
+question of Home Defence again in the light of it. But of this promise
+nothing came.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Redmond was being warned that the Volunteer organization as it
+stood had exhausted its usefulness; its enthusiasm was gone&mdash;a natural
+result of having no purpose. A new opening seemed to be created by the
+Bill which Lord Lincolnshire introduced to recognize a Volunteer Force
+in Great Britain which should perform military duties under the War
+Office control. Redmond hoped to see this carried with an extension of
+it to Ireland, and this was the practical proposal with which he
+concluded his speech when, on November 2nd, for the first time in that
+year, he raised in debate the questions to which so much of his time and
+thought had been given.</p>
+
+<p>How was the Irish recruiting problem to be dealt with? He declared
+himself absolutely against compulsion, to impose which would be &quot;a folly
+and a crime&quot; unless the country was &quot;practically unanimous in favour of
+it.&quot; The voluntary system had never had fair play&mdash;at all events in
+Ireland.</p><a name="Page_206"></a>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;It is a fact, which has its origin in history, and which I need
+     not refer to more closely&mdash;it is a fact that in the past recruiting
+     for the British Army was not popular with the mass of the Irish
+     people. But when the war broke out, my colleagues and I, quite
+     regardless, let me say, of the political risks which stared us in
+     the face, instantly made an appeal to those whom we represented in
+     Ireland, and told them that this was Ireland's war as well as
+     England's war, that it was a just war, and that the recent attitude
+     of Great Britain to Ireland had thrown upon us a great, grave duty
+     of honour to the British Empire. We then went back from this
+     country, and we went all through Ireland. I myself, within the
+     space of about a month after that, made speeches at great public
+     meetings in every one of the four provinces of Ireland. We set
+     ourselves to the task of creating in Ireland&mdash;creating, mind
+     you&mdash;an atmosphere favourable to recruiting, and of creating a
+     sentiment in Ireland favourable to recruiting. I say most solemnly,
+     that in that task we were absolutely entitled to the sympathy and
+     the assistance of the Government and the War Office. I am sorry to
+     say we got neither.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>He disclaimed all imputation upon the Prime Minister or the
+Under-Secretary, Mr. Tennant&mdash;exceptions which pointed the reference to
+Lord Kitchener.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;The fact remains that when we were faced with that difficult and
+     formidable task, practically every suggestion that we made, based
+     on the strength of our own knowledge of what was suitable for
+     Ireland and the conditions there, was put upon one side. The
+     gentlemen who were responsible for that evidently believed that
+     they knew what was suited to the necessities of Ireland far better
+     than we did. A score of times, at least, I put upon paper and sent
+     to the Government and the War Office my suggestions and my
+     remonstrances, but all in vain. Often, almost in despair, I was
+     tempted to rise in this House and publicly tell the House of
+     Commons the way in which we were hampered and thwarted in our work
+     in Ireland. I refrained from doing so from fear of doing mischief
+     and from fear of doing harm. To-day I am very glad that I so
+     refrained, because <a name="Page_207"></a>in spite of these discouragements, in spite of
+     this thwarting and embarrassing, and in spite of the utterly faulty
+     and ridiculous system of recruiting that was set on foot, we have
+     succeeded, and have raised in Ireland a body of men whose numbers
+     Lord Kitchener, in his letter to the Irish conference, declared
+     were magnificent.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>He quoted the Unionist <i>Birmingham Post</i> for the saying that what had
+happened in Ireland was &quot;a miracle.&quot; From the National Volunteers 27,054
+men had joined the colours; from the Ulster Volunteers 27,412. In both
+forces there must be many left who could not leave Ireland, yet might be
+utilized in Ireland.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;It may be remembered that the very day the war broke out I rose in
+     my place in this House and offered the Volunteers to the Government
+     for Home Defence. I only spoke, of course, of the National
+     Volunteers. I was not entitled to speak for the Ulster Volunteers,
+     but I suggested that they and we might work shoulder to shoulder.
+     From that day to this the War Office have persistently refused to
+     have anything to say to these Volunteers. The Prime Minister, a few
+     days after I spoke, in answer to a question told me that the
+     Government were considering at that moment how best to utilize
+     these Volunteers. They have never been utilized since. A few days
+     after I made my speech I went myself to the War Office, and as a
+     result of my interviews there I submitted to the Government a
+     scheme which would have provided them at once with 25,000 men. If
+     that offer had been accepted, not 25,000, not 50,000, but 100,000
+     men would have been enlisted for Home Defence within the month. But
+     no, it was obstinately refused. I hear that an hon. member below me
+     is now apparently inclined to take the point that the War Office
+     took. The War Office said that would interfere with recruiting in
+     Ireland. Of course, we know Ireland better than the hon. member. We
+     know our difficulties in Ireland. We do not believe that it would.
+     On the contrary, we believe that it would have promoted recruiting.
+     We believe that the enlistment of these men, their association in
+     barracks and in camp, with the inevitable creation and fostering of
+     a military spirit, would have led to a large <a name="Page_208"></a>number of volunteers
+     for foreign service. Our views counted for nought. In this instance
+     they were not only our views. These views had the approval of the
+     Irish Command, and from the purely military point of view the Irish
+     Command was in favour of some such scheme as I had outlined, and
+     the reason was plain. They have to provide, and are providing to
+     this day, 20,000 to 25,000 men from the Regular Army for the
+     defence of the coasts of Ireland&mdash;guarding the coast, guarding
+     piers, railways, bridges, and so forth. If these men of ours had
+     been taken up, within two or three months of training and in camp
+     they would have been able to do this work, and would have done it
+     ever since, and would thereby have released from 20,000 to 25,000
+     men. That is the chief reason, I fancy, why the Military Command in
+     Ireland were in favour of this idea. But to this moment the refusal
+     continues. I see that an unofficial Bill was introduced by the
+     Marquess of Lincolnshire into the House of Lords doing, to a great
+     measure, for England and Wales what we have been asking should be
+     done for Ireland. I claim that that Bill shall be extended to
+     Ireland.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>The Volunteer Bill came to the House of Commons in a form making it
+applicable to Ireland. There it was opposed by Sir Edward Carson, who
+demanded that no man of military age should be accepted as a volunteer
+unless he consented to enlist for general service if called. This killed
+the Bill.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Edward Carson was of opinion that the necessities of the case
+demanded universal compulsory service; and conscription was already in
+sight. With that prospect Redmond's anxiety became very grave.</p>
+
+<p>On November 15th he wrote his mind to the Prime Minister:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>HOUSE OF COMMONS,</p>
+
+<p>     <i>November</i> 15, 1915.</p>
+
+<p>     <i>Private</i>.</p>
+
+<p>     MY DEAR MR. ASQUITH,</p>
+
+<p>     I have been in a state of great anxiety for some time on the
+     question of a possible Conscription Bill, and I have discussed the
+     matter fully with Mr. Birrell, who <a name="Page_209"></a>knows my views, and who, no
+     doubt, has communicated them to you.</p>
+
+<p>     I think it well, however, to shortly put, in writing, our position.</p>
+
+<p>     In your Dublin speech you asked the Irish people for &quot;a free
+     offering from a free people,&quot; and the response has been, taking
+     everything into account, in the words of Lord Kitchener,
+     &quot;magnificent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>     Recruiting is now going on at a greater rate than ever in Ireland,
+     and it would be a terrible misfortune if we were driven into a
+     position on the question of conscription which would alienate that
+     public opinion which we have now got upon our side in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>     The position would, indeed, be a cruel one, if conscription were
+     enacted for England, and Ireland excluded.</p>
+
+<p>     On the other hand, I must tell you that the enforcement of
+     conscription in Ireland is an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>     Faced with this dilemma, if a Conscription Bill be introduced, the
+     Irish party will be forced to oppose it as vigorously as possible
+     at every stage.</p>
+
+<p>     I regret having to write you in this way, but it is only right that
+     I should be quite frank in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>     Very truly yours,</p>
+
+<p>     J.E. REDMOND.</p>
+
+<p>     RT. HON. H.H. Asquith, M.P., <i>Prime Minister</i>,</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Assurances reached him that the first tentative Bill for compelling
+unmarried men to enlist would only be introduced to fulfil a pledge
+given by Mr. Asquith in connection with the Derby Scheme, and that as
+the Derby Scheme had not applied to Ireland, the pledge also had no
+bearing there. By December 21st the matter was raised in the House of
+Commons. Redmond, after the Prime Minister had spoken, defined what he
+was careful to call &quot;my personal view&quot; on the question of compulsory
+service.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am content to take the phrase used by the Prime Minister. I am
+prepared to say that I will stick at nothing&mdash;nothing which is
+necessary, nothing which is calculated to effect the purpose&mdash;in order
+to end this <a name="Page_210"></a>war.&quot; He added: &quot;That is the view, I am certain, of the
+people of Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The whole question was presented by him as &quot;one of expediency and
+necessity, not of principle.&quot; From that standpoint he declared himself
+unconvinced that the adoption of compulsion in any shape was either
+expedient or necessary. It was inexpedient because it would &quot;break up
+the unity of the country&quot;&mdash;unnecessary because they had already many
+more men than they could either train or equip. In Ireland, a limited
+task had been defined, to keep up the necessary reserves for fifty-three
+battalions of infantry, and he pointed to the fact that so far the new
+organization of recruiting was producing the stipulated flow.</p>
+
+<p>On these grounds, he said, the Irish party would oppose the measure, and
+on January 5th that opposition was offered, though Ireland was excluded
+from the Bill. But the first division showed a majority of more than ten
+to one for the proposal; and in face of that, when the House returned to
+the discussion, Redmond declared that Irish opposition must
+cease&mdash;especially in view of the support given by the responsible
+leaders of Labour. Sir Edward Carson, following, pressed him to go one
+step farther and accept the inclusion of Ireland in the Bill. Nothing,
+he said, could do so much to conciliate Ulster. This was the first time
+that any suggestion of this possibility had come from that quarter, and
+it came in backing a suggestion which Redmond could not accept. I was
+not present at the debate, and it is hard to judge of such matters from
+the printed record, but the impression on my mind is that the suggestion
+was made without any desire to embarrass. A few days later, in the
+Committee stage, an Ulster member moved an amendment which would have
+included Ireland. Mr. Bonar Law, speaking for the Government, advised
+against it&mdash;on the ground of expediency; it would not be an easy thing
+to put this measure into operation in Ireland.<a name="Page_211"></a> Sir Edward Carson spoke
+later and counselled the dropping of the amendment. With matters in this
+stage Redmond spoke very fully to the House, recognizing the absence of
+all partisan tone in the speeches of Ulster members. He had long felt,
+he said, that &quot;if conscription came, Ireland's whole attitude towards
+the war was likely to suffer cruel and unjust misrepresentation,&quot;
+because it must emphasize a difference between the two countries.
+Conscription in Ireland would be &quot;impracticable, unworkable and
+impossible.&quot; Instead of leading to the increase in the supply of men it
+would have the opposite effect.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would most undoubtedly paralyse the efforts of myself and others who
+have worked unsparingly&mdash;and not unsuccessfully&mdash;since the commencement
+of the war, and would play right into the hands of those who are a
+contemptible minority among the Nationalists of Ireland, and who are
+trying&mdash;unsuccessfully trying&mdash;to prevent recruiting and to undermine
+thus the position and power of the Irish party because of the attitude
+we have taken up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He complained once more of the Government's failure to utilize the
+Volunteers and of the damping effect which had resulted from the
+non-fulfilment of Mr. Asquith's words. Yet Ireland was doing all that
+was asked of it&mdash;maintaining the reserves of Irishmen for Irish
+regiments at the front.&mdash;This was true at the moment; but the Sixteenth
+Division had scarcely yet begun to come into the line and the Ulster
+Division, during its first few months, suffered slight casualties. In
+point of fact, however, the bare rumour of conscription had checked
+recruiting, and Redmond was guarded in his terms. It was, he said, &quot;on
+the whole very satisfactory, and in the towns amazing&quot;; but he admitted
+that the country districts had not given an adequate response.</p>
+
+<p>But he made now an appeal to the House as a whole to lift the
+consideration of this whole matter on <a name="Page_212"></a>to broad lines, to view it on the
+plane of statesmanship. If five years earlier anyone had foretold that
+in a great war Ireland would send 95,000 volunteer new recruits to fight
+by the side of England, would he not have been regarded as a lunatic?
+&quot;The change in Ireland has been so rapid that men are apt to forget its
+history.&quot; That was a true saying; his own success had created
+difficulties for him. Once more he quoted the example of the other
+statesman in the Empire whose position had most analogy with his own. &quot;I
+honestly believe,&quot; he said, &quot;that General Botha's difficulties were
+small compared with those we had to confront in Ireland.... It is true
+to say at this moment that the overwhelming sentiment of the Irish
+people is with the Empire for the first time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was his claim, and in that month of January 1916 he was fully
+entitled to make it; and the House, I think, recognized his
+justification. His speech has in it the ring of confidence, of assurance
+that he would be taken at his word.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rest satisfied,&quot; he said; &quot;do not try to drive Ireland.&quot; Wise words,
+and they were not unwisely listened to. There was no room for doubting
+this man's earnestness when he went on to tell how he himself had
+recently met Irish troops in the field, and had then pledged himself to
+them to spare no effort in raising the necessary reserves for their
+ranks among their own countrymen. &quot;Trust us,&quot; he said to the House,
+indicating himself and his colleagues, &quot;trust us to know, after all, the
+best methods. Do not carp at Irish effort, and do not belittle Irish
+effort.&quot; Then they might count on loyal and enduring support till the
+great struggle was ended.</p>
+
+<p>That speech, as I read it, marks the highwater-line of Redmond's
+achievement. His statesmanship in the counsels of the Empire had
+prevailed for his own country. The Home Rule Act was on the Statute
+Book, and though not in legal operation it was present in all minds; and
+<a name="Page_213"></a>now on a supreme issue&mdash;the blood-tax&mdash;Ireland's right to be treated as
+self-governing was recognized in fact. The argument which underlay
+implicitly Redmond's whole contention was never set out; it was
+contentious, politically, and he wisely avoided it. He spoke for a
+nation to which autonomy had been accorded by statute; he preferred men
+to feel for themselves rather than be asked to admit that no
+self-governing nation will submit voluntarily to the imposition of the
+blood-tax without its own most formal consent. All that he said was, in
+effect: You have Ireland with you for the first time, by our assistance;
+do not destroy our power to continue that assistance, do not alienate
+Ireland. In the counsels of the Empire his argument prevailed; and
+during the early months of 1916 the relations between Great Britain and
+Ireland were better and happier than at any time of which history holds
+record. An utterance from one Irishman, and the general response to it,
+showed this in extraordinary degree.</p>
+
+<p>Our Division, or rather two brigades of it, had detrained in France on
+the 19th of December; the first impression as we shook ourselves
+together for the march to strange billets was the sound of guns.
+Scattered about in different villages lying round Bethune, our
+battalions passed the next two months in the usual training before we
+should take up our own sector of the line, and we saw little or nothing
+of each other. March found us engaged, though still only attached by
+companies to more seasoned troops, in some rough crater-fighting on the
+ugly mine-riddled stretch between Loos and Hulluch. It was when we were
+marching out from broken houses about the minehead at Annequin that we
+first met again our old stable companions, the Royal Irish&mdash;and that I
+first saw Willie Redmond in France at the head of his company.</p>
+
+<p>He was on foot as always, for he never could be persuaded to ride while
+the men were marching, and I never saw more geniality of greeting on any
+countenance than <a name="Page_214"></a>was on his when he came up with outstretched hand to
+where I was sitting by the roadside&mdash;for we had halted to see them go
+by. Here was a man utterly in his element, radiant literally in the
+enthusiasm of his devotion. He refused to listen to our talk of the bad
+time we had been through in the place where they were to succeed us (and
+in two winters of that war I never saw worse); all his talk was of the
+good time which we should have in the billets we were going to, which
+they had just left. Back there, in and about Allouagne, they rejoined
+us; and I remember dining with him in his company mess and hearing his
+eulogies of the splendid fellows that his company officers were. Then,
+about the time we moved up into trenches, our first leaves began and he
+got home in March. Naturally, he looked in at the House of Commons, and
+realized for the first time how uneasy well-informed persons in the
+lobbies were about the chances of the war. Everybody who ever came home
+from the front must have experienced the effect of that strange
+transition from unquestioning confidence to worried anxiety; but Willie
+Redmond was the only man who ever adequately gave expression to it.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the eve of St. Patrick's Day, and the Army Estimates were
+under discussion in a very thin House&mdash;a wrangling, fault-finding
+debate. In the middle of it Willie Redmond got up, and said that as he
+was not likely to be there again, he had one or two things to say which
+he thought the House would be glad to know. Speaking as one of the
+oldest members, who had all but completed his thirty-third year in
+Parliament, he told them that every soul in the House should be proud of
+the troops&mdash;not of the Irish troops, but of the troops
+generally&mdash;because more than anything else of the splendid spirit in
+which they were going through the privations and dangers,&mdash;which he
+described with passion. If he were to deliver a message from the troops,
+he knew well what it would be:</p><a name="Page_215"></a>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;Send us out the reinforcements which are necessary, and which are
+     naturally necessary. Send us out, as we admit you have been doing
+     up to this, the necessary supplies, and when you do that, have
+     trust in the men who are in the gap to conduct the war to the
+     victory which everyone at the front is confident is bound to come.
+     'And when victory does come,' the message would run on, 'you in the
+     House of Commons, in the country, and in every newspaper in the
+     country, can spend the rest of your lives in discussing as to
+     whether the victory has been won on proper lines or whether it has
+     not.' Nothing in the world can depress the spirits of the men that
+     I have seen at the front. I do not believe that there was ever
+     enough Germans born into this world to depress them. If it were
+     possible to depress them at all, it can only be done by pursuing a
+     course of embittered controversy in this country&mdash;as to which was
+     the right way or the wrong way of conducting affairs at the front.
+     When a man feels that his feet are freezing, when he is standing in
+     heavy rain for a whole night with no shelter, and when next morning
+     he tries to cook a piece of scanty food over the scanty flame of a
+     brazier in the mud, he perhaps sits down for a few minutes in the
+     day's dawn and takes up an old newspaper, and finds speeches and
+     leading articles from time to time which tell him that apparently
+     everything is going wrong, that the Ministers who are at the head
+     of affairs in this country, upon whom he is depending, are not
+     really men with their hearts in the work, but are really more or
+     less callous and calculating mercenaries, who are not directing
+     affairs in the best way, but are simply anxious to maintain their
+     own salaries. I say that when speeches and articles of that kind
+     are found in the newspapers they are calculated, if anything is or
+     can be so calculated, to depress the men who are at the front.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Then came a few words in praise of the Irish troops and in deprecation
+of the failure to recognize some of their services; a confident
+assurance that, &quot;whether they are remembered or not,&quot; the Sixteenth
+Division would do their duty, with an equal assurance that the Ulster
+men would do as well as they&mdash;and he reached to his conclusion:</p><a name="Page_216"></a>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;Since I went out there I found that the common salutation in all
+     circumstances is one of cheer. If things go pretty well and the men
+     are fairly comfortable, they say 'Cheer O!' If things go badly, and
+     the snow falls and the rain comes through the roof of a billet in
+     an impossible sort of cow-house, they say 'Cheer O!' still more.
+     All we want out there is that you shall adopt the same tone and say
+     'Cheer O!' to us.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>It is not too much to say that this speech was received with a cry of
+gratitude all over the country and throughout the Army. It said what
+badly needed to be said, and said it with a freshness and a dash that
+came superbly from a company commander in his fifty-fourth year. It was
+the best service that had yet been rendered to John Redmond's policy.
+Everybody quite naturally and simply accepted the Nationalist Irishman
+as the spokesman for all the troops who were actually in the line. Mr.
+Walter Long, always a generous and candid human being, was quick to give
+voice to this feeling:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&quot;The honourable and gallant member for East Clare has been in
+     conflict, not only with one particular political party, but during
+     the greater part of his career with every party in turn, and has
+     engaged in bitter controversy with them. Does anybody doubt the
+     fact that when war was declared one great factor in the mind of the
+     Emperor responsible for this war was that dissension would paralyse
+     the hands of Great Britain? Ireland, whatever may have been our
+     differences in the past, and whatever may be our differences in
+     happier days again when we are at peace, everybody must feel by the
+     action of her representatives, who have fought so bitterly in this
+     House and in the country, has created a new claim for herself upon
+     the affection, the gratitude, the respect of the people of the
+     Empire by the great and proud part that she has played in this
+     great struggle.&quot;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>That was the position to which Redmond's policy, backed by the Irishmen
+who supported it with their lives, of whom his brother was the
+outstanding represen<a name="Page_217"></a>tative, had brought this great issue. The next
+thing which brought the name of Ireland prominently before the world was
+the story of action taken by other Irishmen, also at the risk of their
+lives, to reverse the strong current which was then carrying us forward
+with so hopeful augury.</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5">[5]</a><div class="note"><p> Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Moore, C.B., an officer who had
+served with distinction in South Africa, and whose father, George Henry
+Moore, had been a famous advocate in Parliament of Tenant Right and
+Repeal.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6">[6]</a><div class="note"><p> Rifles were really not available, nor competent
+instructors. But the essential was recognition. A grant towards
+equipment should have been given, and possibly other assistance. We
+secured several thousand rifles in Belgium about this time. For
+instructors, any old crippled veterans paid by Government would have
+conveyed the sense of recognition.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><a name="Page_218"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE REBELLION AND ITS SEQUEL</h3>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>The facts of the Irish rebellion are too generally familiar to need more
+than the briefest restatement&mdash;and perhaps too little known for an
+attempt at detailed analysis. Broadly, a general parade of the Irish
+Volunteers all over the country was ordered for Easter Sunday. On the
+night before Good Friday a German ship with a cargo of rifles was off
+the Irish coast. This ship, the <i>Aud</i>, was a few hours later captured
+and taken in convoy by a British sloop, so that the arms were never
+landed. Emissaries from the Volunteers who had gone to Kerry by
+motor-car to receive and arrange for distributing the arms were killed
+in a motor accident while hurrying back to get in touch with their
+headquarters. On Saturday the general parade was cancelled by order of
+Professor MacNeill, chief of the Volunteer organization. On Monday,
+against his wish, a portion of the Volunteer force in Dublin, including
+the battalion specially under command of Pearse and MacDonagh, with the
+Citizen Army under James Connolly, paraded, scattered through the city
+and seized certain previously selected points, of which the most
+important was the Post Office. From it as headquarters they proclaimed
+an Irish Republic. Slight attempts at rising took place in county
+Wexford, where the town of Enniscorthy was seized, in county Galway, and
+in county Louth. At Galway, at Wexford and at Drogheda the National
+Volunteers turned out to assist in suppressing the rising. Except for a
+serious <a name="Page_219"></a>encounter with a police force in county Dublin, the fighting
+was confined to the capital. It terminated by the unconditional
+surrender of the rebels on the Saturday. The struggle was prolonged by
+the total lack of artillery in the early stages. Riflemen established in
+houses could not be dislodged by direct assault of infantry without very
+heavy casualties to the attacking force.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose of this book is to show Redmond's connection with this event
+and the succeeding developments from it. He failed to foresee the event;
+he failed to direct its developments into the course he desired. How far
+he is to be held responsible, or blameworthy, for these failures,
+readers may be assisted to decide.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning of 1916 onwards the Irish Government was warned of
+danger. One of its members&mdash;the Attorney-General, Sir James
+Campbell&mdash;advocated the seizure of arms from men parading with what were
+evidently stolen service rifles or bayonets. But the Chief Secretary
+refused to take any action which could be described as an attempt to
+suppress or disarm the Irish Volunteers until there was definite
+evidence of actual association with the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Proof of sympathy was not difficult to obtain, and the propaganda
+against recruiting had now reached the point of attempts to break up
+recruiting meetings. Still, Mr. Birrell was in a difficulty. He had a
+logical mind, and he knew what had been permitted to Ulster. The fact
+that the Attorney-General himself had been a main adviser of the
+Provisional Government did not make it easier to follow his advice to
+disarm men who professed disaffection to the existing authority. Mr.
+Birrell knew that if he took such action he could be attacked in the
+official Nationalist Press for having one law in Ulster and another in
+the South. Further, Redmond would certainly not have disavowed, and
+might even have endorsed, such a line of criticism. The reason was that
+Redmond, as he had never believed in the <a name="Page_220"></a>reality of the Ulster danger,
+so now did not believe in this one.</p>
+
+<p>Later, when Mr. Birrell resigned his post after the insurrection was
+suppressed, Redmond chivalrously took on himself a part of the
+responsibility. &quot;I feel,&quot; he said, &quot;that I have incurred some share of
+the blame which he has laid at his own door, because I entirely agreed
+with his view that the danger of an outbreak of the kind was not a real
+one, and in my conversations with him I have expressed that view, and
+for all I know that may have influenced him in his conduct and his
+management of Irish affairs.&quot; A later debate&mdash;on July 31st&mdash;showed that
+his strong personal feeling for Mr. Birrell had moved him rather to
+overstate than to belittle his advisory responsibility. Dublin Castle
+had never consulted him as to policy. Conferences had taken place with
+the Under-Secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, but these were concerned with
+considering and framing the machinery to be created for bringing the
+Home Rule Act into operation, whenever the time came.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There was no conference at all about the state of the country or about
+Sinn Fein. When once or twice in casual consultation the matter came
+up&mdash;I hope the House will listen to this&mdash;I did not hesitate to say what
+in my opinion ought to be done in certain cases by the Government. For
+example, I expressed a strong view to them as to how they should deal
+with seditious newspapers and with prosecutions. What I did suggest,
+they never did; what I said they ought not to do, they always did. And I
+want to say something further. They never gave me any information, bad
+or good, about the state of the country. From first to last I never saw
+one single confidential Government report from the police or from any
+other source. I know nothing whatever about their secret confidential
+information.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is fair to add that the Under-Secretary was in communication from
+time to time with other members of <a name="Page_221"></a>the party, who were of course in
+touch with Redmond. But the substantial accuracy of Redmond's statement
+is sufficiently evidenced by one fact. Everybody knew that Sir Roger
+Casement was in Berlin and had tried&mdash;most unsuccessfully&mdash;to recruit an
+Irish Brigade from among the Irish prisoners. But neither Redmond nor
+any Irish member knew that from April 17th Dublin Castle had warning
+that a ship was on its way from Germany with rifles. The Navy was on the
+alert, and when the <i>Aud</i> came off Fenit, in Kerry, on Good Friday
+morning, she was promptly challenged.<a name="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7"><sup>[7]</sup></a> But in the dark hours of that
+morning she had landed Sir Roger Casement and his two confederates, one
+of whom was arrested with him the same day. On Saturday morning
+Government decided to take action against what was now clearly a rebel
+organization. But as the Chief Secretary and the General Commanding in
+Chief were both in London, and as the available force of men in Dublin
+was small, a postponement was decided on. No special precautions appear
+to have been taken against the contingency of an immediate rising. On
+Monday a very large proportion of the officers from the Curragh and the
+Dublin garrison were at the Fairyhouse races. In the Castle itself there
+was only the ordinary guard.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond at this date was also in London. His lack of apprehension is
+sufficiently indicated by the fact that his son and daughter were both
+at the races, and drove up unknowingly to an armed barricade. Had he
+been in authority and known, as the Government knew on Saturday, that
+the Irish Volunteers expected and had arranged for the landing of a
+heavy cargo of arms on Good Friday, and that a general parade of their
+men had been ordered for Easter, I hope that he would have either had
+troops in the utmost readiness to move, or have put strong guards in
+places of importance. But <a name="Page_222"></a>this is a futile speculation, for had he been
+in power the situation would never have arisen.</p>
+
+<p>The decisive thing which drove most of the relatively small number among
+the Volunteers who broke away from Redmond into their original hostility
+was Government's failure to recognize them. Their force stood in their
+own eyes for the assertion of Ireland's nationality; and many of those
+who took active part in the rebellion were at the outset fully prepared
+to assert that nationality in jeopardy of their lives in the Allied
+cause. Redmond's policy, had effect been given to it by the Government,
+still more had he himself been invested with the right to embody it in
+action, would have prevented the estrangement of all but a very few.
+Once the estrangement took place, however, I think that he undervalued
+what was opposed to him, both in respect of its power and of its
+quality. He lacked appreciation and respect for the idealists whose
+ideals were not his own. He underrated their sincerity, and the danger
+of their sincerity. The beauty of sacrifice in the young men who went
+out to the war, carrying Ireland's cause in their keeping, moved him
+profoundly; and he saw the practical bearing of their acts on the great
+practical problem of statesmanship to which his life had been given. He
+did not guess at the sway which might be exercised over men's minds by
+an almost mystical belief which disdained to count with practicalities,
+Redmond for fifteen years had been the leader, and for thirty-five years
+had been a member, of a party which presented itself&mdash;with great
+justification&mdash;as the winner for Ireland of many positive material
+advantages on the way to an ultimate goal. Pearse, at a time when all
+the world was plunged in a prodigal welter of destruction, came forward,
+demanding from Irishmen nothing but a sacrifice&mdash;promising nothing but
+the chance for young men to shed their blood sacramentally in the cause
+of Ireland's freedom. Redmond also was calling for the extreme risk, but
+on a sane and sound <a name="Page_223"></a>calculation, to ensure the full development of
+something already gained. Pearse preached, mystically, the efficacious
+power simply of blood shed in the name of Ireland. Those whom he brought
+with him into the pass of danger were few, but they were touched with
+his own spirit; and even the very recklessness of their act touched the
+popular imagination. Irish regiments, after all, could do only what
+other regiments were doing; their deeds were obscured in a chaos of war
+from which individual prowess could not emerge. Pearse and his
+associates offered to Irishmen a stage for themselves on which they
+could and did secure full personal recognition&mdash;the complete attention
+of Ireland's mind.</p>
+
+<p>All this would have seemed vanity to Redmond's solid, positive
+intelligence&mdash;vanity in all senses of the word. It would have moved him
+to nothing but angry contempt&mdash;anger against the spirit which was
+prepared to divide Ireland's effort, contempt for the futility of the
+reasoning. But one aspect of the rising dominated all the others in his
+mind. He had neither tolerance nor pity for Roger Casement, who was in
+his eyes simply one who tried to seduce Irish troops by threats and
+bribes into treason to their salt, one who made himself among the worst
+instruments of Germany. At the re-assembly of Parliament on April 27th
+he expressed the &quot;feeling of detestation and horror&quot; with which he and
+his colleagues had regarded the events in Dublin; a feeling which he
+believed to be shared &quot;by the overwhelming mass of the people of
+Ireland.&quot; On May 3rd, in a statement to the Press, he denounced fiercely
+&quot;this wicked move&quot; of men who &quot;have tried to make Ireland the cat's-paw
+of Germany.&quot; &quot;Germany plotted it, Germany organized it, Germany paid for
+it.&quot; The men who were Germany's agents &quot;remained in the safe remoteness
+of American cities,&quot; while &quot;misguided and insane young men in Ireland
+had risked, and some of them had lost, their lives in an insane
+anti-patriotic movement.&quot; It was anti-<a name="Page_224"></a>patriotic, he urged, because
+Ireland held to the choice she had made, to the opinion which thousands
+of Irish soldiers had sealed with their blood. It was &quot;not half so much
+treason to the cause of the Allies as treason to the cause of Home
+Rule.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the day when that statement appeared the sequel had begun to unroll
+itself. In the House of Commons Mr. Asquith announced the trial,
+sentence and shooting of three signatories to the Republican
+proclamation&mdash;Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh. With the exception of James
+Connolly, these were the men most directly answerable for launching an
+attempt which had cost five hundred lives and destroyed over two
+millions' worth of property, Redmond accepted their doom as just.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This outbreak happily seems to be over. It has been dealt with with
+firmness, which was not only right, but it was the duty of the
+Government so to deal with it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But now that example had been made, he held that other thoughts should
+guide those in authority.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As the rebellion, or the outbreak, call it what you like, has been put
+down with firmness, I do beg the Government, and I speak from the very
+bottom of my heart and with all my earnestness, not to show undue
+hardship or severity to the great masses of those who are implicated, on
+whose shoulders there lies a guilt far different from that which lies
+upon the instigators and promoters of the outbreak. Let them, in the
+name of God, not add this to the wretched, miserable memories of the
+Irish people, to be stored up perhaps for generations, but let them deal
+with it in such a spirit of leniency as was recently exhibited in South
+Africa by General Botha, and in that way pave the way to the possibility
+... that out of the ashes of this miserable tragedy there may spring up
+something which will redound to the future happiness of Ireland and the
+future complete and absolute unity of this Empire. I beg of the
+Government, having put down this outbreak with firmness, to <a name="Page_225"></a>take only
+such action as will leave the least rankling bitterness in the minds of
+the Irish people, both in Ireland and elsewhere throughout the world.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It is well to recall what he had in his mind. After the suppression of
+the South African rebellion in 1914, one man only was put to death&mdash;an
+officer who changed sides during an action. No attempt was made to try
+accused persons before a jury; a special tribunal of judges was set up
+by the South African Parliament. But their power of inflicting
+punishment was limited by the Parliament to a sentence of three years.
+General de Wet, the chief figure in the rebellion, was dismissed without
+punishment to his farm. That was the manner in which a strong native
+Government, realizing the possibilities of future trouble, dealt with an
+insurrection infinitely more serious in a military sense than that which
+broke out in Dublin. But in Ireland there was no native government; and
+the announcement of Mr. Birrell's resignation meant in reality that Mr.
+Asquith's Ministry had abdicated so far as Ireland was concerned. Quite
+properly, they had called in a competent soldier to deal with the
+military exigency. Quite shamefully, they left him in sole authority to
+handle what was essentially the task of statesmanship.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody saw that in such a case the need was to prevent a rebellious
+spirit from spreading. Sir John Maxwell took the simple view that the
+way to secure this was by plenty of executions. Knowledge of Irish
+history cannot be expected in an English Minister, still less in an
+English soldier; but it could have taught him how often and how
+ineffectually that recipe had been applied. Still less could it be hoped
+that a soldier, in no sense bound to the study of contemporary politics,
+should allow for the effect of two factors which must certainly
+influence Irish judgment and Irish feeling. The first of these was the
+precedent within the Empire created by General Botha's Government. This,
+I think,<a name="Page_226"></a> English opinion generally, and particularly English
+Imperialist opinion, wholly disregarded; but it was the point to which
+Redmond had instantly directed attention. For him, the idea of an
+Imperial Commonwealth of States was a reality, and within one
+Commonwealth there cannot be two standards of justice. The second factor
+was the licence accorded by a Liberal Government, and the sanction given
+by a Tory Opposition, to preparations for rebellion, and acts of
+rebellion, in Ulster. This was generally recognized by public opinion,
+though I think deliberately set aside by Sir John Maxwell&mdash;who perhaps
+is not to be blamed. But the Prime Minister, who had been chiefly and
+ultimately responsible for the decision to let Ulstermen do as they
+liked, was specially bound to consider and provide for the consequences
+of that line of policy in the past as it affected the present
+development. He was also, as the Minister responsible alike for carrying
+a Home Rule Act and for denying to it operation, specially bound in such
+a pass as this to be guided largely by the judgment of the man who but
+for that postponement would have been head of an Irish Government. But,
+under the various pressures of the moment, Mr. Asquith moved in a wholly
+different direction. Redmond's appeal and advice went totally
+disregarded. Yet Redmond knew Ireland as no Englishman could know it;
+and his hands were clean of guilt for what had happened. Mr. Asquith by
+his past inaction, his Tory colleagues by their action before the war,
+were deeply involved in responsibility. It is difficult, if not
+impossible, to find in Mr. Asquith's conduct any recognition of this
+cardinal fact. He judged rebels as if preparations for rebellion had
+never been palliated or approved.</p>
+
+<p>All that Redmond could achieve was by incessant personal intervention to
+limit the list of executions, to put some stay on what he called later
+&quot;the gross and panicky violence&quot; with which measures of suppression
+<a name="Page_227"></a>were conceived and carried out. He could not prevent the amazing
+procedure of sending flying columns throughout the country into places
+where there had been no hint of disturbance, and making arrests by the
+hundred without reason given or evidence produced. In many cases, men
+who had been thoroughly disgusted by the outbreak found themselves in
+jail; and disaffection was manufactured hourly.</p>
+
+<p>On May 3rd, when Redmond made his public appeal to Mr. Asquith, it was
+still not too late to prevent the mischief from spreading. By general
+consent, Redmond was right when he said that the rising was thoroughly
+unpopular in Ireland, and most of all in Dublin. The troops on whom the
+insurgents fired were in the first instance Irish troops. Later in that
+year I was attached to one of these battalions (the 10th Dublins), and
+asked them how they did their scouting work during the conflict. &quot;We
+needed no scouts,&quot; was the answer; &quot;the old women told us everything.&quot;
+The first volley which met a company of this battalion killed an
+officer; he was so strongly Nationalist in his sympathy as to be almost
+a Sinn F&eacute;iner. Others had been active leaders in the Howth gun-running.
+It was not merely a case of Irishmen firing on their fellow-countrymen:
+it was one section of the original Volunteers firing on another.</p>
+
+<p>Yet from the moment when English troops came on the scene, another
+strain of feeling began to make itself felt. A lady ordered tea to be
+made for one of the incoming regiments, halted outside her house on the
+line of march. The refreshment was long in coming, and she went down to
+see why. She found her cook up in arms: &quot;Is it me boil the kettle for
+Englishmen coming in to shoot down Irishmen?&quot; Yet that was still the
+voice of a minority. When I came home from France a few weeks later, a
+shrewd and prosperous Nationalist man of business said to me with fury:
+&quot;The fools! It was the first rebellion that ever had the country
+<a name="Page_228"></a>against it, and they turned the people round in a week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have prevented the halo of martyrdom from attaching itself
+to those who died by the law for the sake of Irish freedom: the
+tradition was too deeply ingrained in Ireland's history. Yet Redmond did
+not go beyond the measure of average Irish opinion when he accepted the
+first three executions as just. People at least knew who these men were,
+and their signatures to the proclamation of an Irish Republic proved
+their leadership. They were given the death of rebels in arms, to which
+no dishonour attaches. But a fatal mistake was made in suppressing all
+report of the proceedings of the court-martial on them, and this mistake
+was to be repeated indefinitely. Ireland was made to feel that this
+whole affair was taken completely out of the hands of Irishmen&mdash;that no
+attempt even was made to enlist Irish opinion on the side of law by a
+statement of the evidence on which law acted. Day by day there was a new
+bald announcement that such and such men had been shot; and these were
+men whose names Ireland at large had never heard of.</p>
+
+<p>Then on top of all came the appalling admission that an officer
+suffering from insanity had taken out three prisoners and caused them to
+be shot without trial on his own responsibility, none of these men
+having any complicity with the rebellion. This incident would have
+inflamed public opinion in any community; in Ireland its effect was
+beyond words poisonous. It revived the atmosphere of the Bachelor's Walk
+incident; and there was only too much justification for holding that the
+military authorities were indisposed to take the proper disciplinary
+action. Its effect detracted from the excellent opinion which the troops
+generally had earned by their conduct: it instilled venom into the
+resentment of those few cases (and it was beyond hope that they should
+not occur) in which soldiers had either lost their heads <a name="Page_229"></a>or yielded to
+the temptation of revenge in its ugliest shapes.</p>
+
+<p>The result can be best expressed by recording the experience of one Sinn
+F&eacute;iner who was captured in the fighting. While the military escort was
+taking him through the streets to his place of confinement, a crowd
+gathered round and ran along, consisting of angry men and women who had
+seen bloodshed and known hunger during these days. They shouted to the
+soldiers to knock his brains out there and then. Three weeks later he
+was again marched through the streets on his way to an English prison,
+and again a crowd mustered. But this time, to his amazement, they were
+shouting: &quot;God save you! God have pity on you! Keep your heart up!
+Ireland's not dead yet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>These were the effects produced in Ireland on the mind of common people
+by the action of Government in enforcing the ultimate sanction of law
+which the members of that same Government by their action and by their
+inaction had brought into contempt. In England, in the meanwhile, a new
+Military Service Bill was going through the House, and naturally
+attempts to include Ireland in its operation were renewed. Sir Edward
+Carson, criticizing the Government of Ireland, said that (as Redmond put
+it in replying) Nationalists had held the power but not the
+responsibility. There was a note of angry protest in the Irish Leader's
+rejoinder. &quot;I wish to say for myself that certainly since the Coalition
+Government came into operation, and before it, but certainly since then,
+I have had no power in the Government of Ireland. All my opinions have
+been overborne. My suggestions have been rejected, and my profound
+conviction is that if we had had the power and the responsibility for
+the Government of our country during the past two years, recent
+occurrences in Ireland would never have taken place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I think that view was at that moment very generally <a name="Page_230"></a>shared in England.
+The British Press had shown by their attitude towards the events in
+Dublin how deeply Redmond had made his mark. Almost without exception
+Unionist papers refrained from any attempt to identify Nationalist
+Ireland generally with the rising: they did full justice to the valour
+and the sufferings of Irish troops&mdash;who, indeed, at that very moment
+were passing through a cruel ordeal. In that Easter week the Sixteenth
+Division was subjected to two attacks with poison gas of a concentration
+and violence till then unknown, and under weather conditions which
+prolonged the ordeal beyond endurance. The 48th and 49th Brigades had
+very terrible losses. We of the 47th relieved them in the line.</p>
+
+<p>That was a long tour of trenches, some eighteen days beginning on the
+29th of April, and throughout it papers came in with the Irish news. I
+shall never forget the men's indignation. They felt they had been
+stabbed in the back. For myself, I thought that a situation had arisen
+in which Irish members who were serving had a more imperative duty at
+home, and I went to discuss the matter with Willie Redmond, whose
+battalion was then holding the front line to the left of Loos.</p>
+
+<p>I found him in the deep company commander's dug-out in the bay of line
+opposite Puits 14 bis, which will be known to many Irish soldiers. We
+came up to the light to talk, and he agreed with me in my view. We
+arranged that each of us should discuss with his commanding officer the
+question of asking for special leave. Mine advised me to go, and I have
+no earthly doubt that his would have said, or did say, the same; but
+Willie Redmond never brought himself to leave his men. Next month,
+however, he was invalided back, very seriously ill.</p>
+
+<p>But in our talk that day, when we discussed the possibility of our
+having some special influence, he said this: &quot;Don't imagine that what
+you and I have done is going to make us popular with our people. On the
+contrary, we shall both be sent to the right about at the first<a name="Page_231"></a> General
+Election.&quot; I think he was wrong, at least to this extent, that any man
+who served would not have lessened his chance by doing so. When the tide
+flowed strongest against us, in three provinces one Nationalist only
+kept his seat&mdash;John Redmond's son, Major William Archer Redmond.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>Already the tide had begun to turn in Ireland. On May 11th Mr.
+Dillon&mdash;who had been in Dublin during the rebellion&mdash;moved the
+adjournment of the House to demand that Government should state whether
+they intended to have more executions upon the finding of secret
+tribunals, and to continue the searches and wholesale arrests which were
+going on through the country. The list of executions had now reached
+fourteen, and no word of evidence had been published. Also the Prime
+Minister stated that he heard for the first time of the shooting of Mr.
+Sheehy-Skeffington and others by Captain Bowen Colthurst.
+Unquestionably, discussion was urgently needed, and Mr. Dillon was fully
+justified in emphasizing the mischief done in Ireland by alienating
+men's minds. But Mr. Dillon spoke as one who felt to the uttermost the
+passion of resentment which he depicted, and in his indignation against
+charges which had been brought against the insurgents, he was led to
+praise their conduct almost to the disparagement of soldiers in the
+field. Even in print the speech seethes with growing passion; and its
+delivery, I am told, accentuated its bitterness and its anti-English
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>It would be futile to deny that this utterance had a great effect in
+Ireland and in England, or to conceal Redmond's view that the effect was
+most lamentable. But it had one notable result. Mr. Asquith, in
+replying, announced his intention to visit Ireland and look into <a name="Page_232"></a>the
+situation for himself. Within a fortnight&mdash;on May 25th&mdash;he reported to
+the House his impressions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The first was the breakdown of the existing machinery of the Irish
+Government; and the next was the strength and depth, and I might almost
+say, I think without exaggeration, the universality of the feeling in
+Ireland that we have now a unique opportunity for a new departure for
+the settlement of outstanding problems, and for a joint and combined
+effort to obtain agreement as to the way in which the Government of
+Ireland is for the future to be carried on.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He indicated that an attempt would be made to renew negotiations for a
+settlement which would enable the Home Rule Act to be brought into
+operation at once; and that Mr. Lloyd George had consented to undertake
+the task of reconciling parties. But he begged that there should be no
+debate upon this proposal or upon Irish affairs at all. Redmond, in
+accepting, said that the request for acceptance without discussion was
+putting the goodwill of Nationalists to a very severe test.&mdash;A
+discussion would at once have produced this criticism: that Ireland
+would say to-morrow, &quot;The Parliamentary party brought to Ireland a
+post-dated order for Home Rule, liable to an indefinite series of
+postponements: Sinn Fein by a week's rebellion secures that Home Rule
+shall be brought into force at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In truth, the rapid growth of Sinn Fein from May 1916 onwards is due
+largely to this reasoning; but also to resentment against the
+Government's dealing with the rebellion, and against the Irish party's
+silence in Parliament in spite of the numerous actions of the military
+power which called for vigorous criticism.</p>
+
+<p>Irish Nationalist members realized the unpopularity of their silence and
+submitted to it, for the negotiations appeared to offer a real chance.
+We held that Mr. Lloyd George could not afford to fail, and had power
+enough to carry through a settlement. We did not know, and <a name="Page_233"></a>could not,
+that the Minister of Munitions had been called off from his regular work
+within five weeks before the beginning of the offensive on the Somme,
+for which an unprecedented outlay of material had been undertaken.</p>
+
+<p>The negotiations proceeded, and were conducted on the principle of
+discussion through a go-between. The parties never met: Mr. Lloyd George
+submitted proposals to each side separately. Redmond and his colleagues
+insisted on protecting themselves by securing a written document, so
+that, as it was hoped, there could be no understanding and the terms
+come to would be final.</p>
+
+<p>Those of us who hoped for a completely new approach to the problem were
+doomed to disappointment. The affair was taken up where the Buckingham
+Palace Conference left it. The terms to be arranged were terms of
+exclusion for Ulster; and the two questions of defining the area and the
+period met the negotiators on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>It has been shown above that Redmond regarded as vital the distinction
+between temporary and permanent exclusion. His purpose was to stamp the
+whole of this proposed agreement with a provisional and transient
+character. It was to be simply a war measure, subject to re-arrangement
+at the close of hostilities; and it was to be adapted to a community
+still agitated by rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>An Irish Parliament with an Executive responsible to it was to be set up
+at once. But no elections were to be held. The existing members for the
+existing constituencies were to be the provisional Parliament till the
+war ended.</p>
+
+<p>The same considerations precluded the possibility of a referendum in
+Ulster. Nationalists accepted an area defined by agreement. It left out
+of &quot;Ulster&quot; the three counties, Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, in whose
+eight constituencies no Unionist had been returned since 1885. But it
+left to the excluded area the counties of<a name="Page_234"></a> Tyrone and Fermanagh, each
+with a Nationalist majority, and the boroughs of Newry and Londonderry,
+both represented by Home Rulers.</p>
+
+<p>This was a provision which no body of men could be expected to acquiesce
+in permanently as representing the equity of the case. It was accepted
+for the sake of peace, as a temporary expedient. A strong inducement was
+added by Mr. Lloyd George's proposal that at the close of the
+provisional period the whole matter should be referred to a Council of
+the Empire with the Prime Ministers of the Dominions taking a hand in
+the settlement. But to guarantee and seal its provisional and transitory
+character an extraordinary clause was added. Until a permanent
+settlement was reached, the Irish membership at Westminster was to
+remain at its original number of 103.</p>
+
+<p>The document embodying these conclusions was accepted in identical terms
+by each side, and each party of negotiators set out for Ireland to
+endeavour to secure acceptance of it. But before he left London Sir
+Edward Carson asked for an interpretation of the terms. Did the
+agreement mean that none of the six excluded counties could be brought
+under a Dublin Parliament without an Act of Parliament? In other words,
+was the exclusion permanent until Parliament should otherwise determine?
+He was answered that the Prime Minister accepted this interpretation,
+and would be prepared to say so when the matter came before Parliament.
+Knowledge of these communications was not conveyed to Redmond. Redmond's
+interpretation was that at the termination of the war this arrangement
+lapsed, and the Home Rule Act, which was the law of the land, came into
+force. If Ulster, or any part of it, were to be excluded, it must be by
+a new amending Act. Had the assurance given to Sir Edward Carson been
+conveyed to Redmond, either the negotiations must have been resumed or
+they must have been rendered abortive.</p><a name="Page_235"></a>
+
+<p>On June 13th the Ulster Council accepted the terms, no doubt with great
+reluctance. The signatories to the Covenant in the three western
+counties felt themselves betrayed. The whole body found itself committed
+to acceptance of Home Rule in principle for twenty-six counties. But the
+war necessity was pressed upon them and they submitted.</p>
+
+<p>The Nationalist Convention met ten days later in Belfast. Mr. Devlin had
+been strenuous in his exertions throughout the province, but the whole
+force of the ecclesiastical power was thrown against him. Apart from the
+detestation of partition, the Catholic Church conceived that the
+principle of denominational education would be lost in the severed
+counties, where the dominant Presbyterian element was opposed to it.
+Very many delegates came to the Convention pledged in advance to resist
+the proposals: and the general anticipation was that Redmond would be
+thrown over.</p>
+
+<p>The proceedings were secret. But in the result the Nationalists of the
+North refused to be any party to denying the rest of Ireland
+self-government. A division was taken, and consent to temporary
+exclusion was carried by a large majority. The victory was in the main
+due to Mr. Devlin's extraordinary personal gifts, exercised to carry a
+conclusion which inevitably must injure himself where he was most
+sensitive to a wound, in the hearts of those among whom he was born and
+bred.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been in the weeks immediately after this that Redmond spoke
+to me, as I never heard him speak of any other man, his mind about Mr.
+Devlin. &quot;Joe's loyalty in all this business has been beyond words,&quot; he
+said. &quot;I know what it has cost him to do as he has done.&quot; He knew well
+that the younger man's influence had been more efficacious than the
+threat of his own resignation&mdash;which was not withheld. A man of other
+nature might have been jealous of the young and growing power: but such
+an element as this was so foreign to<a name="Page_236"></a> Redmond's whole being that even
+the thought of it never entered the most suspicious mind.</p>
+
+<p>The result of the Belfast Convention was communicated and discussed at a
+meeting of the Irish party held at the Mansion House on June 26th. It
+was one of the most hopeful moments in our experience; reaction from a
+depression approaching to despair gave confidence to the gloomiest among
+us. Hope was in the air. The effect of Mr. Asquith's sentence upon the
+whole machinery of Dublin Castle had not yet worn off. No new Government
+had been installed: the Chief Secretaryship remained vacant, the
+Lord-Lieutenant also had retired from his office. It seemed a certainty
+that we should enter, under whatever auguries, into the realization of a
+self-governing Ireland. Even those who were most enthusiastic for the
+birth of a new and glorious era that was to date from the stirring
+action of the rebels, and who were most open-mouthed in condemnation of
+Redmond's futile efforts, in practice shared our view. I asked one such
+man how he counted on securing the necessary first step of establishing
+an Irish Government. &quot;Oh, I suppose,&quot; was his answer, &quot;the Irish party
+will manage that somehow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But soon delay began to hang coldly on this temper of anticipation, and
+to delay were added disquieting utterances. On June 29th Lord Lansdowne
+announced in the House of Lords that the &quot;consultations&quot; which had been
+taking place were &quot;certainly authorized&quot; by the Government but were not
+binding upon it; and that he, speaking for the Unionist wing of the
+Cabinet, had not accepted the proposals. This was disturbing. Lord
+Selborne had retired from the Government before the negotiators went to
+Ireland, because he knew of the proposals and was not prepared to
+sanction them. We assumed that other Unionists who shared this view
+would have followed him in his frank action. Now we perceived that Lord
+Lansdowne and his friends had frugally hus<a name="Page_237"></a>banded their force. It was
+expected by many that Ireland would do the work for them. Failing that,
+they had still the last stab to deliver. But we counted upon one thing:
+that Mr. Lloyd George, if not Mr. Asquith, would feel himself committed
+to see the deal through&mdash;and that his resignation would have to be faced
+as a part of the consequences if attempts were made to go back on the
+bargain.</p>
+
+<p>Parliament reassembled and still nothing was said and nothing done: but
+the Press was full of rumours. On July 19th Redmond asked that a date
+should be fixed for the introduction of the proposed Bill, and next day
+he renewed his demand, urging that the constant delays and postponements
+were &quot;seriously jeopardizing the chance of settlement.&quot; This was only
+too true. A furious agitation against the proposal of even temporary
+partition was raging through Ireland. Once more, the tide had been
+missed: time had been given to inculcate all manner of doubts and
+suspicions&mdash;and once more the suspicions proved to be only too well
+justified. The whole story was revealed to the House on July 24th.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond, in his speech, emphasized it that the proposals had come not
+from the Nationalists, but from the Government; they had, however, been
+accepted, after considerable negotiation and many changes in substance,
+as a plan which Nationalists could recommend for acceptance.
+Nationalists had been pressed to use the utmost despatch, had been told
+that every hour counted and that it was essential in the highest
+Imperial interests, if Ireland endorsed the agreement, that it should be
+put into operation at once. &quot;That is two long months ago,&quot; he said.
+Action had been taken; the unpopularity of the proposals, fully
+foreseen, had been faced, on a clear understanding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The agreement was in the words of the Prime Minister himself, for what
+he called a provisional settlement which should last until the war was
+over, or until <a name="Page_238"></a>a final and permanent settlement was arrived at within a
+limited period after the war. This was the chief factor of this plan,
+and without it not one of my colleagues or myself would for a moment
+have considered it, much less have submitted it to our followers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The retention of Irish members at Westminster in full strength was
+covenanted for &quot;as an indispensable safeguard of the temporary character
+of the whole arrangement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was on this construction of the agreement that consent to it had been
+secured, in the face of very strong and organized opposition: and
+consent was secured to it as a final document. Nevertheless, when
+Redmond arrived in London he had been at once confronted with a demand
+for modifications&mdash;of which the first were unimportant. Yet to consent
+to any alteration was a sacrifice of principle; but he was told that
+this concession would secure agreement in the Cabinet. Later, however,
+came a public statement from Lord Lansdowne that &quot;permanent and
+enduring&quot; structural alterations would be introduced into the Home Rule
+Act. Redmond had seen the draft Bill in which the Government's draftsmen
+embodied the terms of the agreement, and he had accepted this, as
+conforming to his covenant. In reply to Lord Lansdowne, he had pressed
+for the production of this Bill, but could not get it. The end was that,
+after a Cabinet held on July 19th, he was told that &quot;a number of new
+proposals had been brought forward&quot;; that the Cabinet did not desire to
+consult him about these at all; and on the 22nd Mr. Lloyd George and Mr.
+Herbert Samuel were instructed to convey to him the Cabinet's decision,
+with an intimation that there would be no further discussion or
+consultation. That decision was to make the exclusion of six counties
+permanent, and to withdraw the provision for retaining Irish members at
+full strength during the transitory period.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond attacked no individual. His anger was beyond words. He said
+this, however:</p><a name="Page_239"></a>
+
+<p>&quot;Some tragic fatality seems to dog the footsteps of this Government in
+all their dealings with Ireland. Every step taken by them since the
+Coalition was formed, and especially since the unfortunate outbreak in
+Dublin, has been lamentable. They have disregarded every advice we
+tendered to them, and now in the end, having got us to induce our people
+to make a tremendous sacrifice and to agree to the temporary exclusion
+of these Ulster counties, they throw this agreement to the winds, and
+they have taken the surest means to accentuate every possible danger and
+difficulty in the Irish situation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That day really finished the constitutional party and overthrew
+Redmond's power. We had incurred the very great odium of accepting even
+temporary partition&mdash;and a partition which, owing to this arbitrary
+extension of area, could not be justified on any ground of principle; we
+had involved with us many men who voted for that acceptance on the faith
+of Redmond's assurance that the Government were bound by their written
+word; and now we were thrown over.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the effect on Redmond's position, the result was to engender
+in Ireland a temper which made settlement almost impossible. No British
+Minister's word would in future be accepted for anything; and any
+Irishman who attempted to improve relations between the countries was
+certain to arouse anger and contempt in his countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>More particularly the relations between Irish members and the most
+powerful members of the Government were hopelessly embittered. Mr. Lloyd
+George put aside completely&mdash;probably he never for a moment
+entertained&mdash;the thought of seriously threatening resignation because
+his agreement with the Irish was repudiated by his colleagues. He was
+entirely engrossed with the work of the War Office, where he thought,
+and was justified in thinking, himself indispensable. Mr. Asquith, whose
+object was to keep unity in his Government at all costs, <a name="Page_240"></a>when it came
+to a choice whether to quarrel with the Irish who formed no part of it,
+or with the Unionists who were his colleagues, had no hesitation which
+side to throw over.</p>
+
+<p>I have never seen the House of Commons so thoroughly discontented and
+disgusted. There was much genuine sympathy with Redmond. Sir Edward
+Carson evidently shared it, and he made a conciliatory speech in which
+he proposed that he and the Nationalist leader should shake hands on the
+floor of the House. That is a gesture which comes better from the loser
+than from the winner, and there was no doubt that Sir Edward Carson had
+won. But he knew Ireland well enough to realize the meaning of his
+victory, and his speech indicated disquiet and even horror at the
+prospect before us. He was quite avowedly anxious to see a start made
+with Home Rule, Ulster standing apart. In a later debate, when the
+Government announced its intention to fill again the vacant Irish
+offices (appointing Mr. Duke as Chief Secretary), Redmond referred
+hopefully to this utterance of the Ulster leader and generally to &quot;the
+new and improved atmosphere which has surrounded this Irish question
+quite recently.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The end of this speech dealt with one of the elements which had
+contributed most to the improvement. In the great battle of the Somme,
+which opened on July 1st, the Ulster Division went for the first time
+into general action, and their achievement was the most glorious and the
+most unlucky of that day. They carried their assault through five lines
+of trenches, and, because a division on their flank was not equally
+successful, were obliged to fall back, adding terribly in this
+withdrawal to the desperate losses of their advance. Side by side with
+them on the other flank was the Fourth Division, containing two
+battalions of Dublin Fusiliers, in one of which John Redmond's son
+commanded a company; so that he and the Ulstermen went over shoulder to
+shoulder. He came back unwounded; all other company commanders <a name="Page_241"></a>in the
+battalion were killed. The only thing in which Redmond was entirely
+fortunate during these last years of his life was in his son's record
+during the war.</p>
+
+<p>Another Nationalist well known to the House of Commons served also in
+the Dublin Fusiliers on the Somme, with a different fortune. Professor
+Kettle, owing to conditions of health, had been unable to come to France
+with the Sixteenth Division, and had been mainly employed in recruiting.
+Now in these summer months he pushed hard to get out to France, though
+he was not physically fit for the line. He got to France, and, as was
+easy to foresee, broke down and was sent to work at the base on records:
+but before he left his regiment he knew that it was under orders for a
+general action, and he insisted that he should have leave to rejoin for
+that day. He came back accordingly, found himself called on to take
+command of a company, and led it with great gallantry, and on the second
+day of action was shot dead. It was the fate that he expected; he, like
+so many, had a forerunning assurance of his end. So was lost to Ireland
+the most variously-gifted intelligence that I have ever known.</p>
+
+<p>The Sixteenth Division were still on the sector about Loos, and their
+casualties were heavy and continuous in the perpetual trench warfare.
+With the last days of August they were withdrawn&mdash;for a rest, as they
+believed at first; but their march was southwards to the Somme.</p>
+
+<p>The purpose was to use them for an attack on Ginchy; but a shift of
+arrangements brought the 47th Brigade into line against Guillemont and
+its quarries, which had on six occasions been unsuccessfully attacked.
+The Irish carried them. Three days later the whole division was launched
+against Ginchy. They equalled the Ulstermen's valour, and were luckier
+in the result. For these achievements praise was not stinted. Colonel
+Repington in <i>The Times</i> described the Irish as the &quot;best missile
+troops&quot; in all the armies.</p><a name="Page_242"></a>
+<br />
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The deeds of Irish soldiers helped us greatly outside of Ireland; in
+Ireland, the news was received with mingled feelings. There was
+passionate resentment against the Government, and the question was
+asked, For what were their men dying? Redmond's answer could not be so
+confident as it would have been six months earlier. There were many who
+said that he dare not face the country. His answer to this was given at
+Waterford, where on October 6, 1916, his constituents received him with
+their old loyalty&mdash;though now for the first time there were hostile
+voices in the crowd. He spoke out very plainly, saying with justice that
+in all his life he had never played to the gallery and would not now.
+Things had to be looked at squarely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have taken a leap back over generations of progress, and have
+actually had a rebellion, with its inevitable aftermath of brutalities,
+stupidities and inflamed passions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He would impugn no man's motives, least of all the motives of the dead;
+but those who had set this train of events in motion had been always the
+enemies of the constitutional movement. The constitutional movement must
+go on, he said; but it would be folly to pretend that it could go on as
+if nothing had happened. Ireland must face its share in the
+responsibility. But the real responsibility rested with the British
+Government.</p>
+
+<p>To establish this he entered on a review of the whole series of
+circumstances, not omitting Ulster's preparations for civil war, and
+stressing heavily the mischief that was done when Sir Edward Carson was
+chosen &quot;by strange irony&quot; to be the First Law Officer of the Crown.</p>
+
+<p>Passing from his review, he issued grave warning against the idea of
+conscription: it would be resisted in every village and its attempted
+enforcement would be a scandal which would ring through the world. For
+Ireland also <a name="Page_243"></a>he had admonition. He had told them before that Home Rule
+was an impregnable position. But &quot;no fortress is impregnable unless the
+garrison is faithful and united.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This, alas! was already a counsel of perfection for a country so deeply
+divided in opinion as Nationalist Ireland had come to be. The old
+loyalties had gone&mdash;and he felt it. Ending on a personal note, he
+referred to his age: he was over sixty; he had done thirty-five years of
+work which would have broken down any man less robust in constitution
+than it had been his luck to be born. He believed in youth, he said, and
+would gladly give way to younger men.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But one thing I will not do while I have breath in my body. I will not
+give way to the abuse and calumny and the falsehoods of men whom I have
+known for long years as the treacherous enemies of Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With all his reticence, he was a sensitive man; and for months now he
+could scarcely take up a newspaper, except his party's official organ,
+without finding himself accused of imbecility, of idle vanity, of
+corrupt bargaining, of every unworthy motive. Worse than all, he
+realized the inherent weakness of his position. He told his hearers at
+Waterford that the Irish party would not vary its attitude upon the war,
+but that we should now become a regular and active opposition. He was
+far too experienced not to be aware that during a war&mdash;and such a
+war&mdash;he neither could nor would offer to the Government in power
+opposition in the sense in which Nationalist Ireland would understand
+the word.</p>
+
+<p>But he took steps at once for raising the Irish question by a direct
+vote of censure. On October 18th he moved:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That the system of Government at present maintained in Ireland is
+inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies are fighting in
+Europe, and has been mainly responsible for the recent unhappy events
+and for the present state of feeling in that country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His speech avoided all controversial reference to what <a name="Page_244"></a>had preceded the
+war, but it reviewed with great power the long series of blunders,
+beginning with the delay in putting the Home Rule Bill on the Statute
+Book, and ending with the Cabinet's destruction of the agreement entered
+into in June. Now, as the end of all, Dublin Castle, after the Prime
+Minister's description of its hopeless breakdown, was set up again with
+a Unionist Chief Secretary and a Unionist Attorney-General: with a
+universal system of martial law in force throughout the country, and
+with hundreds of interned men in prison on suspicion. He warned the
+Government of the inevitable effect upon the flow of recruits for the
+Irish Divisions; and in a passage which showed how close his attention
+was to all this matter of recruitment, he pressed the War Office for
+certain minor concessions to Irish sentiment which would help us to
+maintain the Division that had so greatly distinguished itself at
+Guillemont and Ginchy.</p>
+
+<p>But the real pith of his speech was political in the larger sense. He
+pressed upon the House the injury which England's interest was suffering
+through the alienation of American opinion, and through the reflection
+of Irish discontent in Australia; he pleaded for the withdrawal of
+martial law. Nothing came of the debate, except a speech in which Mr.
+Lloyd George admitted the &quot;stupidities, which sometimes almost look like
+malignancy,&quot; that were perpetrated at the beginning of recruiting in
+Ireland. The Labour men and a few Liberals voted for our motion. But as
+a menace to the Government it was negligible.</p>
+
+<p>I was in France during the period of intrigue which followed, leading up
+to the displacement of Mr. Asquith. When the change occurred, members of
+Parliament who were serving were recalled by special summons. I found
+Redmond in these days profoundly impressed with the strength of Mr.
+Lloyd George's personal position. He was convinced that the new Premier
+could, if he chose, <a name="Page_245"></a>force a settlement of the Irish difficulty, and was
+very hopeful of this happening. Sir Edward Carson dared not, he thought,
+set himself in opposition; at this moment the Ulster party was not
+popular, while there was in the House a widespread feeling that Redmond
+in particular had been treated in a manner far other than his due.
+Another of his brother's interventions in debate gave an impetus to this
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Again in a thin House, during some discussion on Estimates, Willie
+Redmond got up and spoke out of the fullness of experiences which had
+profoundly affected his imagination. He told the House of what he had
+seen in Flanders, where the two Irish Divisions had at last been brought
+into contact, so that the left of the Ulster line in front of
+Ploegstreet touched the right of ours in front of Kemmel. It had always
+been said that the two factions would fly at each other's throats: by a
+score of happy detailed touches the soldier built up a picture of what
+had actually happened in the line and behind the line, and then summed
+it up in a conclusion:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They came together in the trenches and they were friends. Get them
+together on the floor of an Assembly, or where you will, in Ireland, and
+a similar result will follow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then, from this theme, he passed to one even more moving&mdash;the fate of
+Irish Nationalists, who were confronted daily with evil news of their
+own land. &quot;It is miserable to see men who went out with high hearts and
+hopes, who have acquitted themselves so well, filled with wretchedness
+because their country is in an unhappy condition.&quot; He appealed for a new
+and genuine attempt to set all this right; and he eulogized once more
+with warm eloquence the conduct of the troops, Ulstermen and the rest
+alike. Raw lads, who eighteen months before had never thought of seeing
+war, had come in before his eyes bringing prisoners by the hundreds from
+the most highly trained soldiery in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Man after man, when Willie Redmond had ended, rose <a name="Page_246"></a>and thanked him; but
+the most notable words came from Mr. Bonar Law:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His name and his action, in connection with that of the leader of his
+party, stand out as a landmark for all the people of this country as to
+what is being done by those who represent Nationalist feeling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All this increased Redmond's hopes of what might be expected from the
+new Premier, the representative of another small nationality, whose
+early days in Parliament had linked him almost more closely with Irish
+Nationalists than with British Liberalism. I was on the upper bench when
+Mr. Lloyd George came in, amid loud cheering. &quot;Look at him,&quot; said Willie
+Redmond (his senior in the House by ten years), who sat beside me: &quot;It
+seems only the other day he was sitting over here cheering like mad for
+the Boers; and there he is now, Prime Minister.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Lloyd George's speech, which had been deferred for several days
+owing to illness, was long before it came to Ireland, and then its tone
+was no way hopeful. He referred back to the negotiations of June and
+July, with their &quot;atmosphere of nervous suspicion and distrust,
+pervasive, universal, of everything and everybody.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was drenched with suspicion of Irishmen by Englishmen and of
+Englishmen by Irishmen and, worst of all, of Irishmen by Irishmen. It
+was a quagmire of distrust which clogged the footsteps and made progress
+impossible. That is the real enemy of Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>No one could say that the transaction to which Mr. Lloyd George was
+referring had helped to destroy distrust: and in view of the opinion
+held by Irishmen&mdash;and not by Irishmen only&mdash;of Ministers' dealing with
+Ireland, it was natural that this passage should provoke the resentment
+which was evident in Redmond when he rose.</p>
+
+<p>He followed Mr. Asquith, and made it clear that Ireland did not keep its
+praises for the rising star. He commended in weighty words the
+patriotism, the reticence <a name="Page_247"></a>and the magnanimity of the dispossessed
+leader; he renewed Ireland's expression of gratitude for the service
+done in the Home Rule Act; then, turning to the new power, he told Mr.
+Lloyd George bluntly that his words would be received in Ireland with
+the deepest disappointment. This was to be a Ministry of quick and
+effective decisions; but so far as our question was concerned, they had
+shown every disposition to wait and see. Was Ireland only to be let
+drift? Two courses might be taken&mdash;the statesman's, of real remedy; the
+politician's, of palliatives. Even of the latter nothing had been said.
+Martial law could be removed; untried men could be released from jail.
+Yet there was no sign. The Prime Minister intervened angrily. He had
+been ill, he said. Redmond was in no way inclined to accept the reason
+as sufficient, and again Mr. Lloyd George rose to say that it was &quot;not
+merely unfair, but a trifle impolitic&quot; not to give him a couple of days
+to consult with the Chief Secretary.</p>
+
+<p>Still Redmond maintained his tone of aggression. A radical reform was
+needed, and of those things that must be borne in mind the first was
+that time was of the essence of success. Promptness was essential.
+Secondly, Government must take the initiative themselves; they must not
+seek to evade their responsibility by putting the blame on other
+shoulders (this was his rejoinder to the allegation of paralysing
+distrust); there was no use in resuming negotiations, going to this man
+and to that man to see what he would be willing to take. Thirdly, the
+problem must be approached by a different method; it must be dealt with
+on lines of a united Ireland. The time had gone by, in effect, for any
+proposals of partition, temporary or permanent.</p>
+
+<p>He added a caution that there must be no attempt to mix up the problem
+of an Irish settlement with conditions about recruiting or conscription.
+&quot;That question must be left to a change of heart in Ireland.&quot; In
+con<a name="Page_248"></a>clusion he expressed to the House of Commons&mdash;though in no sanguine
+accents&mdash;what he had expressed to me a fortnight earlier in private
+talk: his belief that the time was &quot;ripe for drastic, decided and bold
+action&quot; by the Prime Minister. Powerful influences were at Mr. Lloyd
+George's back&mdash;in the Press of all parties, in the opinion of leading
+men of all parties. Three-quarters of the House of Commons, Redmond
+said, would welcome such action: the whole of the overseas Dominions
+would be for it; and it would have &quot;the sympathy of all men of good will
+in the Empire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For the first time I noticed lack of cordiality in the response of the
+House&mdash;not from want of agreement, but from a profound depression. The
+old temper of bickering had revived, especially between some of our
+party and those who disagreed with them. One was glad to get back to
+France for Christmas, even in that grim winter.</p>
+
+<p>When I was invalided back in February, I found that things had not stood
+still in Ireland. Redmond's suggested palliative had been applied, and
+the deported persons were let back home for Christmas. But this produced
+little easing of the situation, and within a few weeks Government
+rearrested several of them.</p>
+
+<p>One, however, Count Plunkett, was still in Ireland when a vacancy
+occurred in Roscommon. He was not in himself a likely man to appeal to
+that constituency. He had been an applicant for the Under-Secretaryship
+at Dublin Castle, and was therefore clearly not a person of extreme
+Nationalist views. But one of his sons, a young poet, had been among the
+signatories to the proclamation of an Irish Republic, and had paid for
+it with his life; Count Plunkett stood really as the father of his son.
+He was returned by a very large majority. This was the first open defeat
+inflicted by the physical force men on the Constitutional party since
+the beginning of Parnell's day.</p><a name="Page_249"></a>
+
+<p>In March, Redmond desired to bring the Irish question again before
+Parliament, and Mr. T.P. O'Connor introduced a motion calling on the
+House &quot;without further delay to confer upon Ireland the free
+institutions long promised her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That debate will always be remembered by those who heard it for one
+speech. Willie Redmond was among the oldest members of the Parliamentary
+party; not half a dozen men in all the House had been longer
+continuously members; he had always been one of the most popular figures
+at Westminster and in Ireland; and he had always spoken a great deal.
+Yet he had never been in the front rank either as a speaker or as a
+politician. The humour and the wit which made him the joy of groups in
+the smoking-room on the occasions when he was in full vein of
+reminiscence never got into his set speeches&mdash;though no man oftener lit
+up debate with some telling interruption. He was often merely
+rhetorical; he had the name&mdash;though in my experience he never deserved
+it&mdash;for being indiscreetly vehement. His early reputation, which he had
+never lived down, is not unkindly represented by a story which he used
+to tell against himself. When the first Home Rule Bill was introduced he
+had a great desire to speak in the debate, and went to Parnell with his
+request. &quot;Will you promise,&quot; said Parnell, &quot;that you will write out what
+you are going to say, and show it to me, and say that and no more?&quot; He
+promised, and handed in his manuscript. Days went by and he heard
+nothing, so he went back to the Chief. &quot;Ah yes,&quot; said Parnell, &quot;I have
+it in my pocket. An excellent speech, my dear Willie. If I were you I
+shouldn't waste it on the House of Commons. It's too good for them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Later, in the days from 1906 onwards, with all his experience, it cannot
+be said that he ever affected opinion in the House. What he said was the
+common stuff of argument: it was all what someone else might have
+<a name="Page_250"></a>said&mdash;until the war came. Then, he was a changed creature. He went
+through in the Army the same experience as hundreds of other members of
+Parliament; but he and he only seemed to have got the very soul out of
+it. He took to his soldier's duty as a religion: he saw all that
+concerned him in the light of it. It has been told already how his two
+speeches on almost casual occasions affected public feeling: but in them
+he was chiefly an Irish member of Parliament speaking about soldiers and
+about Irish soldiers. In this debate he was an Irish soldier pleading
+with Parliament for Ireland in the name of Irish soldiers&mdash;who had
+responded to the call to arms because, as he said, they were led to
+believe that a new and better and brighter chapter was about to open in
+the relations of Great Britain and Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not believe that there is a single member of any party in this
+House who is prepared to get up and say that in the past the government
+and treatment of Ireland by Great Britain have been what they should
+have been. Mistakes, dark, black, and bitter mistakes, have been made. A
+people denied justice, a people with many admitted grievances, the
+redress of which has been long delayed. On our side, perhaps, in the
+conflict and in the bitterness of contest, there may have been things
+said and done, offensive if you will, irritating if you will, to the
+people of this country; but what I want to ask, in all simplicity, is
+this, whether, in face of the tremendous conflict which is now raging,
+whether, in view of the fact that, apart from every other consideration,
+the Irish people, South as well as North, are upon the side of the
+Allies and against the German pretension to-day, it is not possible from
+this war to make a new start?&mdash;whether it is not possible on your side,
+and on ours as well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence
+a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries?
+Why cannot we do it? Is there an Englishman representing any party who
+<a name="Page_251"></a>does not yearn for a better future between Ireland and Great Britain?
+There is no Irishman who is not anxious for it also. Why cannot there be
+a settlement? Why must it be that, when British soldiers and Irish
+soldiers are suffering and dying side by side, this eternal old quarrel
+should go on?....</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If there ought to be an oblivion of the past between Great Britain and
+Ireland generally, may I ask in God's name the First Lord of the
+Admiralty [Sir Edward Carson] why there cannot be a similar oblivion of
+the past between the warring sections in Ireland? All my life I have
+taken as strong and as strenuous a part on the Nationalist side as my
+poor abilities would allow. I may have been as bitter and as strong in
+the heated atmosphere of party contests against my countrymen in the
+North as ever they have been against me, but I believe in my soul and
+heart here to-day that I represent the instinct and the desire of the
+whole Irish Catholic race when I say that there is nothing that they
+more passionately desire and long for than that there should be an end
+of this old struggle between the North and the South.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The followers of the right honourable gentleman the First Lord of the
+Admiralty should shake hands with the rest of their countrymen. I appeal
+to the right honourable gentleman here in the name of men against whom
+no finger of scorn can be pointed; in the name of men who are doing
+their duty; in the name of men who have died; in the name of men who may
+die, and who at this very moment may be dying, to rise to the demands of
+the situation. I ask him to meet his Nationalist fellow-countrymen and
+accept the offer which they make to him and his followers, and on the
+basis of that self-government which has made, and which alone has made,
+the Empire as strong as it is to-day, come to some arrangement for the
+better government of Ireland in the future.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why does the right honourable gentleman opposite not meet us half way?
+I want to know what is the <a name="Page_252"></a>reason. It surely cannot be that the right
+honourable gentleman and his friends believe that under a system of
+self-government they would have anything to fear. Nothing impressed me
+more than the opinion I heard expressed by a high-placed Roman Catholic
+officer who is in service with the Ulster Division, when he told me of
+his experience there, and when he said that although he was the only one
+of the Catholic religion in that Division, it had dawned upon him that
+they certainly were Irishmen and were not Englishmen or Scotsmen.<a name="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8"><sup>[8]</sup></a> The
+right honourable gentleman knows perfectly well that it would not take
+so very much to bring his friends and our friends together, and I ask
+him why the attempt is not made? I ask him whether the circumstances of
+the time do not warrant that such an attempt should be made? I ask him
+whether he does not know in his inmost heart that it would bring to the
+common enemy more dismay and consternation than the destruction of a
+hundred of their submarines if they knew that England, Scotland and
+Ireland were really united, not merely within the confines of the shores
+of these islands, but united in every part of the world where the Irish
+people are to be found?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it that stands in the way of Ireland taking her place as a
+self-governing part of this Empire? Ireland is the only portion of the
+Empire now fighting which is not self-governing. The Australians whom I
+meet from time to time point to their government being free; the
+Canadians and the New Zealanders do the same, and we Irishmen are the
+only units in France to-day taking our part in the war who are obliged
+to admit that the country we come from is denied those privileges which
+have made the Empire the strong organization <a name="Page_253"></a>which it is to-day. If
+safeguards are necessary&mdash;I speak only for myself, and I do not speak
+for anybody else on these benches, because I have been away from this
+House so long that I have almost lost touch with things&mdash;as far as my
+own personal opinion goes, there is nothing I would not do, and there is
+no length to which I would not go, in order to meet the real objections
+or to secure the real confidence, friendship and affection of my
+countrymen in the North of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For my own part, I would gladly, if it would ease the situation, agree
+to an arrangement whereby it might be possible for His Majesty the King,
+if he so desired, to call in someone at the starting of a new Irish
+government, a gentleman representing the portion of the country and the
+section of the community which the First Lord represents; and if a
+representative of that kind were placed with his hand upon the helm of
+the first Irish Parliament, I, at any rate, as far as I am concerned,
+would give him the loyal and the strong support which I have given to
+every leader I have supported in this House. After all, these are times
+of sacrifice, and every man is called upon to make some sacrifices. Men
+and women and children alike have to do something in these days, and is
+it too much to appeal to the right honourable gentleman and his friends
+to sacrifice some part of their position in order to lead the majority
+of their countrymen and to bring about that which the whole
+English-speaking world desires, namely, a real reconciliation of
+Ireland? I apologize for having detained the House so long, but this is
+a matter upon which I feel strongly, and I feel all the more strongly
+about it because I know that I am trying altogether too feebly, but as
+strongly as I can, to represent what I know to be the wishes nearest to
+the hearts of tens of thousands of Irishmen who went with me and their
+colleagues to France, many of whom will never return, all of whom are
+suffering the privations and the hardship and the <a name="Page_254"></a>risk and the wellnigh
+intolerable circumstances of life in France. I want to speak for these
+men, and if they could all speak with one voice and with one accord,
+they would say to this House, to men in every part of it, to
+Conservatives, Liberals and Labour men, to their Nationalist countrymen
+and to their countrymen from the North of Ireland: In the name of God,
+we here who are about to die, perhaps, ask you to do that which largely
+induced us to leave our homes; to do that which our fathers and mothers
+taught us to long for; to do that which is all we desire: make our
+country happy and contented, and enable us, when we meet the Canadians
+and the Australians and the New Zealanders side by side in the common
+cause and the common field, to say to them, 'Our country, just as yours,
+has self-government within the Empire.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I have given the speech almost in full as it stands in print after the
+opening paragraph. But I cannot give the effect of what was heard by a
+densely crowded House in absolute silence. It was not an argument; it
+was an appeal. There was not a cheer, not a murmur of agreement. They
+were not needed, they would have been felt an impertinence, so great was
+the respect and the sympathy. As the speaker stood there in war-stained
+khaki, his hair showed grey, his face was seamed with lines, but there
+was in every word the freshness and simplicity of a nature that age had
+not touched. In his usual place on the upper bench beside his brother,
+he poured out his words with the flow and passion of a bird's song. He
+was out of the sphere of argument; but the whole experience of a long
+and honourable lifetime was vibrant in that utterance. He spoke from his
+heart. All that had gone to make his faith, all the inmost convictions
+of his life were implicit&mdash;and throughout all ran the sense in the
+assembly who heard him, not only that he had risked, but that he was
+eager to give his life for proof. It was not strange that this should be
+so, <a name="Page_255"></a>for he was going on what he believed would be his last journey to
+France; and when he reached the supreme moment of his passion with the
+words &quot;In the name of God, we here who are about to die, perhaps,&quot; the
+last word was little more than a concession to the conventions.</p>
+
+<p>It was a speech, in short, that made one believe in impossibilities; but
+in Parliament no miracles happen. Mr. Lloyd George replied, as John
+Redmond expected&mdash;declaring that the Government were willing to give
+Home Rule at once to &quot;the parts of Ireland which unmistakably demand
+it,&quot; but would be no party to placing under Nationalist rule people who
+were &quot;as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook
+from the rest of Ireland as the inhabitants of Fife or Aberdeen.&quot; No
+Liberal Minister had ever before so completely adopted the Ulster theory
+of two nations. Taxed with the refusal to allow Ulster counties to
+declare by vote which group they belonged to, he declined to discuss
+&quot;geographical limitations&quot; at present, but indicated that if Irish
+members could accept the principle of separate treatment for two
+peoples, there were &quot;ways and means by which it could be worked out.&quot;
+Suggestion of a Conference of Irishmen was thrown out, or of a
+Commission to discuss the details of partition. Redmond, in replying,
+answered to this that &quot;after experience of the last negotiations he
+would enter into no more negotiations.&quot; He warned the Government that
+the whole constitutional movement was in danger. There were in Ireland
+&quot;serious men, men of ability, men with command of money,&quot; who were bent
+on smashing it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After fifty years of labour on constitutional lines we had practically
+banished the revolutionary party from Ireland. Now again, after fifty
+years, it has risen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The rest was a prophecy only too accurate:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the constitutional movement disappears, the Prime Minister will find
+himself face to face with a revolutionary movement, and he will find it
+impossible to preserve <a name="Page_256"></a>any of the forms even of constitutionalism. He
+will have to govern Ireland by the naked sword. I cannot picture to
+myself a condition of things in which the Prime Minister, with his
+record behind him, would be an instrument to carry out a government of
+that kind.... I say this plainly. No British statesman, no matter what
+his platonic affection for Home Rule may have been in the past, no
+matter what party he may belong to, who by his conduct once again
+teaches the Irish people the lesson that any National leader who, taking
+his political life in his hands, endeavours to combine local and
+Imperial patriotism&mdash;endeavours to combine loyalty to Ireland's rights
+with loyalty to the Empire&mdash;anyone who again teaches the lesson that
+such an one is certain to be let down and betrayed by this course, is
+guilty of treason, not only to the liberties of Ireland but to the unity
+and strength and best interests of this Empire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After these bitter words he called on his colleagues not &quot;to continue a
+useless and humiliating debate,&quot; but to withdraw from the House: and we
+accordingly followed him into the lobby. In our absence the discussion
+continued, in a tone not flattering to the Government. It was remarkable
+for one utterance from Mr. Healy, concerning Redmond:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish to say at the outset that in my opinion this Empire owes him a
+debt of gratitude which it can never repay, and I wish also to say of
+him as an opponent that in my opinion, if his advice had been taken by
+the War Office, it is absolutely true, as he contends, that you would
+have marshalled in Ireland from two hundred thousand to three hundred
+thousand men, from whom large drafts could have been drawn; and I will
+further say I believe if his advice had been taken the elements of
+rebellion would have been appeased.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was plain that matters could not stay at this point; but our breach
+with the Government was complete for the moment. Redmond's demand was
+for a full and <a name="Page_257"></a>definite statement of policy, which should be made in
+the House of Commons and there discussed. On May 15th Mr. Bonar Law
+announced that the Prime Minister would make a communication to the
+leaders of Irish parties. It was explained that this method of outlining
+the proposals would be only preliminary to discussion.</p>
+
+<p>On that evening a great banquet to General Smuts was given in the House
+of Lords by Parliament. Strong pressure was used with Redmond to attend
+it, and he consented unwillingly. He was ill&mdash;physically ill, probably
+with the beginnings of his fatal disease&mdash;and morally sick at heart and
+out of hope. Another Irish election in South Longford had been
+strenuously fought by the party and had been won by the Sinn Feiner; a
+decisive factor in the election was the issue of a letter from
+Archbishop Walsh which grossly misrepresented Redmond's whole policy and
+action. He was in no humour for banquetings, and at this moment the
+Irish party was nearly back at its old attitude, which dictated a
+refusal to have part or lot with the House on such ceremonial
+occasions.<a name="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9"><sup>[9]</sup></a> But Redmond's feeling for South Africa was specially
+strong, his feeling about the war was unchanged; and this was a
+recognition of a great South African statesman's services in the war. He
+let himself be persuaded into accepting.</p>
+
+<p>At the dinner he sat next to a Liberal peer, a member of the late
+Government, who talked with him of Irish possibilities. Redmond did not
+know what the Government intended. He was told, now, that the Government
+had written a letter to him and to Sir Edward Carson setting out plainly
+an offer for the immediate introduction of Home Rule with the exclusion
+of the six counties.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond said: &quot;It is impossible that we should accept; nothing can come
+of it.&quot; He was asked then <a name="Page_258"></a>what hope he saw. He answered, as he had for
+some time been saying in private, that the only chance lay in a
+Conference or Convention of Irishmen; but it must include everybody, and
+in no sense be limited to discussion between the Irish party and the
+Unionists. The Liberal peer expressed great interest and proved it in
+action. Next morning he was with Redmond by ten o'clock, and got his
+view in writing that it might be placed before the Cabinet, who were to
+meet at eleven to decide finally the terms of their letter.</p>
+
+<p>As a result of this intervention, the letter, instead of containing a
+single proposal, offered two alternatives: the second was so oddly
+tacked on that many at the time said it read like a postscript. So, in
+point of fact, it was. That was the genesis of the Irish Convention.</p>
+
+<p>His son, from whom I know this, said to me that more than once, when
+things were hopeful in the Convention, Redmond said to him, &quot;What a
+lucky thing it was I went to that dinner!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7">[7]</a><div class="note"><p> The Admiralty do not appear to have communicated their
+information to Dublin Castle.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8">[8]</a><div class="note"><p> This might mislead. The exclusively Protestant character of
+the Ulster Division was not maintained in France, and it came to include
+many Catholic Irishmen in the rank and file and not a few among the
+officers&mdash;all in equal comradeship.&mdash;S.G.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9">[9]</a><div class="note"><p> We had never been parties, for instance, to receptions of
+Prime Ministers from the overseas Dominions, even when they were our
+close friends and supporters.</p></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><a name="Page_259"></a>
+<a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CONVENTION AND THE END</h3>
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Longford election had in reality been not merely a symptom, but an
+event of great importance. It was a notice of dismissal to the
+Parliamentary party. There was no reason to suppose anything specially
+unfavourable to us in the local conditions. Neither candidate made a
+special appeal to the electors; nor was the constituency in any sense a
+stronghold of Sinn Fein. The fact was that the country as a whole had
+ceased to believe in the Parliamentary party as an efficient machine for
+obtaining the national ends. The organization of the United Irish League
+had lost touch with the young; the main support we had lay in the
+Ancient Order of Hibernians, which many Nationalists disliked on
+principle because it was limited to Catholics. What had riot yet
+disappeared up till July 1916, though it was threatened, was belief in
+the principle of constitutional action as against revolutionary methods.</p>
+
+<p>Willie Redmond, who never lacked instinct, and whose separation from
+party politics by conditions of service gave him a vantage-ground of
+detachment, reached a shrewd view of the position before the Longford
+vacancy occurred. He pressed upon his brother that we should all retire,
+saying plainly that we had been too long in possession, and should hand
+over the task of representing Ireland at Westminster to younger men. His
+association with the Volunteer Committee, brief though it was, had made
+him more aware than most of our colleagues how <a name="Page_260"></a>wide was the
+estrangement between us and the new Ireland; but it also taught him to
+believe that many of the men whom he had met there would be willing to
+take up the task on constitutional lines.</p>
+
+<p>This proposal never came before the party. But after Longford had given
+its decision, it was proposed that we should accept the verdict in
+general and resign in a body. Those who put forward the suggestion felt
+that some drastic action was needed to force upon Ireland the
+responsibility for a clear choice between the two courses,
+constitutional and unconstitutional. Redmond, as Chairman, advised
+strongly against this. He said that it would be a lack of courage: that
+one defeat or two defeats should not turn us from our course. But it is
+clear to me that he welcomed the Convention as another and a better
+means of effecting the same end&mdash;of replacing the existing Parliamentary
+party by another body of men.</p>
+
+<p>On May 21st Mr. Lloyd George's speech gave the go-by completely to the
+detailed proposal for a settlement on the basis of partition to which
+the Cabinet&mdash;including Sir Edward Carson&mdash;had consented. It dealt only
+with the alternative plan suggested in the conclusion of the published
+letter. The Government had decided to invite Irishmen to put forward
+their own proposals for the government of their country, he said. This
+invitation was directed to a Convention not merely of political parties,
+although they must all be represented&mdash;the followers of Redmond, of Mr.
+O'Brien, the Ulster Unionists, the Southern Unionists, &quot;and he hoped
+also the Sinn Feiners as well.&quot; But in the main it was to consist of
+&quot;representatives of the local governing bodies, of the Churches, of the
+trade unions, of the commercial interests, of educational interests&quot;; it
+was to be &quot;a real representation of Irish life and activity in all their
+leading branches.&quot; It was to be pledged in advance to no
+conclusions&mdash;except one, and that was only indicated by implication. &quot;If
+substantial agreement should be reached <a name="Page_261"></a>as to the character and scope
+of the Constitution for the future government of Ireland within the
+Empire&quot; (these three words were the limitation), Government would
+&quot;accept the responsibility for taking all the necessary steps to enable
+the Imperial Parliament to give legislative effect to the conclusions of
+the Convention.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A recommendation was added, amounting to a direction, that the
+Convention should sit with closed doors and publish nothing of its
+proceedings till their conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was said to define the all-important words &quot;substantial
+agreement.&quot; But the Prime Minister laid grave emphasis on the importance
+of a settlement for the purpose of the war. The limitation upon Ulster's
+claim was plainly conceived by him to lie in Ulster's sense of an
+Imperial necessity. &quot;The Empire cannot afford uncured sores that sap its
+vigour. The entire strength of Great Britain and the whole-hearted
+support of Ireland are essential to victory.&quot; He appealed &quot;to Irishmen
+of all faiths, political and religious, and especially to the patriotic
+spirit of Ulster, to help by healing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Redmond, in following him, assumed that there would be concurrence from
+all sections of Irishmen. It must be &quot;a free assembly&quot;&mdash;no proposal must
+be barred in advance: it must be representative of &quot;every class, creed
+and interest&quot;&mdash;and in recapitulating these, he added the Irish peers. In
+regard to political parties and bodies, as such, he desired a very
+limited representation. The United Irish League, &quot;the militant official
+organization of the Irish party,&quot; should be unrepresented, and he
+advised the same in regard to other purely political organizations and
+societies. For the Irish party itself he asked a representation only
+equal in number to that given to Irish Unionists. The Cork Independents
+must have what they considered a full and adequate number; and for Sinn
+Fein he asked &quot;a generous representation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then he added:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So anxious am I that no wreckers, mere wreckers, <a name="Page_262"></a>should go on that
+body&mdash;I do not believe any men would go on as wreckers, but any men who
+would be regarded by their opponents as going on it as wreckers&mdash;that on
+the question of personalities, I would be very glad, if there are
+protagonists on one side or the other who during the last twenty or
+thirty years or more have been engaged in the struggle and who&mdash;there
+have been faults on both sides&mdash;have done things and said things which
+have left bitter memories, I should be very glad that such men should be
+left off. If there were any feeling that I am such a man myself, I would
+be only too willing and happy to stand down&quot; (he was interrupted by
+cries of &quot;No, No&quot;) &quot;if by doing so I could promote harmony.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In this there was a genuine expression of the desire which governed his
+whole conduct in the Convention, to get away from the old lines with
+their old traditional antagonisms, and refer the solution not to Irish
+politicians but to Ireland as a whole. What followed in his speech gave
+positive development to the self-denying ordinance which he had proposed
+for the party machines. He asked for a nominated element&mdash;first, to make
+sure that men obviously suitable, who none the less might not happen to
+be elected, should find a place: and secondly, to increase still further
+the Unionist representation.</p>
+
+<p>He added once more a plea for quick action; dilatoriness had had much to
+do, he said, with the Government's late failures in Ireland. But, if
+prompt steps were taken on the path outlined, he would, in spite of all
+that had come and gone, face the new venture with good heart. Yet even
+in his confidence there was the pathetic accent of one who feels need to
+bid defiance to despair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Although I know I lay myself open perhaps to ridicule as too sanguine a
+prophet, I have some assured hope that the result may be blessed for
+Ireland as for the Empire. ... The life of a politician, especially of
+an Irish politician, is one long series of postponements and compromises
+and disappointments and disillusions.... Many <a name="Page_263"></a>of our cherished ideals,
+our ideals of complete, speedy and almost immediate triumph of our
+policy and of our cause, have faded, some of them almost disappeared.
+And we know that it is a serious consideration for those of us who have
+spent forty years at this work and now are growing old, if we have to
+face further postponements. For my part, I feel we must not shrink from
+compromise. If by this Convention which is now proposed we can secure
+substantial agreement amongst our people in Ireland, it will be worth
+all the heartburnings and postponements and disappointments and
+disillusions of the last thirty or forty years.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The omens were not favourable to this storm-beaten courage. When he sat
+down, Sir John Lonsdale rose to reiterate on behalf of the Ulster
+Unionists that they &quot;could not and would not be driven into a Home Rule
+Parliament&quot;&mdash;and that they relied absolutely on the pledges that they
+should not be coerced. Mr. William O'Brien followed. After years of
+advocating settlement by conference among Irishmen, he condemned this
+proposal as coming six or seven years too late, and as defective in its
+machinery, in that it proposed a large body of men: &quot;A dozen Irishmen of
+the right stamp&quot; would be the proper Conference; and the proposal of
+partition should be barred out in advance. If the experiment were tried
+now and failed, the failure would &quot;kill any reasonable hope in our time
+of reconstructing the constitutional movement upon honest lines.&quot;
+Ireland is always fruitful in Cassandras who do not lack power to assist
+in the fulfilment, of their ill-bodings, and this speech foreshadowed
+Mr. O'Brien's intention to abstain. Sir Edward Carson and Mr. Devlin
+gave the debate a more promising tone: but it was difficult for anybody
+to be sanguine.</p>
+
+<p>Preparation, discussion, went on in private and in public. It was soon
+indicated that Sinn Fein would take no part, on the double ground,
+first, that the Convention was not elective in any democratic sense, for
+all the repre<a name="Page_264"></a>sentatives of local bodies had been elected before the
+war, before the rebellion, before the new movement took hold in Ireland;
+and secondly, that it was committed in advance to a settlement within
+the Empire. On the other hand, Redmond was flooded with correspondence
+concerning candidates for membership of the new body. There was also the
+question of a meeting-place. The Royal College of Surgeons offered its
+building with its theatre, possessing admirable facilities. But Trinity
+College offered the Regent House. The conveniences here were in all ways
+inferior; but Trinity was the nearest place to the old Parliament House;
+much more than that, it was the most historic institution in Ireland.
+Its political associations of the past and the present were strangely
+blended and Redmond liked it none the less for that. He decided to press
+for acceptance of this offer.</p>
+
+<p>Then across the current of all our thought came the news of the Battle
+of Messines. Troops had been massing for some time on the sector of line
+which the Irish Divisions had now held since the previous October; and
+the day was plainly in sight which had been expected since spring, when
+they were to try and carry positions in front of which so much blood had
+been vainly shed. On June 7th, at the clearing of light, all was in
+readiness: the Ulstermen and ours still in the centre of the attack from
+Spanbroekmolen to Wytschaete. Just before the moment fixed, men could
+see clearly: in half a minute all was blotted out. The eighteen huge
+land-mines in whose shafts our second line had been so often billeted
+were now at last exploded and the sky was full of powdered earth, with
+God knows what other fragments. In that darkness the troops went over.</p>
+
+<p>For once staff-work and execution harmonized perfectly; the success was
+complete, and the sacrifice small. The Irish raced for their positions,
+and no one could say who was first on the goal. News of the victory
+quickly reached London&mdash;great news for Ireland. Australians <a name="Page_265"></a>and New
+Zealanders had their full share in it, but the shoulder to shoulder
+advance of the two Irish Divisions caught everyone's imagination: it was
+Ireland's day.</p>
+
+<p>Then came through the message that Willie Redmond had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since his illness in the previous summer he had been taken away
+from his work as company commander; at his age&mdash;fifty-six&mdash;he was
+probably the oldest man in any capacity with the Division. A post was
+found for him on General Hickie's divisional staff which made him
+specially responsible for the comforts of the men, in trenches and out
+of trenches. In the battles on the Somme he entreated hard to be let
+rejoin his battalion, but General Hickie issued peremptory orders which
+did not allow him to pass the first dressing-station. Here, indeed, he
+was under terrible shell fire and saw many of his comrades struck down;
+but he was not content. For this new battle he insisted that he must be
+in the actual advance. If he were refused leave, he said he would break
+all discipline and take it. He was permitted to be with the third
+attacking wave; but he slipped forward and joined the first, on the
+right, where the line touched the Ulstermen. So it happened that when he
+fell, struck by two rifle bullets, the stretcher-bearers who helped him
+and carried him down to the dressing-station were those of an Ulster
+regiment. He was brought back to the hospital in the convent at Locre,
+familiar to all of us by many memories; for the nuns kept a restaurant
+for officers in the refectory, and he and I had dined there more than
+once with leading men of the Ulster Division. His wounds were not grave;
+but he had overtaxed himself, and in a few hours he succumbed to shock.
+It was the death that he had foreseen, that he had almost desired&mdash;a
+death that many might have envied him. He had said more than once since
+the rebellion that he thought he could best serve Ireland by dying; and
+in the sequel, so deep was the impression <a name="Page_266"></a>left by his death that it
+seemed at times as if his thought had been true.</p>
+
+<p>Yet one aspect of it was overlooked by many&mdash;the loss inflicted on his
+brother, the Irish leader. It was not merely that Redmond lost the sole
+near kinsman of his generation; he lost in him the closest of those
+comrades who had been allied with him in all the stages of his life's
+fight. The veterans of the old party had been vanishing rapidly from the
+scene; name succeeded name quickly on our death-roll. This death left
+Redmond lonely, and sorely stricken in his affections. But it did more.
+It deprived him of a counsellor, and perhaps the only counsellor he had
+who temperamentally shared his own point of view. More especially now in
+the war, when the leader's wisdom in giving the lead which he had given
+began to be gravely questioned even by his own supporters, it was
+invaluable for him to have backing from one who had taken the war as
+part of his life's creed&mdash;who knew no hesitancies, no reserves in his
+conviction that the right course had been followed, for the right thing
+was to do the right. Finally and chiefly, Willie Redmond was the only
+man who could break through his brother's constitutional reserve and
+could force him into discussion. In the months that were to come such a
+man was badly needed. The loss of him meant to John Redmond a loss of
+personal efficiency. Sorrow gave a strong grip to depression on a
+brooding mind which had always a proneness to melancholy, which was now
+linked with a sick body, and which lived among disappointments and grief
+and the sense of rancorous dislike in men who once thought it a
+privilege to cheer him on his passing.</p>
+
+<p>Add to all this that Redmond's one hope for Ireland now lay in the
+Convention, and that he collated with good reason on his soldier
+brother's influence there&mdash;as no man could fail to do who had seen the
+effect which his last speech produced upon the House of Commons.</p><a name="Page_267"></a>
+
+<p>No doubt, however, part of the service which Willie Redmond rendered to
+Ireland in dying lay in the sympathy which he conciliated to his
+leader&mdash;in whom men saw, rightly, not only his nearest kinsman, but the
+representative of the principles for which the soldier-politician died.
+The sympathy was genuine and it was widespread; yet so reserved was John
+Redmond that few, I think, guessed how deeply the blow had struck home.
+Still less did they realize how much was meant by the bereavement which
+followed immediately. Pat O'Brien, who had been through all vicissitudes
+the faithful and devoted helper of his friend and leader, was suddenly
+prostrated by a stroke. He came down to the House again; he could not
+keep away from the place of his duty, where for a quarter of a century
+he had scarcely missed one division in a hundred, where he had kept
+watch for Redmond like the most trusty sheep-dog; but death was written
+over him and it came in a few days. He was the one friend, I believe,
+whom Redmond would have taken with him to Aughavanagh after Willie
+Redmond's death. Now, Aughavanagh, which had been a place of rest, was a
+place of intense loneliness. Yet to Aughavanagh Redmond had withdrawn
+himself, like a wounded creature; and from Aughavanagh he came to Dublin
+for Pat O'Brien's funeral in Glasnevin. Then, and then only in his
+lifetime people saw him publicly break down; he had to be led away from
+the grave.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, he was beset by ceaseless correspondence concerning the
+numbers and composition of the assembly to which the British Government
+on his suggestion had decided to entrust so great a charge. But a
+startling political event indicated only too plainly how much belated
+that decision had been.</p>
+
+<p>Directly the proposal for a Convention had been disclosed, with its
+attempt to create a new atmosphere, it was put to the Government that
+Sinn Fein could not be expected to take part in the Convention while its
+<a name="Page_268"></a>leaders were in jail or under detention as suspects. This
+representation came from several quarters, and it was soon publicly
+pleaded by the Nationalist party; but it was, to my knowledge,
+immediately put forward by English members of Parliament, the prime
+mover being a Unionist soldier, Major J.W. Hills, M.P. As usual, the
+advantage of prompt action was urged; and as visual, the concession was
+delayed till it had lost its grace and seemed to be extracted. Sinn
+Fein's opinion in all these days was hardening against the Convention,
+which was represented as a mere trick to gain time and to conciliate
+American good will by an unreal offer.</p>
+
+<p>When the prisoners were released, a new personage immediately came into
+the public eye. It was certain that one of them would be nominated to
+contest the vacancy in East Clare left by Willie Redmond's death; the
+choice fell on Mr. de Valera; and the world learnt that in these months
+while the imprisoned Sinn Feiners had been discussing their plans for
+the future&mdash;for the right of association as political prisoners had been
+conceded to them&mdash;this young man had been recognized by his fellows as
+the leading spirit. Ireland as a whole knew nothing of him. He was the
+son of a Southern American and a county Limerick woman; scholarly, a
+keen Gaelic Leaguer, by profession a teacher of mathematics. In the
+rebellion he had held Boland's bakery, a large building covering the
+approaches to Dublin from Kingstown by rail; he had been the last of the
+leaders to surrender, and had earned high opinions by his conduct in
+these operations. This was the Sinn Fein candidate for East Clare&mdash;a
+county where &quot;extreme&quot; men had always been numerous.</p>
+
+<p>The view was expressed that he should have been opposed by one who took
+up the cause where Willie Redmond left it&mdash;by a soldier who was a strong
+Nationalist and strongly identified with the Parnellite tradition. It
+was decided that we should stand a better chance if <a name="Page_269"></a>constitutional
+Nationalism were represented by a Dublin lawyer with close personal ties
+to the constituency. How it would have gone had a soldier been put up,
+no man can say; but it could not have gone worse. Mr. de Valera won by a
+majority of five thousand. He was a stranger, but he stood for an ideal.
+The alternative ideal&mdash;which was John Redmond's and Willie
+Redmond's&mdash;had never been put before the electors. The election was,
+rightly, taken as a repudiation of Redmond's policy; but in it Redmond's
+policy had gone undefended.</p>
+
+<p>The newly elected Sinn Fein leader was very prominent in these days, and
+a good deal of his eloquence was spent in ridicule of the Convention.
+That body was certainly starting its task under the most unpromising
+auspices.</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+<p>The first meeting was fixed for July 25. On the evening before, Redmond
+came up and there was an informal discussion between the Nationalist
+members of Parliament and the Catholic Bishops. There were four of each
+group. Five members had been allowed to the party and as many to the
+Ulstermen. Redmond was not present at the meeting when selection was
+made, but he recommended a list, consisting in addition to himself of
+Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin, and Mr. Clancy, K.C.&mdash;the latter having been
+always his most trusted adviser in all points of draftsmanship and
+constitutional law. My name was added in the place which should have
+been his brother's, as representing Irish troops.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dillon, however, thought it better not to serve, though Redmond
+pressed him very strongly to do so. He considered he could best help the
+Convention from outside its ranks. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy had, on
+different grounds, come to the same conclusion, so that <a name="Page_270"></a>we lacked the
+assistance of three commanding personalities in Irish life, though we
+were thereby freed from some dangers of personal friction. A vacant
+place was thus left in our five, and since the Ulster party had decided
+to put in only two members of Parliament, filling the other places with
+local men, it was thought well that we should take a similar
+representative, Mr. Harbison, who spoke for the county of Tyrone.</p>
+
+<p>Of the four representatives of the hierarchy, Archbishop Harty of Cashel
+had always been a downright outspoken supporter of the Parliamentary
+party. He had publicly denounced the rebellion both on civil and on
+moral grounds. But he had never been prominently concerned with
+political affairs as such; nor had the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr.
+MacRory, a man young for his office and not long in it. He had been
+chosen, no doubt, to guard the special interests of Catholicism in the
+north-east corner. The others were of a very different stamp; no two in
+Ireland had a better right to the name of statesmen. Dr. O'Donnell, the
+Bishop of Raphoe, had been for many years officially one of the
+treasurers of the United Irish League. Since the foundation of the
+Congested Districts Board, he had been one of its members, and served on
+the Dudley Commission which inquired into these regions. His native
+Donegal could show the traces of his influence in applying remedial
+measures to what was once its terrible poverty. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of
+Ross, came from the extreme south of the same western coast-line; a keen
+student of finance and economics, he had been a member of the Primrose
+Committee on Financial Relations, and, before that, of Lord George
+Hamilton's Commission on the Poor Law. His repute was great in his own
+order and outside his own order. In any assembly these two brains would
+have been distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>The question which was discussed among us chiefly on that evening
+concerned the choice of a chairman.<a name="Page_271"></a> Government had originally proposed
+to nominate this all-important officer, but having failed to solve the
+interminable difficulties, had left it to the assembly. Much trouble was
+anticipated by the public. On the whole, our conclusion pointed, but not
+decisively, to the choice which was eventually made. Redmond swept aside
+peremptorily the suggestion of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Next day we assembled&mdash;some ninety persons. The main bulk consisted of
+local representatives&mdash;thirty-one chairmen of County Councils, one only
+having declined to serve. Two of these, Mr. O'Dowd and Mr. Fitzgibbon,
+were members of our party. There were eight representatives of the Urban
+Councils, over and above the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork and
+the Mayor of Derry. Labour had seven representatives, one of whom, Mr.
+Lundon, representing the Agricultural Labourers' Union of the South, was
+an Irish member of Parliament. One was a railway operative from Dublin;
+one a Catholic Trade-Unionist leader from Derry; the remaining four came
+from Belfast. Organized labour in Dublin and the Southern towns had
+endorsed Sinn F&eacute;in's attitude and declined to recognize the Convention.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern Unionist Group was led by Lord Midleton; with him were
+Lords Mayo and Oranmore, representing the Irish peers. The Irish
+Unionist Alliance had sent Mr. Stewart, a great land-agent, and Mr.
+Andrew Jameson (whose name, as someone said, was &quot;a household word
+written in letters of gold throughout Ireland&quot;). The Chambers of
+Commerce had their representatives from Dublin, Belfast and Cork.</p>
+
+<p>In the Ulster group, Mr. Barrie, M.P., acted as leader, Lord Londonderry
+as secretary. Of the rest, Sir George Clark, chairman of Workman and
+Clark's great shipbuilding yard, had been known to us in Parliament. A
+Scot by birth, with a life of thirty years spent in Belfast, during
+which time he had seen his business grow from two hundred hands to ten
+thousand, he knew nothing <a name="Page_272"></a>of Ireland but Belfast, and had no trace of
+Irish feeling. In this he stood alone; but unhappily no man carried more
+weight in Belfast&mdash;with the possible exception of one whom few of us
+outside Ulster knew before we came to that body. Mr. Alexander McDowell
+was a solicitor by profession, the adviser of policy to all the business
+men of Belfast. From the first day of our meeting he stood out by sheer
+weight of brain and personality. He was to some of us the surprise of
+that assembly, and made us realize how little part we had in Ulster when
+the existence of such a man could be an unknown factor to us.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pollock, President of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, was also new
+to us, and was destined to play a prominent part in our affairs. With
+the Catholic prelates sat the two Archbishops of the Church of
+Ireland&mdash;Dr. Crozier and Dr. Bernard&mdash;to both of whom the democratic
+constitution of their Church had given great experience in management of
+business and discussion. Dr. MacDermott, Moderator of the Presbyterian
+General Assembly, was the official head of his Church for the year only
+and had not equal knowledge of administration. An orator, with a touch
+of the enthusiast in his temperament, he was a simple and sympathetic
+figure; vehement in his political faith, yet responsive to all the human
+charities and deeply a lover of his country. There was no better
+representative there of Ulster, of the Ulster difficulty&mdash;at once so
+separate from and so akin to the rest of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The Government nominees included, as was only natural, the most
+personally distinguished group. First of them should be named the
+Provost of Trinity, Dr. Mahaffy, under whose aegis we assembled&mdash;a great
+scholar and a great Irishman. He brought with him an element of
+independent unregimented political thought&mdash;often freakish in
+expression, but based on a vast knowledge of men and countries. In a
+more practical sense,<a name="Page_273"></a> Lord MacDonnell and Lord Dunraven were our chief
+political theorists, devisers by temperament of constitutional
+machinery. Lord MacDonnell's repute as an administrator, Lord Dunraven's
+as a leading figure in the Land Conference, gave weight to whatever came
+from them. Lord Granard, who sat with them, was a Catholic peer who had
+commanded a battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in the Tenth Division
+and had held offices in Mr. Asquith's Government. He had now the
+brilliant idea of reopening for the period of the Convention one of the
+most beautiful eighteenth-century dwellings, Ely House, and making it a
+centre of hospitality and a meeting-place for friendly outside
+intercourse. Few more useful assistances were rendered to our purpose,
+and certainly none more pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Desart, a distinguished lawyer, acted closely with Lord Midleton.
+Sir Bertram Windle, President of University College, was another of
+Government's choices&mdash;a man of science who was also very much a man of
+affairs. Another, far less of a debater, far more of a power, was Mr.
+William Martin Murphy, Chairman of the Dublin Tramways, a powerful
+employer of labour who had headed the fight against Larkin in 1913, and
+had been mainly responsible for the character of the employers' victory.
+He was the owner of the most widely circulated Irish paper, the <i>Irish
+Independent</i>&mdash;which stood in journalism for what Mr. Healy represented
+in Parliament&mdash;an envenomed Nationalist opposition to the Parliamentary
+party.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Edward Lysaght, the son of a great manufacturer in South Wales,
+combined like his father an aptitude for literature and for business; he
+wrote books, he was concerned in a publishing venture, but he was
+chiefly interested in his farm in county Clare&mdash;where he had voted for
+de Valera. He had been chosen deliberately as a link with Sinn Fein. It
+stamped an aspect of the Convention that he was the youngest man
+there&mdash;for <a name="Page_274"></a>he would not have been noticeably young in the House of
+Commons. We were a middle-aged assembly. Another link, though not so
+explicit, with Republican Ireland was Mr. George Russell, &quot;A.E.,&quot; poet,
+writer on co-operative economics, a mystic, with all a mystic's
+shrewdness, an orator with much personal magnetism. Lastly, there was
+Sir Horace Plunkett, perhaps the only member of the Convention except
+Redmond whose name would have occurred to every Irishman as
+indispensably necessary.</p>
+
+<p>Two other personages should be noted. Mr. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh,
+Chairman of the Carlow County Council, was by tradition and training a
+strong Unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old
+Irish princely families. He had been elected to the Vice-Chairmanship of
+his County Council while still a Unionist; later, he adhered to Lord
+Dunraven's proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way
+house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member
+of our party; by temperament deeply conservative, he was in no way
+separated by that from many of the ablest Nationalists, lay and
+ecclesiastic. As a speaker he had few equals in the Convention; no man
+there, indeed, except Redmond, could throw equal passion into the plea
+of urgency for a settlement, for I think no other man felt it with such
+earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Doran, Chairman of the Louth Council, was on his way back to
+France when the summons to the Convention stopped him. A Methodist, he
+was divided by religion from his neighbours in County Louth: but that
+did not stop them from putting this prosperous and capable farmer,
+working his land on the most modern methods, into the Chair of their
+County Council. Before the war, when the Larne gun-running took place,
+he decided that matters looked serious, called his friends together and
+formed a company of Volunteers, who might be needed to protect
+themselves or to protect other Nationalists across the adjacent Ulster
+border.<a name="Page_275"></a> After the war had broken out and the Home Rule Act was passed,
+and Redmond had launched his appeal, this country farmer, then aged
+fifty, made his way to Mallow and asked General Parsons to accept him as
+a recruit. He was accepted, and very shortly given a commission in the
+Dublin Fusiliers. Out of his local Volunteers he took seventy-five into
+the Army with him. He was with the Sixteenth Division from its landing
+in France till after the day of Messines, commanding his company. All
+this gave him an authority in an assembly where all voices were in
+support of the war, and more particularly in an appeal to Ulster; and
+with this advantage went an unusual gift of frank and eloquent speech,
+linked with a fine idealism.</p>
+
+<p>These were the main personal elements in the group that came together on
+July 25th&mdash;Mr. Duke, the Chief Secretary, acting as temporary Chairman
+and Sir Francis Hopwood (soon to become Lord Southborough) having been
+brought over as Secretary. Mr. Duke having addressed us with an earnest
+suavity, we were told to select a Chairman: and on the motion of the
+Primate, Archbishop Crozier, this embarrassing task was delegated to a
+committee of ten, rapidly told off. We adjourned for lunch, and on
+reassembling found that a unanimous recommendation named Sir Horace
+Plunkett. The Ulstermen had expressed a willingness to accept Redmond.
+This he refused to discuss; but he was put into the Chair of the
+selecting committee. There was a recommendation also that Sir Francis
+Hopwood should be Secretary to the Convention. Both these proposals were
+welcomed, and we dispersed feeling that we had done a good day's work.</p>
+
+<p>There was, however, one set-off to it. When the Selection Committee had
+done its work, its members went off singly, and outside the gate of
+College a small group of ardent patriots were waiting, who mobbed
+Redmond on the way to his hotel. They were young, <a name="Page_276"></a>no doubt; but the
+Republican party claimed specially the youth of Ireland; and these lads
+expressed with a simple eloquence very much what was said by older and
+more articulate voices, uttering the same thought in print. It is worth
+while to illustrate here the attitude taken towards Redmond by much of
+Nationalist Ireland, for it profoundly influenced Redmond's attitude and
+action in the Convention. I take, not casual and partisan journalism,
+but a passage from a book published by a distinguished Irish writer who
+had never publicly attached himself to any party. Mr. James Stephens was
+in Dublin during the insurrection; he wrote a book about his own
+personal observation of it, which as a record of observation is
+admirable. But when Mr. Stephens comes to emit opinions, here is what he
+has to say:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly.
+It happened because the leader of the Irish party misrepresented his
+people in the English House of Parliament. On the day of the declaration
+of war between England and Germany he took the Irish case, weighty with
+eight centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the
+window. He pledged Ireland to a particular course of action, and he had
+no authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would
+be met. The ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional
+nature betrayed him and us and England. He swore Ireland to loyalty as
+if he had Ireland in his pocket and could answer for her. Ireland has
+never been disloyal to England, not even at this epoch, <i>because she has
+never been loyal to England</i>, and the profession of her National faith
+has been unwavering, has been known to every English person alive, and
+has been clamant to all the world beside.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it that he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated
+Ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality
+(if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this
+country.<a name="Page_277"></a> He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have
+gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received
+politically whatever England could have safely given him. But, alas!
+these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment. They were
+not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to
+Ireland or to England, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so
+he pledged his country's credit so deeply that he did not leave her even
+one National rag to cover herself with.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After a lie, truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and
+serene goddess we knew or hoped for&mdash;it is a disease, it is a moral
+syphilis, and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been
+purged. Mr. Redmond told the lie, and he is answerable to England for
+the violence she had to be guilty of, and to Ireland for the desolation
+to which we have had to submit. Without his lie there had been no
+Insurrection, without it there had been at this moment, and for a year
+past, an end to the 'Irish question.' Ireland must in ages gone have
+been guilty of abominable crimes, or she could not at this juncture have
+been afflicted with a John Redmond.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Politicians everywhere need to grow tough skins; but Redmond, though he
+was a veteran in politics, had no special gift that way. It was not
+pleasant for the Nationalist leader, when an assembly of Irishmen were
+called together to attempt the framing of a Constitution, to find
+himself the object, and the sole object, of public insult; it was not
+pleasant for him to feel that he might at any time be subjected to a
+renewal of this experience in the streets of Ireland's capital, where he
+had been acclaimed as a hero so few years ago. It was not pleasant for
+him to feel that whenever he took up a book or paper dealing with
+Ireland he was liable to come upon some outburst such as the one which I
+have quoted. These things were pin-pricks, yet pin-pricks administered
+in <a name="Page_278"></a>public; and the mere effort to endure such things without wincing
+saps a man's vitality. Behind them lay the definite repudiation of his
+policy in election after election&mdash;for Kilkenny City followed the
+example of Clare and replaced Pat O'Brien by a Sinn Feiner. He was
+repudiated in the eye of the world, and repudiated with every
+circumstance of contumely. Plainly in the Convention he could no longer
+claim to speak for Ireland; that limited gravely his power to serve.</p>
+
+<p>I think, however, that deep in his heart a resentment, all the more
+rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard
+against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in
+the Convention he had sought to pledge Ireland without due mandate or
+had committed anyone but himself. All that was personal in his
+resources&mdash;his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence&mdash;all
+this he put unreservedly at the Convention's service: but he abstained,
+and I think not only out of policy but as the result of silent anger,
+from making the least use of that authority which he still possessed and
+which he might easily have augmented. If in the result he took too
+little upon him, lest anyone should ever say he had taken too much, and
+if because he left too much to others Ireland was the loser, Ireland
+must bear not the loss only but the blame.</p>
+
+<p>Many even of those who most agreed with his action had, under the
+influence and events of these years and of public comments on these
+events, lost confidence in him. Some weeks after the Convention
+assembled, a very able priest said to me that he regarded Redmond as &quot;a
+worn-out man.&quot; The genuineness of his regret was proved by the delight
+with which he heard what I could tell him. Never in my life did I find
+so much cause for admiration of Redmond as in the early stages&mdash;which
+were in many ways the most important&mdash;of our meetings. Never at any time
+did I know him exert so successfully his charm of public manner. At the
+second day's meeting, <a name="Page_279"></a>when the new Chairman took up his place and
+function, there were several small points to be settled, each capable of
+creating friction; and it has to be admitted that in the technical
+aspect of his duty Sir Horace Plunkett did not shine: business quickly
+became involved. Fortunately he was of a temper to welcome help, and it
+was quickly to hand. Archbishop Crozier showed himself to be
+accomplished, resourceful, and most tactful on all points of procedure:
+and Redmond then for the first time did with extraordinary skill what he
+had to do at many stages later. By a series of questions to the Chair he
+suggested rather than recommended a way of clearing the involved issue;
+and all this was done with a precision of phrase which was none the less
+exact because it was easy, and with a dignity which was none the less
+impressive because it had no pretence to effect. His mastery both of the
+form and substance of procedure was conspicuous. One of the ablest among
+the Southern Unionists said to me in these days: &quot;He is superb: he does
+not seem able to put a word wrong.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>I think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this,
+that within the Convention he was happy. There was a note in it that I
+never felt in the House of Commons, even when he was at his best. There
+he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar
+faces. Here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in
+his life in an assembly in no way sectional. For from the first it was
+plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of
+normal, ordinary Irish life: farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord,
+tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer&mdash;all were there in pleasantly familiar
+types. The atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it
+resembled rather some casual assemblage where all sorts of men had met
+by accident and conversed without prejudice. Everybody met somebody whom
+he had known in some quite different relation of life and with whom he
+had never <a name="Page_280"></a>looked to be associated in any such task as the framing of a
+Constitution. It was all oddly haphazard, full of interest and
+surprises; all of us were a little out of our bearings, but much
+disposed to reconnoitre in the spirit of friendly advance.</p>
+
+<p>After the first day of Sir Horace Plunkett's chairmanship there was an
+adjournment of something like a fortnight to give the Chairman and
+secretariat time for preparation: and in this interval a plan of action
+was formed. The object in view was to avoid the danger of an immediate
+break and to give play to the reconciling influences. It was decided to
+begin by a prolonged process of general discussion, in which men could
+express their minds freely without the necessity of coming to an
+operative decision on any of the controversial points, until the value
+of each could be assessed in relation to the possibility of a general
+agreement.</p>
+
+<p>The plan adopted was to discuss, without division taken, the schemes
+which had been submitted by members of the Convention and by others.
+Members would propose and expound their own projects: for the exposition
+of the others some member must make himself responsible.</p>
+
+<p>At this &quot;presentation stage&quot; and at all stages, Redmond absolutely
+declined to put forward a plan in his own name. This was not only from
+temperamental reasons: there was an official obstacle. He was an
+individual member of the Convention: but he was Chairman of the Irish
+party, pledged not to bind it without its consent. He felt, no doubt,
+that any detailed proposal from him would be taken as binding the party,
+whom he could not consult without bringing them into the secrets of the
+Convention.</p>
+
+<p>But this attitude of self-abnegation was pushed very far by him, and
+perhaps too far. In his early utterances he deprecated all official
+recognition of sections. Yet from the moment when committees came to be
+appointed this recognition was claimed; and from the first the<a name="Page_281"></a> Ulster
+group maintained a compact organization. They had their own chairman,
+Mr. Barrie, and their secretary; they secured a committee-room for their
+own purposes; they voted solidly as one man. All this, though we did not
+know it at first, was dictated by the conditions of their attendance.
+They were pledged to act simply as delegates, who must submit every
+question of importance to an Advisory Committee in Belfast&mdash;behind which
+again was the Ulster Unionist Council. They had therefore no freedom of
+action and were of necessity extremely guarded in speech.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern Unionists, including the representatives of the Irish
+peers, were also organized as a group; but they came to the Convention
+with much fuller powers. They felt themselves bound to consider, and in
+certain conditions to consult, those whom they represented; but they
+were free to originate suggestions, and individually each man expressed
+his own view. But they too had their meeting-place and their frequent
+consultations.</p>
+
+<p>The handful of Labour men also met and discussed action, though they
+were not organized as a group and did not feel pledged to a joint
+course. Each, according to his own lights, represented the interests of
+Labour. Still, they met.</p>
+
+<p>The only group which had no common centre of reunion was that of the
+Nationalists&mdash;a majority of the whole assembly. This included the
+representatives of the Irish party and the County and Urban Councillors,
+all of whom had been returned as its supporters. It included also the
+four representatives of the hierarchy, every one of whom had been either
+actually or potentially a part of Nationalist Conventions, and of whom
+three had been most prominent supporters of the general organization.</p>
+
+<p>But a difficulty existed in the presence of other personages who were in
+general support of us, but who outside the Convention belonged to a
+different category. Lord Dunraven was a Home Ruler, but had been no
+supporter <a name="Page_282"></a>of the Irish party. Lord MacDonnell stood much nearer to us,
+but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician.
+Mr. Lysaght had voted against us in Clare. Mr. Russell had very often
+attacked the party on aspects of its general action. Above all, there
+was Mr. W.M. Murphy, who, like Mr. Healy, had been at one time a member
+of the Irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support
+of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all
+forces together to discredit and weaken its influence.</p>
+
+<p>All of these five men were Government nominees, as were also Lord
+Granard and Sir Bertram Windle, who in different ways gave Redmond
+complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call
+together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national
+organization which would have excluded all these and included the
+Bishops;<a name="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10"><sup>[10]</sup></a> but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do
+this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still
+more of partisan machinery. His conclusion was to do nothing; and it was
+a conclusion to which he was prone at all times when he did not see his
+way clear. This temperamental disinclination to take any action which
+might create difficulties was in these days at its height with him.
+Since the spring his usually perfect health had been failing; he
+suffered from the physical inertia which accompanies the growth of a
+fatal disease; and sorrow upon sorrow, rebuff upon rebuff, had weakened
+the resilience of his mind. It was not that he lacked courage or
+confidence in his own judgment; but he was bound as a statesman to make
+allowance for the estimate which others, his followers, would put upon
+that judgment when he declared it. Sensitive by nature, he was deeply
+aware of failure which had resulted from the most disparaging of
+causes&mdash;not flat rejection, but belated, half-<a name="Page_283"></a>hearted and blundering
+adoption, of whatever course he had proposed. He overrated, I am sure,
+the extent to which his personal position had been depreciated in the
+minds of those who were there. It was true, as the event was to prove,
+that he could no longer count on unquestioning support of any policy
+simply on the ground that he advocated it; but any opinion which he
+presented would have been commended not only by the cogency of his
+argument but by an old esteem for his wisdom, and, above and beyond
+this, by a personal feeling Men would have inclined to his side not for
+the argument's sake only, but for his sake.</p>
+
+<p>There was felt, too, precisely at the moment when it mattered most, the
+defect in his quality as leader. He lacked the personal touch. It was
+not that he would not, but that he could not, put himself into contact
+with the individual minds of men. He owed it, I think, to the rank and
+file to give them more of his guidance than they actually received. He
+was a genial presence when they met; but of confidential discussion upon
+details I am sure that nothing passed. Had he called the group together,
+had he spoken his mind to them collectively, in confidence, things would
+in all ways have been better. But there was ingrained in him a sort of
+shyness, a repugnance to force his view on others by argument, an
+indisposition to controversy, which was his limitation; and all this was
+at this time accentuated by the hurt sense that there would be always in
+men's minds a memory, not of the hundred times when his wisdom had amply
+justified itself, but of recent occasions when he had advised them and
+the result was not what he foretold.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, then, this criticism&mdash;what he said and did publicly in the
+Convention could hardly by stretch of imagination have been bettered.
+But outside its sessions he did not handle his team. On the balance,
+probably, he thought it better to leave them to their own devices; but
+his temperament weighed in that decision.<a name="Page_284"></a> As a result, the County
+Councillors and other local representatives used to hold meetings of
+their own. They were shrewd and capable men; but in the matters with
+which we had to deal the most skilled direction was necessary; and there
+was never a man more capable of giving them guidance out of a lifetime's
+experience than was Redmond, nor one from whom they would have more
+willingly accepted instruction.</p>
+
+<p>Discussion in the Convention itself was not of great value for the
+education of opinion, because men naturally were reluctant to get up and
+state precisely their individual difficulties, which in a confidential
+interchange of views might have been shown to proceed from some defect
+in comprehension. The chief value in the debates lay in what they
+revealed rather than what they imparted. One fact was salient. No
+Nationalist was prepared to recommend acceptance of the Home Rule Act as
+it stood, though some of its most vehement assailants adopted great
+parts of its framework. Broadly speaking, Nationalists wanted for
+Ireland the powers which were possessed by a self-governing Dominion,
+but were content to leave all control of defence to the Imperial
+authority and did not press any demand for a local militia. On the other
+hand, there was strong insistence on the right of an Irish Parliament to
+have complete power of taxation within its jurisdiction.</p>
+
+<p>It was manifest that the financial clauses of the existing Act would no
+longer apply. They were framed in view of a situation which found
+Ireland contributing ten millions in taxation and costing twelve to
+administer. Now, less than half the taxation paid the cost of all Irish
+services and the balance went towards the war.</p>
+
+<p>It was also evident that Nationalists were prepared to make concessions
+to the minority quite inconsistent with the current democratic view of
+what a Constitution should be. The Bishop of Raphoe, for instance,
+expressed willingness to have the Irish peers as an Upper House.<a name="Page_285"></a> Lord
+Midleton, however, for the Southern Unionists, insisted that those whom
+he spoke for must have a voice in the House of Commons&mdash;however they got
+it; and there was general desire to give it them, even by methods which
+no one could justify for general application.</p>
+
+<p>In short, it became increasingly clear as the debates proceeded that we
+could come to an arrangement with Unionists if Lord Midleton represented
+Unionism. But he did not. Ulster was there; and the Ulster men made it
+plain that their business was to hear suggestions, not to put them
+forward. Two facts, however, emerged about Ulster's attitude. The first
+was that in coming to the Convention the Ulstermen had expected to
+negotiate on the basis of taking the Home Rule Act as the maximum
+Nationalist demand. The only compromise which they had contemplated was
+a mean term between the provisions of that Act and Ulster's demand for a
+continuance of the legislative Union so far as Ulster was concerned. The
+second was that Belfast regarded as ruinous to its interests any
+possibility of a tariff war with Great Britain, and believed that if
+Ireland were given the power to fix its own customs duties the dominant
+farming interest would seek to find revenue by new taxation on imports.
+Hence, the proposal to give Ireland full fiscal powers could not be
+acceptable to Ulster. Here lay the main rock in our course.</p>
+
+<p>As the discussion proceeded, one category of proposals was summarily
+dealt with&mdash;those which contemplated the setting up of some provincial
+authority intermediate between the central Parliament, which all
+postulated, and the existing local bodies in the counties. This policy
+did not lack advocates. But the County Councillors were solid against
+it: evidently their private meeting discussed and decided against an
+expedient which they held would detract from the dignity of the central
+Parliament and from the dignity of the County Councils. Those who
+defended it as a plan which might <a name="Page_286"></a>meet Ulster's difficulty got no
+backing from Ulster; that group said neither for nor against it. In the
+rest of the assembly there was a strong feeling against anything that
+looked like partition or might in public be called partition. Several of
+us had thought in advance that this was the most likely path to the
+solution; and looking back, I think it ought to have been much more
+fully explored. But encouragement was lacking.</p>
+
+<p>Another anticipation proved illusory. We all realized that in the
+circumstances Ireland could come to a financial arrangement with Great
+Britain on easier terms than at any time in her history; that to settle
+at once would be highly profitable; and more particularly, that we could
+probably secure the completion of land purchase as part of the bargain.
+It was thought that this argument would appeal to the commercial sense
+of Ulster. We were met by a resolute reiteration that Ulster considered
+it Ulster's duty and Ireland's duty to take a full share, equally with
+the rest of the United Kingdom, in all the consequences of the war&mdash;even
+if it cost them their last shilling; and Ulster speakers denounced our
+argument as a bribe. Some Nationalists were inclined to discount these
+protestations, yet I see no reason to doubt their sincerity. At all
+events, no one disputed that it was to Ireland's interest financially
+that a settlement should be made.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite unnecessary to summarize here in any detail the course of
+these general discussions in full Convention, which began on August
+21st. One thing, however, resulted from them on which too much emphasis
+cannot be laid. In the process of &quot;exploring each other's minds,&quot; as the
+phrase went, we came to know and to like one another. Later in the year,
+a friend of mine, high placed in the Ulster Division, but not an
+Ulsterman by upbringing or sympathy, came home from France. He told me
+that the main impression on the minds of Ulster delegates had been made
+by the Nationalist County<a name="Page_287"></a> Councillors. They had expected noisy
+demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them
+with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than
+too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of
+dissent. What Willie Redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming
+true: Irishmen brought into contact with one another in the Convention,
+as other Irishmen had been brought into contact in the trenches, and no
+longer kept apart by those unhappy severances which run through ordinary
+Irish life, came under the influence of that fundamental fellowship,
+deeper than all divergence of politics or creed, which draws our people
+into a sense of a common bond.</p>
+
+<p>The desire to bring delegates together in friendly social intercourse
+had shown itself in many quarters. The Viceregal Lodge pressed
+invitations on us, and Redmond, though in the circumstances he himself
+would go to no entertainment anywhere, expressed his wish that
+Nationalists should alter their traditional attitude and accept what was
+offered in so friendly a spirit. But the first place where we met as a
+body with informal ease was at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord
+Mayor&mdash;a popular figure in our assembly.</p>
+
+<p>Next day the Lord Mayor of Belfast rose at the adjournment to express
+all our thanks, and to insist that there should be a session in Belfast,
+where he could return the compliment. Immediately, there came another
+proposal for a similar visit to the South of Ireland. We went to Belfast
+at the beginning of September, and the attitude of the Ulster members,
+which had till then been somewhat guarded and aloof, changed into that
+of the traditional Irish hospitality. They showed us their great linen
+mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in
+which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries,
+works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any
+cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design
+<a name="Page_288"></a>combining lightness and strength. Perhaps the most impressive sight of
+all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards. Endless lines of
+empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of some ten
+thousand artisans, who streamed past where we stood assembled; and as
+the crowds swept along, all these eyes, curious, but not unfriendly,
+scrutinized us, and one word was in all their mouths as they came
+up&mdash;&quot;Which is Redmond? Where's John Redmond?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight later Cork completed what Belfast had begun; and, perhaps
+because Cork is less strenuous, the whole atmosphere there was even
+friendlier. It had almost the quality of a holiday excursion, for we
+assisted at the ancient ceremony by which the Lord Mayor of Cork asserts
+his jurisdiction over the harbour waters&mdash;proceeding outside the
+protecting headlands and flinging from him a ceremonial dart outwards to
+the sea. This day, however, we accomplished the ceremony well within the
+limits; we passed the narrow gateway in the chain of mines, but outside
+that, submarines were a very real menace, and the Admiralty cut short
+our steamer's voyage. We were none the less festive on board.</p>
+
+<p>It was not all mere holiday in Cork. One speech in particular at this
+meeting impressed the whole Convention. A Southern delegate illustrated
+from his personal knowledge how cumbrous and uneconomic were the
+dealings of a government at Westminster with the meat supply from
+Ireland; and a mass of complicated and important trade detail was
+skilfully linked to the larger issue of war interest and Imperial
+interest; there was genuine eloquence as well as commercial shrewdness
+in this discourse. A short speech, too, from one of the Ulster County
+Councillors indicated by its tone, what was in my opinion the general
+sentiment, that as a result of these preliminary discussions almost
+everybody in the assembly expected and desired an effective agreement.</p>
+
+<p>At least for the purposes of this book, and perhaps <a name="Page_289"></a>many purposes, the
+trend of our debates can be best summarized by reproducing Redmond's
+main contribution to them. He intervened on the first day when Mr.
+Murphy's scheme was proposed, on August 21st, but only with a few
+welcoming words, and to emphasize his view that we were all there to
+accept whatever commanded most support. But at Belfast on September 5th
+he spoke fully; and I do not think his speech would have been materially
+different had he delivered it three weeks later in Cork. What I print
+here is based on the unusually full notes made by him, so full that they
+admit of being treated like a press telegram, and read clearly when
+small and obvious words are added. The manuscript is scored with
+underlining, single, double and treble, to guide the voice in reading
+from it; it has interest as illustrating the technical devices which a
+great orator employed for a special occasion; and for this speech he
+spared no effort. I thought, then as always, that he was less impressive
+and less effective in so fully prepared an oration than when he was
+putting his thought into the form which immediately came to him. But as
+a document it represents beyond doubt his considered opinion and his
+most deliberate advice.</p>
+
+<p>Dealing briefly at first with the contention that the system of the
+Union had been a success and should not be touched, he outlined the
+familiar arguments. But, as he said, the existence of the Convention was
+the final answer. The head of a Coalition Ministry had declared, without
+dissent from any of his Unionist colleagues, that Dublin Castle had
+hopelessly broken down. The Prime Minister of another Coalition, mainly
+Unionist in its composition, had set up this assembly, charging it to
+find another and better system of government.</p>
+
+<p>Beneficent legislation had been quoted. Yes, but how was it attained?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In any constitutionally governed country, once public opinion is
+converted to some great reform, it naturally <a name="Page_290"></a>passes, surely and easily,
+though perhaps slowly, into law. In Ireland, after Irish public opinion
+has made up its mind, the reformer has to convert the public opinion of
+another country which is profoundly ignorant or apathetic, and unhappily
+it is uncontrovertible that scarcely a single piece of beneficent
+legislation on land, or anything else, has been passed since the Union
+except by long, violent, semi-revolutionary agitation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are we to go on for ever upon this path? Are we to go back into the
+region of perpetual and violent agitation in order to get the reforms we
+need? Are we never to be allowed to have peace in our country?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He passed then to the complaint that Ulster's special case had not been
+sufficiently considered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The man who would hope to settle this great problem without special
+consideration of the special case of Ulster would indeed be a fool. Only
+for the special case of Ulster we should not be here at all. Our chief
+business is to endeavour to satisfy that special case.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For myself, I am one of those Nationalists to whom Mr. Barrie referred,
+who believe that the co-operation of Ulstermen is necessary for a
+prosperous and free Ireland, and there are no lengths consistent with
+common sense and reason to which I would not go to satisfy their fears
+and doubts and objections.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The special case of Ulster as put before us was this: 'We are contented
+under the Union, we have prospered under the Union. Therefore from our
+particular standpoint we have no reason to ask for a change.' But they
+declare themselves not only Ulstermen but Irishmen. They admit that the
+rest of Ireland is not prosperous as they are, and is not contented;
+and, that being so, they have come here in a spirit of true patriotism
+to see what is proposed as a remedy; and, as I understand it, they only
+stipulate that in any scheme of reform their rights and interests and
+sentiments shall be safeguarded and <a name="Page_291"></a>respected. That is a reasonable and
+patriotic attitude, and I wish most heartily and most sincerely to
+respond to it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now let me say what are the main objections to these schemes which have
+emerged from the debate. Some may be regarded as more particularly
+affecting Ulster, others as more particularly affecting the Southern
+Unionists, but all of them taken together make up what I may call the
+Unionist objection.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Archbishop of Dublin grouped these objections under three heads:</p>
+
+<p>1. Imperial Security.</p>
+
+<p>2. Fiscal Security.</p>
+
+<p>3. Security for Minorities.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the question of Imperial Security, objection is taken to what is
+called an 'Independent' Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is supposed that what is called Dominion Home Rule implies an
+'Independent' Parliament. This is a complete delusion. There is only one
+Sovereign and Independent Parliament in the Empire&mdash;the Imperial
+Parliament; its supremacy is indefeasible and inalienable. Every other
+Parliament in the Empire is subordinate, and an Irish Parliament must be
+subordinate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Imperial Parliament has created many Parliaments and given to them
+power to deal in general as they wish with local affairs, but it never
+parted with its own overriding authority&mdash;it has no power to do so&mdash;and
+in several of the colonies it has exercised that overriding authority
+from time to time.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gladstone spoke of the Irish Parliament which he proposed to set up as
+'practically independent in the exercise of its statutory functions.'
+But the overriding authority of the Imperial Parliament would always be
+there in the background to arrest injustice or oppression, just as it is
+in regard to every Dominion Parliament in the Empire to-day.</p><a name="Page_292"></a>
+
+<p>&quot;That position was specifically laid down and accepted by Parnell in
+1886.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lord Midleton demands that the rights and authority of the Crown shall
+be preserved and safeguarded. There is no difference whatever between us
+on this, and no difficulty can arise upon it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As to the control of Army and Navy, no one suggests any interference
+with the Imperial authority over the Army and the Navy. I include in
+that such naval control of harbours as is necessary for security.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Captain Gwynn has proposed that Ireland should have power to raise a
+force for home defence. In other words, to pass a Territorial Act for
+Ireland. My policy about the Volunteers is known: I proposed at the
+beginning of the war that the Government should utilize the existing
+Volunteer forces; and had this proposal been acted on in 1914 there
+would have been no rebellion in 1916. If I understand Captain Gwynn, he
+did not suggest that Irish Territorials should be under an Irish War
+Office and an Irish Minister for War, but that in his opinion a system
+of Irish Territorials was desirable, and inasmuch as the English
+Territorial Acts are not suitable to us, the Irish Parliament should be
+given the power to raise under Imperial authority a force for itself and
+on its own lines.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If this is his view, I agree with it. But this is a matter on which no
+one would think of breaking off.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Speaking generally, I think the Archbishop of Dublin and those who
+agree with him may take it for granted that upon all those questions
+which he grouped under the heading of Imperial Security there would be
+little difficulty in arriving at an agreement with, at any rate, men
+like myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now let me deal with the second group of subjects put forward by the
+Archbishop of Dublin under the heading of Fiscal Security&mdash;or a
+reasonable prospect of national prosperity.</p><a name="Page_293"></a>
+
+<p>&quot;The first objection is to what is called fiscal autonomy, although,
+after listening most carefully to his speeches, it seems to me that the
+real objection is not so much an objection to fiscal autonomy as
+establishing the full power of the Irish Parliament over the collection
+and imposition of Irish taxes, as an objection to giving that Parliament
+power to set up a tariff against Great Britain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He referred then at length to the Report of the Primrose Committee on
+Irish Finance, dated October 1911.<a name="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11"><sup>[11]</sup></a> That Committee had for its
+chairman a great English Civil Servant; three of its members were famous
+English financiers; another was the Professor of Political Economy at
+Oxford. Of the two names associated closely with Ireland, one was Lord
+Pirrie, whose fortune had been made in Belfast, and the only Irish
+Nationalist was the Bishop of Ross. They had reported unanimously for
+giving to Ireland full fiscal powers. &quot;We tried hard,&quot; Redmond said, &quot;to
+get the principle of their Report adopted in framing the Bill of 1912.&quot;
+Government insisted on adhering to the plan of &quot;contract finance&quot; which
+their own non-partisan committee of experts had explicitly condemned.</p>
+
+<p>He quoted several passages from the weighty argument by which the
+Committee had justified its conclusions, especially those dealing with
+the contention that the power would be used to set up a tariff against
+British goods.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ireland is not a nation of fools.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If in framing a new Constitution you go on the assumption that every
+power you confer will be abused, it would be far better to desist from
+your task altogether, and instead of increasing the powers of a people
+dead to all sense of responsibility and manifestly unfit for political
+freedom, you had better disestablish all existing <a name="Page_294"></a>forms of
+constitutional government and advocate the government of Ireland as a
+Crown Colony. But none of us so distrust our people.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dr. O'Donnell has proposed a solution of the difficulty about imposing
+a tariff against England by means of a Conference between the two
+nations. Other suggestions will be made. Protection may be found for
+Ulster by giving to them disproportionate representation. It may be
+found in the power of the Senate, it may be found in the power to
+suspend. If we are agreed somewhat on the general lines of the Primrose
+Report, the outstanding difficulty will be capable of adjustment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sir Crawford McCullagh rightly pointed out the terrible burden of war
+taxation, which is at present over twenty millions, and he said we
+cannot go on on those lines, and we must get back to pre-war burdens or
+the country will be ruined. How are we to get back?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If nothing is done by us, and the war goes on, as it may, for some
+years, we may easily be paying thirty, forty, or fifty millions, and
+generations to come will have to bear a crushing load. The income tax is
+certain to be raised, and excess profits also, and no part of Ireland
+will suffer more than Ulster, and especially Belfast.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The highest interest of Ulster, therefore, is a speedy settlement
+whereby the increase of war taxation will cease and Ireland's
+contribution to Imperial purposes will either disappear or, to put it at
+the very lowest, be limited and stereotyped.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Knight raised the question of land purchase. I agree with every
+word he said, but what is the difficulty? The difficulty is in providing
+the additional money needed at a low rate of interest. As part of a
+settlement I feel quite sure we could obtain the completion of land
+purchase on satisfactory terms. Indeed, I have the highest authority for
+the statement that this question would be regarded as an essential
+portion of a settlement, and that a most generous arrangement would be
+made. But <a name="Page_295"></a>if there is no settlement, do you imagine the Treasury will
+do anything to help us? No. I fear the British Government will be more
+occupied in endeavouring to deal with the state of open anarchy in
+Ireland than in making great financial concessions on land purchase. Mr.
+Knight, if he wants purchase completed, had better help us to an
+agreement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The third group of objections mentioned by the Archbishop of Dublin
+deals with Security for Minorities.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On this, it is impossible for the Convention to break down, because we
+are all in favour of the object in view. It is a mere question of the
+best machinery to carry out our unanimous desire and intention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ulster may clearly claim a representation out of proportion to her
+numbers, not only, I admit, in the Senate, but in the lower chamber.
+Safeguards of the most stringent character would be accepted, at any
+rate by me, in the machinery of the Constitution to prevent the
+possibility of Ulster's interest, Ulster's prosperity and Ulster's
+sentiments being injured or over-ridden.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For Southern Unionists, the case is unanswerable. They <i>must</i> get
+proper representation in both Houses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some suggestions have been made: proportional representation; Mr.
+Murphy's proposal of a special representation for property; special
+representation for creeds, and finally a nominated element in the House
+of Commons. I have an open mind on them all. It may be none of these
+will be found wholly satisfactory. But where there is a will there is a
+way. We are all agreed it must be done, and therefore it can and will be
+done.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In none of these objections, and they are the chief ones that have
+emerged on Imperial security, fiscal security, and security of
+minorities, is there in my mind any difficulty in coming to an
+agreement, if we are really animated by the desire every speaker has
+professed to <a name="Page_296"></a>answer the appeal of the Empire in this hour of her dire
+extremity by removing one of her greatest weaknesses and dangers.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We were told by Lord Midleton to play for safety. What is safety for
+us? What is safety for the Empire? I strongly say the only safety is a
+settlement of this question.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What will be the certain effect of a breakdown? No one could fail to
+have been impressed by the serious and solemn note upon which the
+Archbishop of Dublin concluded his speech. He reminded you this was not
+a question of Ulster and the rest of Ireland, not of Catholic and
+Protestant, or Unionist and Nationalist: it was a question of the
+necessity for all men of good will, all men of responsibility, all men
+who know that the foundation of freedom is the maintenance of order, to
+join hands to protect their common country from anarchy and chaos.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Archbishop spoke of Mr. Lysaght's speech as a threat. No one here
+will be moved by threats, but let us not be mad enough to shut our eyes
+to the facts. Is there a man in this room who can contemplate without
+horror the immediate future of Ireland if this Convention fails? For my
+part, I see clearly a future following on our failure in which on one
+side there will be an angered, if you like, a maddened people, with no
+responsible control, and on the other, Government ruling by the point of
+the bayonet. Between these two forces there will be no place for a
+Constitutional party or for men like myself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That would be the effect in Ireland. What would be the effect
+throughout the Empire?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have close relations with statesmen of all parties in all the
+Dominions, and I am informed that twenty-five per cent, of their troops
+are of Irish birth or of Irish parents, and that they have practically
+joined because they believed the Irish problem was as good as settled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What has happened about Ireland has caused untold difficulties in every
+Dominion. Mr. Holman, the Prime<a name="Page_297"></a> Minister of New South Wales, said that
+conscription was defeated by the Irish vote. Mr. Hughes said the same.
+Two hundred thousand troops have been lost to the Empire by the feeling
+of disgust at the failure to settle the Irish question. It has been the
+same in Canada. Everywhere a breakdown will be regarded with dismay.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What will be the effect in America? The position of America is grave
+and dangerous. I have close relations with many Americans of high
+position and influence, and they all tell me the same. This is a secret
+session, and I can repeat what they say. There is little or no
+enthusiasm for the war. Mind, I am speaking of Americans, not Irish
+Americans. The apathy is largely due to distrust of England. They
+distrust her posing as the champion of small nations while here at her
+doors the Irish question is unsettled. Lord Midleton says the Americans
+are uninformed. Perhaps so as to details. Perhaps they only see the
+broad effect. But how does that help us? The fact remains. Ireland is
+the only, or the chief, cause of American apathy to-day. This is of
+vital importance. Could we hope to win the war if America dropped out?
+Russia has gone. The President of the United States has many pacifist
+men around him. Their movement is strong. Germany is abstaining from
+outrages that would raise American feeling. I say, the danger of peace
+proposals which we could not accept being offered to America and
+accepted by her is a real and a very serious one.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hence it is that the Government, the diplomatic service, and all
+connected with our foreign affairs are feverishly anxious as to the
+result of our deliberations. If we break down in despair and
+helplessness, God only knows how terrible and far-reaching may be the
+consequence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Far better for us and for the Empire never to have met than to have met
+and failed of an agreement.</p><a name="Page_298"></a>
+
+<p>&quot;Finally, what would be the effect of a breakdown at the front?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We are called upon on all sides of this ancient quarrel to make what
+people call sacrifices&mdash;sacrifices of inherited predilections, of
+old-world ideas, and of ancient shibboleths, of perhaps ingrained
+prejudice. I would be ashamed to speak of the surrender of such things
+as sacrifices, when I remember the kind of sacrifices our brave boys
+have made and are making this very hour while we are safe at home
+talking. I cannot trust myself to speak upon this matter. Only the other
+day, once again the Ulster Division and the Sixteenth Irish Division,
+shoulder to shoulder, have fought and died for Ireland. The full story
+is not yet known, but it is full of tragedy, of heroism and of glory.
+Surely they deserve some encouragement. No set of men living would be
+prouder and happier than they if we can send them the news of a
+settlement of this question which will relieve them from the daily shame
+they feel, every time they meet their Allies, in the consciousness that
+their country, Ireland, for which they are facing death, is distracted
+and disunited and a source of reproach.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, we must come to a settlement. We must rise to the occasion&mdash;if only
+to save ourselves from a lifelong remorse for wrecking this venture&mdash;for
+what the historian of the future would describe as a crime against the
+Empire in her hour of deadliest peril, and a crime against the peace and
+happiness of our own beloved and long-suffering country.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One result of this speech was seen at once in an utterance from Mr.
+Andrew Jameson, a leading figure among the Southern Unionists. He said
+at once that Redmond had convinced him that all the difficulties as to
+maintaining the Imperial connection and providing safeguards for
+minorities could and would be met. The fiscal difficulty remained. He
+pressed the Ulster group to come to our assistance and depart from their
+attitude <a name="Page_299"></a>of silence. This speech went further towards our desire than
+any Unionist had previously gone.</p>
+
+<p>In a later debate Mr. Pollock outlined two essentials of the Ulster
+demand. The United Kingdom must remain a fiscal unit; and Ireland must
+be represented at Westminster. If these points were conceded, agreement,
+he thought, should be possible.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, as discussion grew franker and more business-like,
+relations improved. There were small passages at arms, but these only
+served to show how strong was the general desire for harmony. One of my
+colleagues said that he did not know what to make of a political
+assembly where everyone applauded when you got up, and applauded when
+you sat down, and never interrupted you. Another said that the
+Convention was the only society in Ireland from which one always came
+away cheered up: and this was so generally felt that an Ulster speaker
+reminded us that the atmosphere of our proceedings was pleasant but
+exceptional. He warned us to remember that, even if we agreed, either
+side might be repudiated. Yet there was a marked feeling that the
+Convention, and the tone which prevailed in the Convention, had done
+good in the country. This was admitted by the Grand Master of the Orange
+Order, Colonel Wallace, in a speech which led to an important
+illustration of the mutual process of education, for it raised with
+great frankness the issue of religious differences and alluded specially
+to the recent Papal decrees over which so much controversy had raged.
+The Bishop of Raphoe rose to reply and expounded, as an ex-professor of
+Canon Law, the true bearing of these documents. His speech was a
+masterpiece; its candour and its lucidity commended itself to all
+hearers, but most of all to the Ulstermen, who applauded at once Lord
+Oranmore's comment that the <i>odium theologicum</i> had been replaced by
+<i>divina caritas</i>; and at a very late stage in our proceedings, Mr.
+Barrie referred back to this speech <a name="Page_300"></a>of the Bishop's as one of the
+things which they would never forget.</p>
+
+<p>The Primate, who in this month of September was one of the hopeful
+hearts (&quot;My confidence has grown daily,&quot; he said), used words which met
+with widespread response: &quot;We can never leave this hall and speak of men
+whom we have met here as we have spoken of them in the past.&quot; There was
+good will in the air&mdash;good will to each other and to the enterprise. At
+the close of the proceedings in Cork the Lord Mayor of Belfast moved a
+vote of thanks to the citizens through their Lord Mayor, and he closed
+on a note of hope&mdash;anticipating &quot;something in store for Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yet already these anticipations were overcast. During this week, while
+all seemed going so well, one of the endless unhappy and preventible
+things happened. It was from Redmond that I first heard the news. One of
+the Sinn Fein leaders who had been rearrested on suspicion after the
+amnesty took part in a hunger-strike as a protest against being
+subjected to the conditions imposed on a convicted felon. He was
+forcibly fed and died under the process, owing to heart-failure. Redmond
+told me with fury how he had urged again and again on the Chief
+Secretary the possibility of some such calamity, and had urged that
+these men should receive the treatment proper in any case to political
+prisoners, but above all to men who had been neither convicted nor
+tried.</p>
+
+<p>The result was immediately seen in some hostile demonstrations in Cork,
+chiefly against Mr. Devlin and Redmond. But this was only the beginning.
+On the following Sunday the body of the dead man, Thomas Ashe, was
+carried through the streets of Dublin at the head of a vast procession,
+in which large bodies of Volunteers, openly defying Government's
+proclamation, marched in uniform; and he was buried with military
+honours and volleys fired over his grave. With all this breach of the
+law Government dared not interfere. They had put <a name="Page_301"></a>themselves in the
+wrong; whether they prevented the demonstration or permitted it,
+mischief was bound to follow. A new incitement was given to the
+enthusiasm for Sinn Fein, a new martyr was provided, and new hostility
+was raised against the Convention, for whose success Government was
+notoriously anxious. On the other hand, Ulster Unionist opinion was
+violently offended; they were scandalized by the disregard for law and
+the impotence of constitutional authority. This attitude, however open
+to comments based on their own recent history, did not render them any
+easier to deal with. Above all, the Ashe incident emphasized the
+presence in Ireland of a great force over which Redmond had no control
+and which had no representative in the Convention. How, men asked, even
+if a bargain could be made with Constitutional Nationalists, should that
+covenant be carried into effect?</p>
+<br />
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+<p>The Cork visit marks the close of the first stage in the history of the
+Convention. At the opening of our session there it was decided to
+appoint a Grand Committee of twenty, whose task should be, &quot;if possible,
+to prepare a scheme for submission to the Convention, which would meet
+the views and difficulties expressed by the different speeches during
+the course of the debate.&quot; The Convention itself, after its
+deliberations of that week, would adjourn until the Committee was in a
+position to report. This second stage, purely of committee work, was to
+last much longer than anyone anticipated: the Convention did not
+reassemble till the week before Christmas. If that length of adjournment
+had been foreseen, the Committee would never have been appointed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lysaght in his first address to the Convention had pressed upon us
+the view that Sinn F&eacute;in could be won.<a name="Page_302"></a> But he warned us also (with such
+emphasis that some speakers afterwards resented it as a threat) that if
+the Convention produced no result, or an unacceptable result, or
+provoked suspicion by delay, the result would be a revolution. Already
+impatience was growing. We could publish no account of our proceedings:
+but it became known inevitably that we had not as yet reached one
+operative conclusion in our task of Constitution building.</p>
+
+<p>At Cork, Sir Horace Plunkett made an encouraging speech at the public
+luncheon; he announced the appointment of our Committee, which certainly
+looked like business. But only when we got to detail did men fully
+realize the difficulties and the embarrassing nature of the position.</p>
+
+<p>The Ashe affair had done more harm than we knew. When the Primate was
+making the hopeful speech from which a few words have already been
+quoted, he spoke also of our experience as having been a process of
+mutual education, which we needed to extend beyond our own assembly. He
+promised his help in this, and it was felt that Ulstermen generally were
+on their honour to report well of what they commended in our presence.
+They were, it seems, at least as good as their word; the Committee
+behind them was favourably impressed, and when we went to Cork&mdash;so I
+have been informed&mdash;the question of giving the delegates full powers to
+negotiate was under discussion. But this mood was dissipated by the
+angry temper in all sections which arose out of the imprisonments, the
+hunger-strikes, the penalties imposed, and the successive concessions to
+violent resistance.</p>
+
+<p>To this was added a new cause of quarrel. The Franchise Bill was now
+coming before the House of Commons; and under the provisions agreed to
+by the Speaker's Conference, extension of the franchise was to be
+applied in Ireland, but there was to be no redistribution. This proposal
+was not unreasonable, since the Home Rule Act was now a statute and
+under it new and properly <a name="Page_303"></a>distributed constituencies were scheduled;
+while over and above this the Convention was in existence to occupy
+itself with the matter.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the existing distribution of seats was hard on
+Unionist Ulster: the great mass of population in and about Belfast was
+under-represented. Ulstermen said that while Nationalists professed
+great desire to give favour to minorities, in reality they persisted in
+keeping their political opponents at an unfair disadvantage. There was
+no more question of enlarging the delegates' authority in Convention:
+the Advisory Committee hardened their attitude, and it was our task to
+convince a body which could not hear our arguments at first hand.
+Decisions lay with Ulstermen in Belfast, not in the Convention&mdash;that is
+to say, not subject to the daily, hourly, prompting to remember that
+they were not only Ulstermen but Irishmen, which arose from friendly
+intercourse with their fellow-delegates.</p>
+
+<p>The Grand Committee of twenty, representing all groups, met on October
+11th. Sir Horace Plunkett had in advance begged Redmond to undertake the
+presentation of a scheme which would serve as a basis for discussion.
+Redmond declined, on the ground that the initiative should come from
+someone who was not there as a politician; but he admitted that the onus
+of making a proposal was on Home Rulers. Dr. O'Donnell, though an
+office-bearer in the United Irish League, was present as a
+representative of the hierarchy; he was charged with the task. He had
+been throughout a strong advocate of claiming for Ireland all the powers
+possessed by any of the Dominions, with limitations on the military
+side; he had also been forward in his desire to give wholly exceptional
+rights of representation to minorities.</p>
+
+<p>But when we got into Committee one man immediately took the lead. Sir
+Alexander McDowell<a name="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12"><sup>[12]</sup></a> had not spoken in any debate; there is reason to
+believe that he was <a name="Page_304"></a>glad not to commit himself in advance before the
+moment when his special gift might come into play. All his life he had
+been carrying through agreements between conflicting interests: he was a
+great mediator and negotiator. Now, he advocated what was, in
+strictness, an irregularity. A task had been delegated to us: he asked
+us to delegate it again to a smaller group. The whole case, he said, had
+been fully opened up; further debate would be no use; we all knew all
+the arguments. He deprecated formal procedure; it was plainly a family
+quarrel, and we should treat it in that spirit. Honestly, he said, he
+should be sorry if the Convention failed. Ulster had no fault to find
+with the Union; but they were living next door to a house already in
+flames.</p>
+
+<p>That was the general tone, but it would be difficult to convey the
+impression of experience and authority which his manner left: and
+Redmond supported him. It was plain that the two men would understand
+each other. In the upshot their view prevailed; Redmond, Mr. Barrie and
+Lord Midleton were instructed to suggest names, and after an interval
+they came back with a list of nine. Lord Midleton was for the Southern
+Unionists; Mr. Barrie, Lord Londonderry and Sir Alexander McDowell for
+the Northern; Redmond, Mr. Devlin and Bishop O'Donnell represented the
+parliamentary Nationalists, and to them were added Mr. W.M. Murphy and
+Mr. George Russell.</p>
+
+<p>This left eleven of us unemployed, and some days later we were formed
+into three sub-committees, the first dealing with the question of
+Electoral Reform and the composition of an Irish Parliament; the second
+with Land Purchase, and the third with a possible Territorial Force and
+the Police. But the marrow of the business rested with the original
+sub-committee of nine.</p>
+
+<p>They, however, could not get rapidly to work; other affairs pulled them
+in different directions. Redmond was forced to go to Westminster, where
+the Franchise<a name="Page_305"></a> Bill was coming on; moreover, the Irish party felt that
+it must raise the question of Irish administration.</p>
+
+<p>As our leader, he was obliged to speak on both matters. His reply to the
+Ulster amendment proposing to extend redistribution to Ireland was that
+this departed from the compromise reached at the Speaker's Conference,
+and moreover ignored the existence of the Convention. He spoke with
+studied brevity and avoidance of party spirit: but the debate became a
+wrangle. Mr. Barrie brought back into it some of the Convention's
+friendlier atmosphere; but his argument was that in the interests of the
+Convention this concession should be made.</p>
+
+<p>The second debate, on October 23rd, was inevitably contentious: it
+deplored the policy being pursued by the Irish Executive and the Irish
+military authorities &quot;at a time when the highest interests of Ireland
+and the Empire demand the creation of an atmosphere favourable to the
+Convention.&quot; Redmond had an easy task in convicting the Government's
+action of incoherence and of blundering provocation&mdash;but to do this was
+of no advantage to his main purpose, which he served as best he could by
+a side-wind, eulogizing the temper of the Convention and specially the
+&quot;sincere desire for a reasonable settlement&quot; shown by the Ulster
+delegates.</p>
+
+<p>Still, at the best, it was impossible for him not to feel that the
+reaction of a debate which could not be kept in the tone on which he
+started it must be unfavourable to the meetings of the Nine which were
+about to take place. He was to go in to negotiate a settlement for his
+country while the voices of faction were yelping at his heels all over
+Ireland, and all the forces of reconciliation which he had brought into
+play were neutralized and sterilized.</p>
+
+<p>A debate of these days gave him a happier occasion to intervene than the
+domestic bickerings in which he had been forced to take part; yet even
+in this the note of sadness predominated. On October 29th, when a <a name="Page_306"></a>vote
+of thanks was proposed to the Navy, Army and Mercantile Marine, he
+joined his voice to that of other leaders of parties, to emphasize, as
+he said, that they spoke from an absolutely unanimous House of Commons.
+He recalled the exploits of Irish troops and dwelt again on the presence
+of a large Irish element in the Canadian and Anzac Divisions. But his
+reference was chiefly to those Nationalist Irish Brigades, who had
+remained true, he said, to the old motto of the Brigade of Fontenoy,
+<i>Semper et ubique fidelis</i>. These men had known in the midst of their
+privations and sufferings a new and poignant feeling of anguish: they
+had seen &quot;a section at any rate of their countrymen&quot; repudiate the view
+that in serving as they served they were fighting for Ireland, for her
+happiness, for her prosperity and her liberty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish it were possible for me to speak a word to every one of those
+men. If my words could reach them, I would say to every one of them that
+they need have no misgiving, that they were right from the first, that
+time will vindicate them, that time will show that while fighting for
+liberty and civilization in Europe they are also fighting for
+civilization and liberty in their own land. I would like to say to every
+one of them, in addition, that even at this moment, when ephemeral
+causes have confused and disturbed Irish opinion, they are regarded with
+feelings of the deepest pride and gratitude by the great bulk of the
+Irish race and by all that is best in every creed and class in Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The Irish Divisions had once and again been engaged shoulder to
+shoulder, but this time with very different fortune, in the third battle
+of Ypres; yet, win or lose, they won or lost together. In that same
+fighting Redmond's own son had earned special honour; the Distinguished
+Service Order was bestowed on him for holding up a broken line with his
+company of the Irish Guards. At a happier time this news would have been
+received with enthusiasm all over Ireland; now, <a name="Page_307"></a>the most one could say
+was that it delighted the Convention.</p>
+
+<p>It would be quite wrong, however, to regard Redmond's attitude in these
+days as unhopeful. The first meetings of the Nine were fruitful of much
+agreement&mdash;conditional at all points on general ratification. But the
+true spirit of compromise was there. So far as concerned the provision
+to give minorities more than their numerical weight, it was agreed that
+there should be two Houses, with powers of joint session, and with
+control over money bills conceded to the Upper House. In the Lower House
+Unionists should (somehow) get forty per cent, of the representation: so
+that in the joint session the influences would be equally balanced.</p>
+
+<p>The hitch came over finance. Nationalists wanted complete powers of
+taxation, but would agree to a treaty establishing Free Trade between
+the two countries for a long period. Ulster wanted a common fiscal
+control for Great Britain and Ireland. By November 1st a complete
+deadlock had been reached.</p>
+
+<p>On that date the Grand Committee met to take stock informally of the
+position, especially in regard to the procedure of the more detailed
+sub-committees, and to face the fact that a grave misfortune had
+befallen us. Sir Alexander McDowell had been prevented by illness from
+attending any of the meetings. He had no further part in the
+Convention's work, and died before it ended.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond in a confidential talk spoke of his absence as lamentable. The
+two had arranged&mdash;on the Belfast man's proposal&mdash;to meet for private
+interviews before the Nine came together. Neither had control of the
+forces for which he spoke; but both stood out, by everyone's consent,
+from the rest of the assembly. It is impossible to say how much they
+might have achieved had they come to an understanding; but assuredly no
+other representative of the North spoke with the same self-confidence or
+the same weight of personality as Sir<a name="Page_308"></a> Alexander McDowell. My own
+feeling about him&mdash;if it be worth while to record a personal
+impression&mdash;was that he was a man with the instinct for carrying big
+things through&mdash;that the problem tempted him, as a task which called for
+the exertion of powers which he was conscious of possessing. In losing
+him we lost certainly the strongest will in his group, perhaps the
+strongest in the Convention; and it was a will for settlement. It was,
+too, a will less hampered by regard for public opinion than that of any
+popularly elected representative man can be. He had, I think, also
+eminently the persuasive gift which is not only inclined to give and
+take but can impart that disposition to others.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pollock, who replaced him, was an able man, but singularly lacking
+in this quality. He held his own views clearly and strongly, but his
+method of exposition accentuated differences: it had always a note of
+asperity, though this was certainly not deliberate. One of the pleasant
+memories which remains with me is of a day when debate grew acrimonious
+and hot words were used. Mr. Pollock refused to reply to some phrases
+which might have been regarded as taunts, because, he said, &quot;I have made
+friendships here which I never expected to make, and I value them too
+much to risk the loss of them.&quot; That friendly temper, combined with his
+ability, made him a valuable member of this Convention: but for the
+critical work of bringing men's minds together, of sifting the essential
+from the unessential, he was a bad exchange for Sir Alexander McDowell.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond said to me that he had found Mr. Barrie much more conciliatory
+than in the earlier and public stages. He was delighted with Lord
+Midleton, who was, he said, &quot;showing an Irish spirit which I never
+expected&quot;;&mdash;standing up for the claims of an Irish Parliament if there
+was to be one. In the discussion, however, one man, Bishop O'Donnell,
+had been &quot;head and shoulders above everyone else.&quot;</p><a name="Page_309"></a>
+
+<p>Argument had ranged about the question of customs and excise. This was
+the dividing line. But when at last a deadlock was definitely reached,
+the Ulster position was stated in a letter which refused to concede to
+an Irish Parliament the control of either direct or indirect taxation.
+It was to be a Parliament with no taxing power at all.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, in the corresponding document from the Nationalist
+side, the importance of immediate and full fiscal control had been put
+very high.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Self-government does not exist,&quot; it said, &quot;where those nominally
+entrusted with affairs of government have not control of fiscal and
+economic policy. No nation with self-respect could accept the idea that
+while its citizens were regarded as capable of creating wealth they were
+regarded as incompetent to regulate the manner in which taxation of that
+wealth should be arranged, and that another country should have the
+power of levying and collecting taxes, the taxed country being placed in
+the position of a person of infirm mind whose affairs are regulated by
+trustees. No finality could be looked for in such an arrangement, not
+even a temporary satisfaction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The genesis of this passage should be told, for it had importance in the
+history of the Convention; and also it conveys an idea of the limits to
+which Redmond carried self-effacement. It is important because it acted
+on Ulster like a red rag shown to a bull. Obviously, if this were the
+Nationalist view, then the Home Rule Act could not be said to give
+self-government&mdash;for under its system of contract finance Ireland
+certainly had not control of her fiscal and economic policy. A measure
+accepted with enthusiasm in 1912 was now regarded as impossible of
+giving &quot;even a temporary satisfaction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What had happened was this. The Chairman in his tireless efforts to
+bring about agreement had addressed two sets of questions, to the
+Nationalists and to the<a name="Page_310"></a> Ulstermen respectively, by answering which he
+hoped they might clear the air. The direct answers for the Nationalists
+were drafted by Mr. Russell, but were shown to Redmond, Mr. Devlin and
+the Bishop of Raphoe. It was, however, suggested that as an addendum a
+summary should be added. Redmond did not ask to see this addition, and
+it was not shown to him. It led off with the paragraph which has been
+quoted. The fact that he allowed anything in any stage of such a
+negotiation to go out in his name without his own revision marks the
+loosening of grip&mdash;a tired man.</p>
+
+<p>His exertions for the past years, the past ten years at least, had been
+tremendous: they had been redoubled from 1912 to 1916. Towards the end,
+one resource had been failing him&mdash;the chief of all. A leader when he is
+well followed gives and takes; there is interchange of energy. For more
+than a year now Redmond had lacked the moral support, the almost
+physical stimulus, which comes from the ready response of followers.
+Labour at no time came easy to him, there was much inertia in his
+temperament; and the part which he had laid out for himself in the
+Convention as merely an individual member did not impose on him the same
+unremitting vigilance as if he acted as leader. Yet, the leadership was
+his; if he did not exercise it, no one else could; and this incident
+shows that his abnegation of leadership was not a mere phrase.</p>
+
+<p>On November 22nd the Grand Committee reassembled to hear the report from
+the Nine. Lord Southborough, who had presided at all their meetings,
+detailed the conclusions which had been reached or the point on which
+they had broken down.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed a discussion lasting some three days, in which Ulstermen
+and Nationalists reaffirmed their positions. Archbishop Bernard, the
+Primate, and Lord MacDonnell all attempted mediation. Finally, Lord
+Midleton, who described the position as &quot;a stone wall <a name="Page_311"></a>on each side,&quot;
+announced that he and his group would put before the Grand Committee
+certain proposals as a <i>via media</i>. These in effect conceded to an Irish
+Parliament all that Nationalists claimed, subject only to the
+reservation that customs must be fixed by the Imperial Parliament and
+the produce of them retained as Ireland's contribution to Imperial
+services.</p>
+
+<p>At this point our work was interrupted by the reemergence of the
+redistribution question. Redmond and the other Irish members were
+obliged to go to London and assist for two days at a debate in the worst
+traditions of the House of Commons. The change of atmosphere was
+extraordinary&mdash;and the accusations of bad faith were not limited to what
+passed at Westminster. One virulent speech declared that the Convention
+had no prospects, never had any, and was never intended to have any.
+This was accompanied by an attack on the action of the Ulster
+group&mdash;based, of course, on hearsay. Those of us who felt that at any
+rate the Convention offered a better hope for Ireland than any which now
+could be based on action at Westminster pleaded for the acceptance of a
+proposal which Redmond put forward as a compromise&mdash;that the proposed
+Irish clauses should be dropped from the main Bill and the Irish matter
+dealt with in a separate statute. It was so agreed at last, and a
+conference between Irish members, with the Speaker presiding, was set
+up, and quickly did its work. But if all this had been agreed to in
+October or earlier, much friction would have been saved and a cause of
+quarrel with the Ulster that was not in the Convention might have been
+avoided. Still, peace was achieved, and the proposal to cut down Irish
+representation was once more defeated.</p>
+
+<p>Grand Committee met for another session, but was chiefly concerned with
+getting ready for the reassembling of Convention&mdash;fixed for Tuesday,
+December 18th. It was decided that a group meeting of Nationalists for
+<a name="Page_312"></a>informal discussion should be held on the Monday night&mdash;the first
+occasion on which this had been done.</p>
+
+<p>Ill-luck, however, seemed to dog us. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of Ross, who
+was much closer in his point of view to Redmond than any of the other
+Bishops, was gravely ill. This was foreseen. But on the Monday a heavy
+snowstorm fell; Redmond, shut up in his hills at Aughavanagh, could not
+reach Dublin. The roads were not open till the Thursday, and then he
+thought it too late to come. He was in truth already too ill to face any
+unusual exertion.</p>
+
+<p>The Convention had been summoned, not to receive a final report from the
+Grand Committee, but to face a new situation. An offer had been put
+forward by one group which altered the whole complexion of the
+controversy. Grand Committee had abstained from deciding whether to
+counsel acceptance or rejection. But for the first time an influential
+body of Irish Unionists had agreed, not as individuals but as
+representatives, to accept Home Rule, in a wider measure than had been
+proffered by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 or by the Act of 1914.
+Limitations which were imposed in all these had been struck out by Lord
+Midleton's proposals.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, it was certain that the Ulster group would reject the
+scheme. Conversation among Nationalists made it plain that if Ulster
+would agree with Lord Midleton we should all join them. For the sake of
+an agreement reached between all sections of Irishmen, but for nothing
+less conclusive, Dr. O'Donnell and Mr. Russell were content to waive the
+claim to full fiscal independence. Such an agreement, they held, would
+be accepted by Parliament in its integrity. But if Ulster stood out,
+there would be no &quot;substantial agreement,&quot; and the terms which
+Nationalists and Southern Unionists might combine to propose would be
+treated as a bargaining offer, certain to be chipped down by Government
+towards conformity with the Ulster demand. In the result there would be
+an uprising of opinion in Ireland against a <a name="Page_313"></a>measure so framed; the
+fiasco of July, 1916, would repeat itself.</p>
+
+<p>Against this, and prompting us to acceptance, was the view very strongly
+held by Redmond, that Government urgently needed a settlement for the
+sake of the war, and would use to the utmost any leverage which helped
+them to this end. An agreement with Lord Midleton would mean a Home Rule
+proposal proceeding from a leading Unionist statesman who spoke for the
+interest in Ireland, which, if any, had reason to fear Nationalist
+government. This would mean necessarily a profound change in the
+attitude of the House of Lords and of all those social influences whose
+power we had felt so painfully. Government could undoubtedly, if it
+chose, carry a measure giving effect to this compact.</p>
+
+<p>Further, weighing greatly with the instincts of the rank and file was
+the motive which prompted Irish Nationalists to welcome the advance made
+by those whom Lord Midleton represented. The Southern Unionists were the
+old landowning and professional class, friendly in all ways of
+intercourse, but politically severed and sundered from the mass of the
+population. Now, they came forward with an offer to help in attaining
+our desire&mdash;quite frankly, against their own declared conviction that
+the Union was the best plan, but with an equally frank recognition that
+the majority was the majority and was honest in its intent. The
+personality of the men reinforced the effect of this: Lord Oranmore, for
+instance, whom most of them had only known by anti-Home Rule speeches in
+the House of Lords, revealed himself as the friendliest of Irishmen,
+with the Irish love for a witty phrase.</p>
+
+<p>This temperamental attitude was of help to Lord Midleton when on
+December 18th he expounded the position of himself and his friends in a
+very powerful argument, the more persuasive because the good will in his
+audience softened his habitual touch of conten<a name="Page_314"></a>tiousness. It had seemed
+to them, he said, that both in the Nationalist and Northern Unionist
+camp there was a tendency to consider dispositions out of doors and to
+conciliate certain antagonisms without considering whether they excited
+others. He and his friends had determined to fix their minds solely on
+the Convention itself, and to pursue the purpose for which they were
+summoned of endeavouring after agreement within that body. They were
+Unionists; but they had asked themselves what could be removed from the
+present system without disturbing the essence of Union; and in that
+effort they would go to the extremest limit in their power, without
+thought of conciliating opinions outside, and without any attempt to
+bargain.</p>
+
+<p>On one point only he indicated that their scheme was tentative. Defence
+was by consent of all left to the Imperial Parliament. This implied, he
+held, an adequate contribution, and the yield of customs to be collected
+by the Imperial Parliament seemed roughly to meet the case, for the
+period of the war. But this was not absolutely a hard-and-fast proposal.
+In any case, after the war, the amount should be the subject of inquiry
+by a joint commission.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from this, the offer was their last word. It conceded to Ireland
+the control of all purely Irish services. This included the fixation of
+excise, because excise on commodities produced in Ireland did not touch
+the treaty-making power. Customs touched that power, and therefore
+customs, like defence, must be left to the Imperial Parliament. But, he
+argued, Irish Nationalists were not asked to give up anything which had
+been conceded to them by any previous Home Rule proposal.</p>
+
+<p>To all Unionists he said: These proposals keep the power of the Crown
+over all Imperial services undiminished; they keep representation at
+Westminster&mdash;a corollary from leaving the Imperial Parliament powers
+over Irish taxation; and by accepting the suggestions already <a name="Page_315"></a>agreed
+to, they give a generous representation to Unionists in an Irish
+Parliament. This special representation of minorities was, he thought,
+sufficient to give a guarantee of &quot;sane legislation&quot; while it lasted;
+and he suggested that the period should be fifteen years. These
+concessions, in his opinion, sufficiently protected Southern Unionists.
+To Ulster he said, &quot;We share every danger threatening you&mdash;we have many
+dangers you need not fear. Yet, we have no sinister anticipations. Are
+you still determined to stand out?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, when so much of the full demand was conceded, were
+Nationalists insistent, he asked, on demanding what they had never asked
+in the discussions upon any Home Rule Bill? Nationalist leaders had now
+the chance of leading a combination of all sane elements in the
+landowning and land-cultivating classes. No Irish leader had ever before
+been able to present such an appeal to Unionist opinion as would come
+from the man who represented a Convention Party.</p>
+
+<p>It was a speech which Redmond, if present, must have replied to, and
+could not have replied to without indicating profound sympathy&mdash;for he
+was in agreement with its main lines; and his expression of opinion upon
+it must have influenced strongly the views of the rank and file at the
+moment when they were most open to suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>In his absence, men's minds were greatly affected by the fear that if we
+adopted these proposals, our decision would be exposed to attack from a
+combination of three forces&mdash;Sinn F&eacute;in, which would at least officially
+condemn anything less than complete separation, and would furiously
+assail a proposal that denied full taxing powers; the Roman Catholic
+Church, which would take its lead from Bishop O'Donnell, who set out in
+an able memorandum the reasons why Ireland must have full control of
+taxation; and finally, the powerful newspaper whose proprietor, Mr.
+Murphy, at once gave signs of his hostility <a name="Page_316"></a>by putting on the paper an
+amendment to Lord Midleton's resolution which amounted to a direct
+negative.</p>
+
+<p>The reassembly of the Convention was fixed for Wednesday, January 2nd.
+Redmond came to Dublin on the Monday. He told me that he was inclined to
+move that while we thanked Lord Midleton for his substantial
+contribution towards our purpose, we could not accept his proposal,
+unless it opened the way to a settlement. What he meant by this was not
+merely that if Ulster agreed, we should accept; for that would certainly
+open the way. But he had also in his mind the possibility of a guarantee
+from Government that an arrangement come to, as this might be, by
+four-fifths of the Convention, and repudiated only by the pledge-bound
+Ulster block, would be regarded as substantial agreement, and taken as a
+basis for legislation. In that case, also, the way would be open; but he
+had no written assurance of such an understanding, though I gathered
+that he was urging the Government to give it. We were, however, told on
+good authority in these days that if the Southern Unionists' proposal
+was accepted by the Nationalists and other elements outside of Ulster,
+the Prime Minister would use his whole influence with his colleagues to
+secure acceptance of the compact and immediate legislation upon it. This
+would mean, we were also assured, that the whole thing would be done
+before Easter.</p>
+
+<p>On January 2nd the resumed debate for the first time brought the
+Convention face to face with concrete proposals for a settlement. In
+tone and in substance it would have done credit to any Parliament that
+ever sat. I shall not try to summarize the arguments, but simply to note
+certain outstanding facts.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Midleton modified his original proposal that collection of customs
+should be an Imperial service throughout. He agreed that collection
+might be done by the Irish Civil Service. Moreover, he admitted that
+Ireland <a name="Page_317"></a>must have full means of checking the account for these taxes,
+great part of which must necessarily be collected at English ports,
+since tea, tobacco and the other dutiable articles were seldom shipped
+direct to Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>But he made it plain that the essential of his proposal was the
+maintenance of a common customs system, leaving the fixation of customs
+to the Imperial Parliament for Great Britain and Ireland. If this was
+denied, as it would be by the acceptance of Mr. Murphy's amendment, all
+Unionists would be driven once more into the same lobby; all chance of
+uniting elements heretofore divided would disappear.</p>
+
+<p>This was the fact against which we were brought up. Insistence on the
+full Nationalist demand as it had been outlined in the Convention meant
+the refusal of a new and powerful alliance which now offered itself, and
+the destruction of anything which could be called an agreement.</p>
+
+<p>In the close, Lord Midleton reinforced his appeal by a solid material
+argument. The sub-committee presided over by Lord MacDonnell had reached
+unanimous conclusions embodying proposals for the completion of land
+purchase within a very brief period. Landlords, agents, tenants,
+representatives for Ulster as well as from the South and West, were
+parties to this plan. Lord Midleton now looked back on the past as one
+who had been in the fight since Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill.
+Every fresh settlement had been wrecked, he said, by standing for the
+last shred of the demand. In 1885, if Gladstone had abandoned the
+identity of democratic franchise for both countries and had made to the
+Irish minority such concessions as this Convention was willing to make,
+he would have carried the Liberal Unionist element with him. Then, as
+now, a great land purchase scheme depended on the solution of the main
+problem. To-day land purchase stood or fell with the Convention.</p>
+
+<p>He was backed by Lord Dunraven&mdash;who waived his <a name="Page_318"></a>preference for his own
+original proposal&mdash;and by Lord Desart, in most able argument: the latter
+declaring that the proposal to give Ireland a separate customs system
+could never be carried in England. But the speech of the day came from
+Mr. Kavanagh, who, speaking as a Nationalist who had been a Unionist,
+ended a most moving appeal for agreement with a declaration that he at
+all events would vote for the compromise. There was no mistaking the
+effect produced by the earnestness of this speaker, who knew as much of
+Ireland and was as well fitted to judge of its true interests as any man
+in the room. That effect was felt, I think, in the tone of a private
+meeting of Nationalists held the same night. Redmond, with the art of
+which he was a master, indicated support for the proposal without
+forcing a conclusion. He dwelt on the fact that if we did not agree we
+not only lost our chance of immediate and complete land purchase but
+left ourselves subjected to the entire burden of war taxation. Other
+speakers pointed out that we ought not to let ourselves be lured into
+driving the Southern Unionists and the Ulstermen together against us.
+Mr. Clancy said in his downright manner that he would not as yet express
+his view publicly: but that he was not going to reject this offer for
+the sake of fixing taxes on tea and tobacco, and that when the right
+time came, he would say so. The strongest arguments used against this
+view were that in surrendering control of customs we lost our management
+of the taxes which pressed upon the poor; and further, that even if we
+agreed, no one knew what would result. We had no guarantee that the
+compact would be expressed in legislation. But on the whole the tone
+showed a disposition to accept, and especially to support Redmond&mdash;who
+had spoken of his political career as a thing ended. Next day the debate
+in Convention continued. Archbishop Bernard, speaking as a Unionist,
+said that the proposal was a venture beset with risks, but the greatest
+<a name="Page_319"></a>danger of all was to do nothing. It would be a grave responsibility for
+Ulster to wreck the chance of a settlement. Lord Oranmore dwelt on the
+composition of the proposed Legislature Power was to be entrusted to a
+very different Parliament from that which they had feared. He and his
+like were to get what they desired&mdash;an opportunity of taking part in
+the government of the country. It looked to him as if the only possible
+Irish Government under this scheme must be Unionist in its complexion.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps there was an echo of this in Redmond's speech, by far the
+greatest he made in the Convention, when at last he intervened on
+January 4th&mdash;the Friday which ended that session.</p>
+
+<p>He dealt at once with Mr. Barrie's often repeated view that the proper
+object of our endeavours was to find a compromise between the Act of
+1914 and the proposal for partition put forward by Ulster. On that basis
+the Convention could never have been brought together. The Prime
+Minister's letter of May 16th which proposed the Convention suggested
+that Irishmen should meet &quot;for the purpose of drafting a Constitution
+for their own country.&quot; On May 22nd Mr. Lloyd George had said, &quot;We
+propose that Ireland should try her own hand at hammering out an
+instrument of government for her people.&quot; The only limitation was that
+it should be a Constitution &quot;for the future government of Ireland within
+the Empire.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Then he turned to the argument that all the sacrifices were asked from
+Unionists. Let us weigh them, he said. What sacrifices had been made by
+the Irish Nationalists, since this chain of events began?&mdash;Then followed
+a passage which I recapitulate, not necessarily in full, but in phrases
+which he actually used, and I noted down:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Personal loss I set aside. My position&mdash;our position&mdash;before the war
+was that we possessed the confidence of nearly the entire country. I
+took a risk&mdash;we took <a name="Page_320"></a>it&mdash;with eyes open. I have&mdash;we have&mdash;not merely
+taken the risk but made the sacrifice. If the choice were to be made
+to-morrow, I would do it all over again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have had my surfeit of public life. My modest ambition would be to
+serve in some quite humble capacity under the first Unionist Prime
+Minister of Ireland.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As to other sacrifices, in the way of concessions, he recited the list
+of what had been agreed to&mdash;proposals so strangely undemocratic&mdash;the
+nomination of members of Parliament, the disproportionate powers given
+to a minority. &quot;Shall we not be denounced for making them?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, what sacrifices had been made by the Southern
+Unionists? These were the men who had had the hardest battle to fight in
+the struggle over Home Rule. They were not, like Ulster Unionists,
+&quot;entrenched in a ring-fence,&quot; but the scattered few, who had suffered
+most and who might naturally have entertained most bitterness. Yet Lord
+Midleton's speech had been instinct with an admirable spirit. The speech
+of the Archbishop of Dublin had touched him deeply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Between these men and us there never again can be the differences of
+the past. They have put behind them all bitter memories. They have
+agreed to the framework of a Bill better than any offered to us in 1886,
+1893 or 1914.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As for us Nationalists&mdash;he emphasized that each man came here free,
+untrammelled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I speak only for myself. But even if I stand alone, I will not allow
+myself, because I cannot get the full measure of my demand, to be drawn
+to reject the proffered hand of friendship held out to us. In my opinion
+we should be political fools if we did not endeavour to cement an
+alliance with these men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>As concerned the Labour men, Mr. Whitley, who had always been a
+Unionist, had declared willingness to agree. But the Ulster
+Unionists&mdash;what sacrifice had they made?</p><a name="Page_321"></a>
+
+<p>&quot;The last thing I desire is to attack Mr. Barrie and his friends. But
+they are not free agents. I was shocked when I heard that a section here
+openly avowed the need to refer back to some outside body. If we had
+been told we were going into a body which would consist of two orders of
+members, it would have been difficult to get us here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the essential point Ulster had made no concession. What did Mr.
+Barrie say in his formal document? 'We are satisfied that for Ireland
+and for Great Britain a common system of finances with one Exchequer is
+a fundamental necessity.' If they denied the taxing power to Ireland,
+any proposal on these lines must give Ireland less than any proposal for
+Home Rule ever put forward. This was Ulster's original position and they
+had not budged an inch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is their response to the Empire's S.O.S. Is it worthy of Ulster's
+Imperial loyalty? I don't believe it is their last word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Lord Londonderry, however, in replying, did not add any ground of hope.
+The last speech of the day announced that of six trade unionists five
+would support the compromise.</p>
+
+<p>Redmond that evening put on the notice paper a motion adopting Lord
+Midleton's proposals provided that they &quot;be adopted by His Majesty's
+Government as a settlement of the Irish question and legislative effect
+be given to them forthwith.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On the day before this motion was tabled, a party was given at Lord
+Granard's house which everybody attended, and which marked the most
+festive moment of our comradeship. When we separated on the Friday most
+men were absolutely confident of an agreement covering four-fifths of
+the Convention.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily, the motion could not come under consideration for a period of
+ten days. In the following week Lord Midleton thought it necessary to
+attend the<a name="Page_322"></a> House of Lords. It was settled that we should spend the
+interval discussing the land purchase report, for which his presence was
+not essential. Redmond, whose health was still bad, did not come up to
+Dublin. All this gave time for agitation, and agitation was at work.</p>
+
+<p>Still, during that week there was no sign of any change in tone. Members
+of the local bodies who had gone to their homes at the week's end came
+back just as much inclined to settle as before.</p>
+
+<p>I met Redmond on the night of Monday, January 14th. He had seen no one
+in these ten days. He told me that he was still uncertain what would
+happen, but asked me to get one of the leading County Councillors to
+second his motion. Next morning I came in half an hour before the
+meeting to find the man I wanted. When I met him he was full of
+excitement, and said, &quot;Something has gone wrong; the men are all saying
+they must vote against Redmond.&quot; Then it was evident that propaganda had
+been busy to some purpose.</p>
+
+<p>When Redmond came in to his place, I said, &quot;It's all right. Martin
+McDonogh will second your motion.&quot; He answered with a characteristic
+brusqueness, &quot;He needn't trouble. I'm not going to move it; Devlin and
+the Bishops are voting against me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He rose immediately the Chairman was in his place.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The amendment which I have on the paper,&quot; he said, &quot;embodies the
+deliberate advice I give to the Convention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I consulted no one&mdash;and could not do so, being ill. It stands on record
+on my sole responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since entering the building I have heard that some very important
+Nationalist representatives are against this course&mdash;the Catholic
+bishops, Mr. Devlin&mdash;and others. I must face the situation&mdash;at which I
+am surprised; and I regret it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I proceeded I should probably carry my point on a division, but the
+Nationalists would be divided.<a name="Page_323"></a> Such a division could not carry out the
+objects I have in view.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Therefore, I must avoid pressing my motion. But I leave it standing on
+the paper. The others will give their advice. I feel that I can be of no
+further service to the Convention and will therefore not move.&quot;<a name="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13"><sup>[13]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>There was a pause of consternation. The Chairman intervened and the
+debate proceeded, and was carried on through the week. During its course
+a letter to the Chairman from the Bishop of Ross was circulated to us,
+most dexterous in exposition, most affecting in the tone of its
+conclusion. It can be read in the Report of the Convention and it cannot
+with justice be quoted except at full length&mdash;so admirable is the
+linking of argument. It need only be said here that it was an appeal &quot;to
+my fellow-Nationalists who have already made great concessions&quot; to
+yield, for the sake of a settlement, this further point, and that the
+appeal was signed &quot;from my sick-bed, not far removed from my death-bed.&quot;
+That eloquent voice and subtle brain could ill be spared from our
+assembly: but the letter came too late. It is plain that the writer had
+no inkling of what would happen till it was actually taking place.</p>
+
+<p>No one can overstate the effect of this episode. Redmond's personal
+ascendancy in the Convention had become very great. I am certain there
+was not a man there but would have said, &quot;If there is to be an Irish
+Parliament, Redmond must be Prime Minister, and his personality will
+give that Parliament its best possible chance.&quot; The Ulstermen had more
+than once expressed their view that if Home Rule were sure to mean
+Redmond's rule, their objections to it would be materially lessened.
+Now, they saw Redmond thrown over, and by a combination in which the
+clerical influence, so much distrusted by them, was paramount.</p>
+<br /><a name="Page_324"></a>
+
+<p>IV</p>
+
+<p>A new stage in the history of the Convention now opens. In the interval
+between the meeting which began by Redmond's withdrawal of his amendment
+and that of the following week, Sir Horace Plunkett went to London and
+laid the situation before the Prime Minister. Redmond had also written
+to Mr. Lloyd George stating that no progress could be made unless
+Government would declare its intentions as to legislation. The Chairman
+came back with the following letter in his pocket:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>10 DOWNING STREET,</p>
+
+<p>     WHITEHALL, S.W. 1,</p>
+
+<p>     <i>January</i> 21, 1918.</p>
+
+<p>     DEAR SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,</p>
+
+<p>     In our conversation on Saturday you told me that the situation in
+     the Convention has now reached a very critical stage. The issues
+     are so grave that I feel the Convention should not come to a
+     definite break without the Government having an opportunity of full
+     consultation with the leaders of the different sections. If, and
+     when, therefore, a point is reached at which the Convention finds
+     that it can make no further progress towards an agreed settlement,
+     I would ask that representatives should be sent to confer with the
+     Cabinet. The Government are agreed and determined that a solution
+     must be found. But they are firmly convinced that the best hope of
+     a settlement lies within the Convention, and they are prepared to
+     do anything in their power to assist the Convention finally to
+     reach a basis of agreement which would enable a new Irish
+     Constitution to come into operation with the consent of all
+     parties.</p>
+
+<p>     Yours sincerely,</p>
+
+<p>     D. LLOYD GEORGE.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Before acting on this, Sir Horace Plunkett allowed the debate to
+continue during two days. Since no movement towards agreement manifested
+itself, but only evidence of widespread and various divergence, he laid
+<a name="Page_325"></a>the Prime Minister's invitation before the Convention. There was
+considerable difference of opinion before a decision was reached for
+acceptance. Groups separated to select their representatives on the
+delegation.</p>
+
+<p>It was agreed in private conference that only one view should be
+presented from the Nationalist side, and that the view of what was at
+this point clearly the majority. Redmond, in agreeing to act as a
+delegate, agreed to set aside his own judgment and to press the claim
+for full fiscal responsibility&mdash;which, like other Nationalists, he
+regarded as in the abstract Ireland's right. But illness prevented him
+from attending when at last the delegates were received by the Prime
+Minister on February 13th.</p>
+
+<p>On the 5th he had asked a question in Parliament&mdash;the last he was to ask
+there. It concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of
+aircraft in Dublin&mdash;one of the things for which he was pressing in his
+ceaseless effort to bring Ireland some industrial advantage from the
+war. I saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the House,
+and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by Sinn F&eacute;iners, in
+which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the
+aerodromes near Dublin which he had helped to establish. But the main
+thing he had to say concerned the course of the Convention. Everything,
+in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but
+ruin and chaos.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke of his health. A bout of sickness which had prostrated him at
+Christmas in Dublin had left him uneasy. He was at the time, I thought,
+unduly alarmed about himself, and I believed that the continuance of
+this frame of mind was simply characteristic of a man who had very
+little experience of ill-health. I left him with profound compassion for
+his trouble of spirit, but without any serious apprehension for his
+state of body.</p>
+
+<p>The Convention reassembled on February 26th to consider the result of
+the delegation, which was summed <a name="Page_326"></a>up in a letter from Mr. Lloyd George.
+This well-known document begins with a definite pledge of action. On
+receiving the report of the Convention the Government would give it
+immediate attention and would &quot;proceed with the least possible delay to
+submit legislative proposals to Parliament.&quot;&mdash;The date of this pledge
+was February 25, 1918.&mdash;Mr. Lloyd George pressed, however, for a
+settlement &quot;in and through the Convention&quot;; and he declared his
+conviction that &quot;In view of previous attempts at settlement and of the
+deliberations of the Convention itself, the only hope of agreement lies
+in a solution which on the one side provides for the unity of Ireland by
+a single Legislature, with adequate safeguards for the interests of
+Ulster and of the Southern Unionists, and, on the other, secures the
+well-being of the Empire and the fundamental unity of the United
+Kingdom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ireland's strong claim to some control of indirect taxation was
+admitted; but it was laid down that till two years after the war the
+fixation and collection of customs and excise should be left to the
+Imperial Parliament: and that at the end of the war a Royal Commission
+should report on Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenditure and
+should submit proposals as to the fiscal relations of the two countries.</p>
+
+<p>For the war period, Ireland was to contribute &quot;an agreed proportion of
+the Imperial expenditure,&quot; but was to receive the full proceeds of Irish
+revenue from customs and excise, less the agreed contribution. The
+police and postal services were to be reserved also as war services.</p>
+
+<p>These provisions were laid down as essentials. A suggestion was made of
+an Ulster Committee within the Irish Parliament, having power to modify
+or veto measures, whether of legislation or administration, in their
+application to Ulster.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, Government expressed their willingness to accept <a name="Page_327"></a>and finance
+the Convention's scheme for land purchase and to give a large grant for
+urban housing.</p>
+
+<p>The question now before the Convention was whether it should or should
+not accept this offer, which differed from the Midleton proposals in
+that it withheld the control of excise as well as of customs, and that
+it retained control of police and Post Office for the war period. It
+also adumbrated an Ulster Committee, which had been an unpopular
+suggestion when put forward in the presentation stages. On the other
+hand, it offered great material inducements in the proposed expenditure
+for land purchase and for housing. Some of the County Councillors who
+had been most vehement in their opposition to the Midleton compromise
+were now disposed to think this too good an offer to let go, but
+believed it could be obtained without their taking the responsibility of
+voting for it. It was necessary to point out that the Irish party could
+not lower a standard of national demand set up by the Nationalists in
+the Convention, and that if they did so they would be hooted out of
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>The main argument of those who advised against acceptance was that
+Ministers had pledged themselves to act in any case. Let them. We could
+best help by enunciating our own programme. Then they would know the
+real facts of the Irish situation. If a majority of the Convention
+accepted the proposals of the Prime Minister's letter, there was no
+pledge that the Bill would be on those lines. We needed to keep a
+bargaining margin in what we put forward. It was even suggested that the
+Government proposals would be more likely to attract support in Ireland
+if put forward as a generous offer from a largely Unionist Government
+than if published as a compromise to which Nationalists had
+condescended.</p>
+
+<p>Our reply was that the essential thing was to make a beginning with
+self-government, and that by refusing <a name="Page_328"></a>to accept the Government's offer,
+on which alone we could combine with an influential Unionist section, we
+gravely increased the difficulties in the way of carrying Home Rule. If,
+as we held, the main need was to unite Ireland, the last thing on which
+we should insist was the concession of complete financial powers. When
+the lack of those powers began to prove itself injurious to Ireland's
+material interests, Ireland would certainly become united in a demand
+for the concession of them; and the history of the British Empire since
+the loss of America showed that every such demand had been granted to a
+self-governing State.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment interest centred on the discussion in private councils of
+Nationalists. The debates in full Convention were animated, but somewhat
+unreal by comparison. Lord Midleton's motion had been dropped, by
+consent, for a series of resolutions tabled by Lord MacDonnell which
+were in substance an acceptance of Government's proposal.</p>
+
+<p>But neither in the private councils nor in the public debates had we
+Redmond's presence. His illness had grown serious; an operation was
+necessary; it passed over hopefully, and on Tuesday, March 5th, when the
+debate resumed, Mr. Clancy had a telegram saying that he was practically
+out of danger.</p>
+
+<p>It was plain in these days that we were nearing a most critical
+decision, and Nationalist opinion was profoundly uneasy. Many men were
+drifting back to Redmond's view, and recoiled from the prospect of
+dividing the Convention once more into its original component
+parts&mdash;Nationalists on the one side, Unionists on the other. It was
+proposed that on the Wednesday Nationalists should meet and, if
+possible, concert joint action; if not, determine definitely each to go
+our own ways; for a painful part of the situation was that all of us had
+been used to act together, and none now felt himself free of some
+obligation. This had to be cleared up<a name="Page_329"></a> When we came down to Trinity
+College that morning, the news met us that Redmond was dead.</p>
+
+<p>The Convention adjourned its work, although time pressed most seriously,
+till after the interment. Ireland is a country where a public man can
+always count on a good funeral. The body was brought to Kingstown, and
+thence by special train to Wexford, where he had expressed the wish to
+be laid, in the burying-place of his own people and in the town with
+which he had been most closely associated. Hundreds of men came from
+distant parts to mark their sorrow and respect: what remained of him was
+carried in long and imposing procession through the streets. Over the
+grave Mr. Dillon, who had been chosen to succeed him in the chair of the
+Irish party, spoke eloquent and fitting words. Some day, no doubt, a
+monument to his memory will be set up in the streets of Wexford, where
+his great uncle's statue stands, and where will be placed the memorial
+to his gallant brother, subscribed for from all parts of the kingdom and
+from all Irish regiments in the Army.</p>
+
+<p>But I say without hesitation that the first and most striking endeavour
+to put in lasting shape a tribute to John Redmond was made in the
+Convention, not by great men, but by the ordinary rank and file of Irish
+Nationalists, who went back from the graveside to the work which his
+death had interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>Those who had been inclined before to accept his advice&mdash;still standing
+on our minutes&mdash;were now more than ever determined to follow it. That
+advice was not to refuse the hand of friendship which offered itself
+from men who by alliance with us could take away from the Home Rule
+demand all sectarian character: who could bring for the first time a
+great and representative body of Irish landlord opinion and Irish
+Protestant opinion into line with the opinion of Irish tenants and Irish
+Catholics. In order to act upon this advice men needed to face a
+powerful combination of forces and <a name="Page_330"></a>much threatened unpopularity: they
+had to encounter the hostility of an able and vindictively conducted
+newspaper; they had to separate themselves politically from the united
+voice of their own hierarchy; they had to break away from the politician
+who for many years now had equalled Redmond in his influence in Ireland
+and surpassed him in popularity. All of them were representative of
+constituents, all were living among those whom they represented; not a
+man of them but knew he would worsen his personal and political position
+by what he did. Yet, for that is the true way to state it, they stood to
+their dead leader's policy.</p>
+
+<p>It needs not to follow out in any detail the steps by which we reached
+the end of our labours. In the upshot, the Ulster group of nineteen
+dissented from everything and joined in a report which renewed the
+demand for partition. The Primate and the Provost signed a separate note
+declaring that a Federal Scheme based on the Swiss or Canadian system
+offered the only solution which could avoid the alternative choice
+between the coercion of Ulster and the partition of Ireland. The
+remaining members, sixty-six in all, accepted one common scheme.<a name="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14"><sup>[14]</sup></a>
+Their number included ten Southern Unionists, five Labour
+representatives (three of whom were Protestant artisans from Belfast),
+with Lords Granard, MacDonnell and Dunraven, Sir Bertram Windle and the
+representatives of the Dublin and Cork Chambers of Commerce.</p>
+
+<p>The scheme on which we concurred recommended the immediate establishment
+of self-government by an Irish Ministry responsible to a Parliament
+consisting of two Houses, composed on highly artificial lines. For a
+period of fifteen years Southern Unionists were to be represented by
+nominated members, while Ulster was to have extra members elected by
+special constituencies representing commercial and agricultural
+interests. The<a name="Page_331"></a> Parliament was to have full control of internal
+legislation, administration and direct taxation. The fixation of customs
+and excise was to be from Westminster, but the proceeds of these taxes
+to be paid into the Irish Exchequer. There was to be a contribution to
+the cost of Imperial defences, and representation at Westminster, but a
+representation of the Irish Parliament rather than of the
+constituencies. All of this was agreed to at our last meeting, and
+nothing could have been more pleasant than the atmosphere of good will
+which prevailed. But this was after a critical division&mdash;the most
+critical in which I have ever voted&mdash;in which those of us Nationalists
+who were for accepting the Government proposals voted with the Southern
+Unionists and those who were against with the Ulster group. The
+combination of Ulstermen and extreme Nationalists was thirty-four
+strong; those who adopted Redmond's policy and Lord Midleton's were
+thirty-eight. We had in our lobby sixteen of the Nationalist County and
+Urban Councillors; they had eleven.</p>
+
+<p>If that vote had gone otherwise, we were told plainly that the Southern
+Unionists would be no parties to the rest of the compromise. They were
+willing to recommend self-government only if the Convention recommended
+the reservation of customs to the Imperial Parliament. This point had
+become in their minds important even more as a symbol of the close union
+between the two kingdoms than by reason of the economic advantages which
+they attributed to it.</p>
+
+<p>Once the sticking-point was passed, the divided Nationalists recombined,
+and we were all at one in our mutual felicitations on the harmony which
+prevailed at the close. But as one of our rank and file said in my ear,
+&quot;If we had not given the vote we did, where would be all this talk of
+harmony? And mind you now, it was not easy to give it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was right, and within six months it cost him the <a name="Page_332"></a>chairmanship of his
+County Council. Others paid the same penalty, I am sure, without
+grudging it, for most of us were prouder of that action than of any
+other in our political lives. It may be well to set down the names of
+the local representatives and Labour men who voted as Redmond would have
+advised on that first crucial division.</p>
+
+<p>They were: W. Broderick, Youghal Urban Council; J.J. Coen, Westmeath
+County Council; D. Condren, Wicklow County Council; J. Dooly, Kings
+County County Council; Captain Doran, Louth County Council; T. Fallon,
+Leitrim County Council; J. Fitzgibbon, Roscommon County Council; Captain
+Gwynn, Irish Party; T. Halligan, Meath County Council; W. Kavanagh,
+Carlow County Council; J. McCarron, Labour; M. McDonogh, Galway Urban
+Council; J. McDonnell, Galway County Council; C. McKay, Labour; J.
+Murphy, Labour; J. O'Dowd, Sligo County Council; C.P. O'Neill, Pembroke
+Urban Council; Dr. O'Sullivan, Mayor of Waterford; T. Power, Waterford
+County Council; Sir S.B. Quin, Mayor of Limerick; D. Reilly, Cavan
+County Council; M. Slattery, Tipperary (S. Riding); H.T. Whitley,
+Labour.<a name="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15"><sup>[15]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p>In so far as we were led by anyone, Mr. Clancy, fulfilling in public
+what he had privately spoken, was our leader and spokesman.</p>
+
+<p>We were along with the Southern Unionists and our natural allies, Lords
+Granard and MacDonnell and Sir Bertram Windle. Archbishop Bernard and
+Dr. Mahaffy voted with us in that pinch, so that both the late Provost
+of Trinity and the present one did their part to secure an agreement.</p>
+
+<p>In the other list, the Archbishop of Armagh and the<a name="Page_333"></a> Moderator were
+grouped with the Archbishop of Cashel and the Bishops of Raphoe and Down
+and Connor; the Lord Mayor of Cork and Lord Mayor of Belfast were
+together; Mr. Devlin was with Mr. Barrie. This list represented no unity
+except a common refusal to agree to any compromise. Those who voted in
+it followed one or other of two trains of cogent reasoning; but the
+reasonings led to opposite conclusions. These men were beyond doubt as
+honest in their convictions as those who went the other way; but they
+took the easier course, whether they were Nationalist or Unionist: they
+swam with the tide.</p>
+
+<p>The troubles which Nationalists brought on themselves by supporting Lord
+Midleton were answered by the troubles which his group met for
+supporting Nationalist demands. The men who refused to make the
+compromise possible have the laugh of us. Neither section of us who
+voted for agreement achieved anything by facing the risk of
+unpopularity. We had followed Redmond's policy and we shared Redmond's
+fate. We had done our best to help the British Government and that
+Government itself defeated us.</p>
+
+<p>By the Prime Minister's letter Government was pledged to legislate for
+the better government of Ireland, not upon condition of our reaching
+substantial agreement, but in any event. Yet the letter emphasized the
+&quot;urgent importance of getting a settlement in and through the
+Convention.&quot; We had secured a report for a scheme in which sixty-six out
+of eighty-seven concurred in the broad lines; and of the twenty-one
+dissentients, nineteen were a group sent to the assembly with a pledge
+which they construed as giving them a special position, in that no
+legislation affecting them was to be passed without their concurrence.
+The agreement which we had reached enabled the Government, when it
+undertook legislation, to quote Unionist authority on the one hand and
+Nationalist authority on the other for many wise provisions which
+<a name="Page_334"></a>otherwise a Coalition Ministry might have found it most difficult to
+propose.</p>
+
+<p>But no legislation followed. Once more an Irish issue became involved in
+the wheels of the English political machine.</p>
+
+<p>We have ourselves in part to thank for it. We might in January have
+taken Redmond's advice, and Lord Midleton's declared view that
+legislation would follow might have proved correct. Yet, what use are
+might-have-beens? History is concerned with what happened, and our work
+in the Convention dragged itself on till the great German offensive had
+been launched and the Allied line pushed back to the very gates of
+Paris, and Government was at its wits' end for men. It is hard to blame
+a Ministry for what harm was done in the frantic rush to cope with
+perhaps the most critical instant in all history; but what was done
+produced infinite mischief and no good result. Immediately after the
+Convention's report (signed upon April 8th) had been received,
+Government proposed to apply conscription to Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>It is said, and it is not difficult to believe, that without making this
+proposal they dare not have come upon the British people with so extreme
+demands for compulsory service as were made. But by making it Ministers
+tore up and scattered in fragments whatever results the Convention had
+to show for its labours, and by legislating for conscription in Ireland
+they gained not one man. The proposal, as Redmond had always told them,
+proved impossible to carry out.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that if Redmond had lived this would ever have
+happened. His record in the war gave him an authority in Parliament
+which no other Irishman could possibly claim. It would have been
+impossible for Mr. Lloyd George to take such a step without giving him
+notice; and once that notice came, Redmond could have insisted upon the
+significance of the report of the Convention's sub-committee on
+questions of defence.<a name="Page_335"></a> This committee consisted of two civilians and
+three soldiers. Lord Desart, a Unionist, was in the chair; Mr. Powell,
+K.C., a Unionist (afterwards Irish Solicitor-General and now a judge),
+was the other civilian; the soldiers were the Duke of Abercorn, an
+Ulster Covenanter, with Captain Doran and myself, Nationalists from the
+Sixteenth Division. We found unanimously that if an Irish Parliament
+existed, whatever might be the claims of the Imperial authority, it
+would be impracticable to impose conscription without the Irish
+Parliament's consent. This unanimous finding was bound to influence the
+view of any Ministry, no matter how hard pressed. But, as debate
+revealed, Mr. Lloyd George had never heard of it.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that Redmond could have persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to adopt in
+April the course on which&mdash;but after the harm was done&mdash;he fell back in
+June, when Lord French asked for a large, but limited, number of
+recruits to refill the Irish Divisions within a specified time&mdash;at the
+end of which time, failing the production of the volunteers, other
+measures must be taken. Here, however, we are back in the region of
+speculation. Conscription was proposed and anarchy let loose in Ireland.
+Redmond's words, &quot;Better for us never to have met than to have met and
+failed,&quot; stand as the final sentence on this notable episode in Irish
+history.</p>
+
+<p>That is the Convention's epitaph as, I think, he would have written it.
+How shall we write his own?</p>
+
+<p>No attempt has been made in this book, and none shall be made, to
+represent him as a hero. But there are certain attributes which malice
+itself can scarcely deny him. All his ideals were generous. His love of
+country, the master-motive in his life, had nothing in it exclusive or
+tribal or partisan. His was a policy forward-looking and constructive;
+without narrowness or jealousy, it aimed to bring the destinies of
+Ireland into the hands of Irishmen, not greatly caring what Irishmen
+they were&mdash;indeed, if they were in a real measure responsible to<a name="Page_336"></a>
+Ireland, not caring at all. In this spirit he grasped masterfully at the
+chance which the war offered; in this spirit, he went out to meet his
+fellow-countrymen in the Irish Convention.</p>
+
+<p>And not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous. His love of
+Ireland was free from all attendant hates. His resentment was never on
+private grounds, and it was without rancour. He spent his whole life in
+opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after
+thirty years spent in criticism. His experience of political life and of
+English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his
+instinct was always to perceive the best in men. The friend who knew him
+best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and
+long ago, said this of him: &quot;He was always an optimist.&quot; The speaker did
+not mean&mdash;he could not have meant&mdash;that in those last months Redmond was
+sanguine. He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where
+suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives
+and with his own love of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>If he went wrong at any time, he went wrong by too generous a judgment
+of other men, too open-handed a policy. Perhaps, too, he may have
+erred&mdash;it was his characteristic defect&mdash;in not pressing his policy upon
+others with more vehemence. He had not the temperament which, when once
+possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and
+spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into
+effect. There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the
+ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he
+had none&mdash;none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during
+which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely
+devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always
+underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer,
+more ambitious of <a name="Page_337"></a>success, might with the same gifts have achieved more
+for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more
+love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch
+with the mass of his following.</p>
+
+<p>The way of life to which he was committed was in its essence distasteful
+to him. I do not believe that history shows an example of a statesman
+who served his country more absolutely from a sense of duty.</p>
+
+<p>All this might be admitted without conceding greatness to him. But he
+was a great man, unlike others, cast in a mould of his own. Without the
+least affectation of unconventionality, and indeed under a formal
+appearance, he was profoundly unconventional. His tastes, whether in
+literature, in art, in the choice of society, in the choice of his way
+of life, were utterly his own, unaffected by any standard but that which
+he himself established. Without subtlety of interpretation, his
+judgments cut deep into the heart of things. You could not hear him
+speak, could not be in his presence, without feeling the weight of his
+personality.</p>
+
+<p>A statesman, if ever there was one, he was never given the opportunity
+of proving himself in administration; he can be judged only by his gifts
+in counsel and by his power of guiding action. As a counsellor, he was
+supreme. He had that faculty for anticipating the future, that broad,
+far-reaching vision of the chain of events which can proceed only from
+long, deep and constant thought, and which is truly admirable when
+united, as it was in him, to a sovereign contempt for this or that
+momentary outcry. In these qualities of insight and foresight I have
+only seen one man approach him, the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
+to whose credit stands the greatest work of Imperial reconciliation
+accomplished in our day. But Redmond had supremely what the wise old
+Scotsman lacked&mdash;the gift of persuasive speech, to win acceptance for
+his wisdom and his vision.</p><a name="Page_338"></a>
+
+<p>He could persuade, but he could not compel. His was not the magnetism
+which constrains allegiance almost in despite of reason&mdash;the power which
+was possessed by his first and only leader, Parnell. Redmond's appeal
+was to men's judgment and convictions, not to those instincts which lie
+deepest and most potent in the heart of man. That was the limitation to
+his greatness. He could lead only by convincing men that he was right.</p>
+
+<p>If in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed
+to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in
+his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but
+by those who desired the same end. Yet admit that he failed and that he
+fell from power. No man holds power for ever, and during seventeen
+continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far
+more than all the personal ascendancy of a Prime Minister in one of the
+oversea Dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which
+control of administration and patronage bestows. He left his people
+improved in their material circumstances to an almost incredible degree,
+as compared with their state when he began his work.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Ireland counts his life a failure, and he most assuredly accepted
+that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for
+Ireland's, because he had not won through to the goal. His action upon
+the war was his life's supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it
+had failed to achieve its end. By that action let us judge him, for all
+else is trivial in comparison beside it.</p>
+
+<p>It is said by his critics that he bargained badly. If reply were made
+that he believed the Allied cause to be right and desired to lead his
+country according to his conception of justice, we should be answered
+that he was in charge of his country's interests, not of her morals; and
+he would have admitted an element of <a name="Page_339"></a>truth in this. Yet, as in the Boer
+War he had led his countrymen to support what he conceived to be the
+right cause, even with certain injury to their own, so now assuredly he
+would not have acted as he did, had he not been convinced that Ireland's
+honour was to be served as well as her advantage.</p>
+
+<p>But when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had
+to bargain with. No one in August 1914 anticipated the course of the
+war. No one foresaw the need for the last man available. It was more
+than a year before Great Britain could even equip the men who pressed
+themselves forward for service. All that he really had in his hand to
+give or to withhold was the value of Ireland's moral support. Could he
+by waiting his time have made a better bargain?</p>
+
+<p>When that critical hour came, Redmond knew in his, bones the weight of
+Ireland's history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly
+tend to assert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong
+counter-emotion. He knew that if Ireland said nothing and did nothing at
+the crisis, things would be said of Ireland which would rapidly engender
+rising passion; and with the growth of that passion all possibility, not
+of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries
+would be gone. In plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only
+chance for action would have been in heading an Ireland hostile to
+England. In this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset,
+he could only have done this by denying all that he believed. But apart
+from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be
+served. Ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of.
+How could he hope for an Ulster united to Ireland, if Ulster were
+divided from Ireland on the war?</p>
+
+<p>Everything depended on an instant and almost desperate move. He might
+have left the sole offer of service from Ireland to lie with Sir Edward
+Carson. What he <a name="Page_340"></a>did actually was to offer instantly all that the
+Ulstermen had offered, and more, for he proposed active union in Ireland
+itself. It was a bold stroke, but it was guided by an ideal perpetually
+present with him&mdash;the essential unity of Ireland. To set Irishmen
+working together at such a crisis in the common name of Ireland was an
+object for which he was willing to jeopardize the whole organization
+which stood behind him, at a moment when he could speak of full right
+for three-fourths of his countrymen. And, when he is called a failure,
+let it be remembered that in this he did not fail.</p>
+
+<p>This fight is not yet ended, the long battle is not lost. Had Ireland
+from the first stood aloof, had she been drawn at the war's opening into
+the temper which she displayed in its closing stages, then indeed we
+might despair of any hopeful issue, any genuine peace between these two
+neighbouring islands, and, what matters infinitely more, between the
+strong yet divergent strains that make up Ireland itself.</p>
+
+<p>But as the mists of passion clear and deeds rather than words come into
+sharp light, it will be seen and realized that for a thousand Irishmen
+who risked their lives to defeat Redmond's effort there were fifty
+thousand who at his summons took on themselves far greater hardships and
+faced dangers far more terrible. By them we take our stand&mdash;we who
+followed Redmond, who believed and still believe in his wisdom. We wish
+no word of his last years unspoken, no act undone by that great and
+generous-hearted Irishman in the supreme period of his life. In his
+defeat and ours, we accept no defeat; we shall endeavour to keep our
+will set, as his was, for a final triumph which can mean humiliation for
+no Irish heart. Tangled as are the threads of all his policy, he leaves
+the task far nearer to accomplishment than he found it; and if in the
+end freedom and prosperity come to a united Ireland, they will be found
+to proceed&mdash;however deeply overlaid by years and by <a name="Page_341"></a>events may be the
+chain of causation&mdash;from the action which John Redmond took in August
+1914, and upon which his brother, with a legion like him, set the seal
+of his blood.</p>
+
+<p>To have served long and faithfully without reward&mdash;to have given all of
+life to one high purpose&mdash;to have faced a great crisis greatly&mdash;these
+are claims enough for Redmond that the allegiance of his comrades and
+followers may be justified when it is judged. The grave has closed over
+him, and the rest is for us to do, that a coping-stone may be set on his
+life's labours, and that reparation final and conclusive, for what he
+suffered undeservedly, may yet be offered to the dead.</p>
+
+<p>FOOTNOTES:</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10">[10]</a><div class="note"><p> When ultimately we did meet, these were the elements which
+assembled.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11">[11]</a><div class="note"><p> His notes here are only references to quotations. I
+supplement on this page by my own notes.&mdash;S.G.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12">[12]</a><div class="note"><p> He was knighted for his work in connection with the war.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13">[13]</a><div class="note"><p> These are my notes, jotted as he spoke.&mdash;S.G.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14">[14]</a><div class="note"><p> Subject to the publication of a Report signed by Bishop
+O'Donnell, and these in agreement with him reaffirmed their view.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15">[15]</a><div class="note"><p> The following, though unavoidably absent at the critical
+moment, joined with us: M.K. Barry, Cork County Council; J. Butler,
+Kilkenny County Council; Patrick Dempsey, Belfast; M. Governey, Carlow
+Urban Council; M.J. Minch, Kildare County Council.</p></div>
+
+<a name="Page_343"></a>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<a name="INDEX"></a><h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+<ul><li>Agar-Robartes, Mr., <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>-<a href='#Page_69'>69</a></li>
+<li>Ancient Order of Hibernians, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a></li>
+<li>Army--</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Irish Brigades raised for the War--</li>
+<li><ul><li>    Sixteenth Division,</li>
+<li><ul><li>      staffing of, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>-<a href='#Page_188'>188</a>;</li>
+<li>      development of opinions in, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>;</li>
+<li>      10th Division made up from, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>-<a href='#Page_195'>195</a>;</li>
+<li>      proceeds to France, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>-<a href='#Page_201'>201</a>;</li>
+<li>      in action, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>;</li>
+<li>      Messines, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>-<a href='#Page_265'>265</a>;</li>
+<li>      Ypres, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>    Tenth Division, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a></li>
+<li>    Tyneside Battalions, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a></li>
+<li>    Ulster Division, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>      on the Somme, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>;</li>
+<li>      Messines, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>-<a href='#Page_265'>265</a>;</li>
+<li>      Ypres, <a href='#Page_306'>306</a></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>  Irish Nationalist attitude to, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>-<a href='#Page_141'>141</a></li>
+<li>  Irish recruiting--</li>
+<li><ul><li>    Redmond's efforts, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>-<a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>-<a href='#Page_179'>179</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_191'>191</a>-<a href='#Page_192'>192</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>;</li>
+<li>    efforts handicapped by Government, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>-<a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>-<a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a>;</li>
+<li>    letter to Birrell, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>;</li>
+<li>    Sinn Féin propaganda against, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Irish Regulars' achievements, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    in Gallipoli, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a> ff.</li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Ulster sympathies of, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a> ff.;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    the Curragh incident, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>-<a href='#Page_109'>109</a></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Ashe, Thomas, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>-<a href='#Page_302'>302</a></li>
+<li>Asquith, H.H.,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  struggle of, with House of Lords, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>-<a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>;</li>
+<li>  on indivisibility of Ireland, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>;</li>
+<li>  Ladybank speech, (Oct., 1913), <a href='#Page_85'>85</a></li>
+<li>  War Minister, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a></li>
+<li>  response to Redmond's National Defence offer, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a></li>
+<li>  on Ulster preparations for resisting Home Rule, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a></li>
+<li>  fails Redmond, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a></li>
+<li>  recruiting speech in Dublin, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-<a href='#Page_157'>157</a></li>
+<li>  the Coalition, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a></li>
+<li>  Redmond's letter to, against conscription, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>-<a href='#Page_209'>209</a></li>
+<li>  the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a></li>
+<li>  reports on his visit to Ireland, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a></li>
+<li>  breaks faith with Redmond, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-<a href='#Page_240'>240</a></li>
+<li>  displaced, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a></li>
+<li>  estimate of, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Aughavanagh, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>-<a href='#Page_39'>39</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Balfour, A.J., <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>-<a href='#Page_56'>56</a></li>
+<li>Balfour, G., <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></li>
+<li>Barrie, Mr., <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a></li>
+<li>Beatty, Admiral, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a></li>
+<li>Bernard, Dr., Abp. of Dublin, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a></li>
+<li><ul><li>  three points of, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a> ff.</li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Biggar, Joseph, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a></li>
+<li>Birrell, A., Redmond's letter to, on the Volunteers, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a></li>
+<li><ul><li>  on Kitchener's attitude to Irish National Volunteers, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li>
+<li>  <i>Appreciation</i> of Redmond quoted, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a></li>
+<li>  the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>-<a href='#Page_220'>220</a></li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Blake, E., <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></li>
+<li>Brade, Sir R., <a href='#Page_203'>203</a></li>
+<li>Budget of 1909-10, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a></li>
+<li>Butler, Sir W., <a href='#Page_5'>5</a></li>
+<li>Butt, Isaac, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a></li></ul>
+
+
+<ul><li>Campbell, Sir James, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></li>
+<li>Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li>
+<li>Carson, Sir E.,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  the Covenant demonstrations, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>;</li>
+<li>  moves exclusion of Ulster, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>;</li>
+<li>  on Ulster and the Army, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>;</li>
+<li>  on possibility of persuading Ulster, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Speaker's Conference, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>;</li>
+<li>  attitude to Home Rule enactment, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>-<a href='#Page_149'>149</a>;</li>
+<li>  joins the Coalition, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>-<a href='#Page_193'>193</a>;</li>
+<li>  interpretation of exclusion proposals, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>;</li>
+<li>  refuses joint platform at Newry, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>;</li>
+<li>  kills Volunteer Bill, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a>;</li>
+<li>  on conscription for Ireland, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>;</li>
+<li>  final victory against Redmond, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>;</li>
+<li>  temperamental attitude to Home Rule, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>-<a href='#Page_97'>97</a>;</li>
+<li>  quoted, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>-<a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>;</li>
+<li>  appeal on Ulster's claim, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a>-<a href='#Page_98'>98</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Casement, Sir Roger, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  quoted, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Castletown, Lord, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></li>
+<li>Cecil, Lord Hugh, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></li>
+<li>Cecil, Lord Robert, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a></li>
+<li>Chamberlain, Austen, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a></li>
+<li>Churchill, Winston,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Belfast speech of (1912), <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>;</li>
+<li>  devolution proposal, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>;</li>
+<li>  Bradford speech (1914), <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>-<a href='#Page_104'>104</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Larne gun-running, <a href='#Page_113'>113</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Citizen Army, the, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Clark, Sir George, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>-<a href='#Page_272'>272</a></li>
+<li>Clarke, ----, execution of, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a></li>
+<li>Clancy, J.J., <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a></li>
+<li>Coalition formed, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>-<a href='#Page_193'>193</a></li>
+<li>Coercion, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>-<a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a></li>
+<li>Colthurst, Capt., <a href='#Page_228'>228</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a></li>
+<li>Commons, House of,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Parnell's obstruction in, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>  payment of members, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>;</li>
+<li>  scene after passing Home Rule Bill, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>;</li>
+<li>  disgust of, at Redmond's defeat, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>;</li>
+<li>  Redmond's estimate of, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>;</li>
+<li>  his familiarity with, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Congested Districts Board, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a></li>
+<li>Connolly, James, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Conscription,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Redmond's opposition to, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a> ff., <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>-<a href='#Page_248'>248</a>;</li>
+<li>  application of, to Ireland, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Convention, <i>see</i> Irish Convention</li>
+<li>Craig, Capt., <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  quoted, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Crooks, Will, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a></li>
+<li>Crozier, Dr., Abp. of Armagh, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li>
+<li>Curragh incident, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>-<a href='#Page_109'>109</a></li>
+<li>Curzon, Col., <a href='#Page_187'>187</a></li></ul>
+
+
+<ul><li>Dalton, Miss (Mrs. John Redmond), <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a></li>
+<li>Davitt, Michael, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a></li>
+<li>Davitt (young), <a href='#Page_116'>116</a></li>
+<li>de Robeck, Admiral, despatch of, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>-<a href='#Page_196'>196</a></li>
+<li>de Valera, E., <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></li>
+<li>Desart, Lord, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a></li>
+<li>Devlin, J.,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  in Redmond's "inner cabinet," <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>;</li>
+<li>  his supporters' disappointment on compromise, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>;</li>
+<li>  recruiting successes of, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>;</li>
+<li>  indispensable in Ireland, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>;</li>
+<li>  carries Belfast Convention for exclusion proposals, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>;</li>
+<li>  on the Irish Convention, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>;</li>
+<li>  estimate of, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>;</li>
+<li>  Redmond's estimate of, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Devolution, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a></li>
+<li>Dillon, John,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  relations with Redmond, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>;</li>
+<li>  on coercion, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>;</li>
+<li>  an Irish Volunteer movement, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>;</li>
+<li>  speech on suppression of the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>;</li>
+<li>  declines to serve on the Irish Convention, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Doran, Capt., <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>-<a href='#Page_275'>275</a></li>
+<li>Doyle, Sir A. Conan, cited, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>-<a href='#Page_132'>132</a></li>
+<li>Dublin strike (1913), <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a></li>
+<li>Duke, Sir. H.E., <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></li>
+<li>Dunraven, Lord, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  on the Convention, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>-<a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Ewart, Sir S., <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Field, William, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></li>
+<li>Financial Relations Commission, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a></li>
+<li>Fingall, Lord, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a></li>
+<li>Forster, W.E., <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></li>
+<li>Franchise Bill (1917), <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>-<a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a></li>
+<li>French, Sir John, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li>
+<li>Friend, General, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Gallipoli, Irish troops in, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a> ff.</li>
+<li>General Elections--</li>
+<li><ul><li>  1906, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a></li>
+<li>  1910 (Jan.), <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>-<a href='#Page_44'>44</a></li>
+<li>  1910 (Dec.), <a href='#Page_49'>49</a></li>
+<li>  1918, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>George V, King, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a></li>
+<li>George, D. Lloyd,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  non-Irish preoccupations of, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>-<a href='#Page_42'>42</a>;</li>
+<li>  Conciliation mission after the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>;</li>
+<li>  agreement with the Irish, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>;</li>
+<li>  agreement thrown over, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>;</li>
+<li>  Redmond's hopes from, as Premier, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>-<a href='#Page_245'>245</a>;</li>
+<li>  on Irish distrust, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>;</li>
+<li>  supports the "two nations" theory, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Convention, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a>;</li>
+<li>  letter to Plunkett, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>;</li>
+<li>  conference with Convention representatives, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>;</li>
+<li>  proposals to the Convention, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>  quoted on Ulster, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Gladstone, W.E., <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  breach with Parnell, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>-<a href='#Page_19'>19</a>;</li>
+<li>  retirement, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Gladstone, W.G.C., <a href='#Page_66'>66</a></li>
+<li>Gough, Gen., quoted, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a> ff.</li>
+<li>Government, delays of, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>-<a href='#Page_237'>237</a>, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  general attitude to Redmond, <i>see under</i> Redmond</li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Granard, Lord, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a></li>
+<li>Grey, Earl, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></li>
+<li>Grey, Lord (Sir Edward), Ulster proposals of, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  speech on outbreak of War, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>-<a href='#Page_130'>130</a>;</li>
+<li>  quoted, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_30'>30</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Harbison, Mr., <a href='#Page_270'>270</a></li>
+<li>Harty, Abp. of Cashel, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a></li>
+<li>Hayden, Mr., <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>-<a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li>
+<li>Hazleton, Mr., <a href='#Page_14'>14</a></li>
+<li>Healy, T.M., returned for Wexford, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>-<a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  attacks on Redmond and Nationalist Party, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>;</li>
+<li>  opposition to county option, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>-<a href='#Page_112'>112</a>;</li>
+<li>  declines to serve on Convention, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>;</li>
+<li>  quoted, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Hickie, Maj.-Gen, W.B., <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a></li>
+<li>Hulk, Maj.-Gen., <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></li>
+<li>Hobson, Bulmer, quoted, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>,159</li>
+<li>Home Rule Bill (1912), demonstrations for and against, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  National Convention, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>;</li>
+<li>  Ulster's attitude, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>  exclusion proposals, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</li>
+<li>  devolution proposals, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>;</li>
+<li>  Unionist converts, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>;</li>
+<li>  in Committee, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>;</li>
+<li>  financial arrangements under, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>-<a href='#Page_75'>75</a>;</li>
+<li>  Report stage, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>;</li>
+<li>  Third Reading, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>;</li>
+<li>  in the Lords, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>  third Introduction (1914), <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</li>
+<li>  inadequate private discussion of, by Irish Party, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>-<a href='#Page_101'>101</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Amending Bill, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Speaker's Conference, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>  amending Bill postponed, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a>;</li>
+<li>  operation of, to be deferred, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>-<a href='#Page_149'>149</a>;</li>
+<li>  Royal assent, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>;</li>
+<li>  Asquith's move towards securing immediate operation of, after the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>;</li>
+<li>  O'Connor's demand for, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Hopwood, Sir Francis, <a href='#Page_275'>275</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Industrial depression in Ireland under the War, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a></li>
+<li>_Irish at the Front, The_, quoted, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a></li>
+<li>Irish Brigades, <i>see under</i> Army</li>
+<li>Irish Convention--</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Committee of Nine, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a></li>
+<li>  Financial considerations, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>-<a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    Lord Midleton's proposals, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>-<a href='#Page_323'>323</a>;</li>
+<li>    Lloyd George's proposals, <a href='#Page_326'>326</a>-<a href='#Page_332'>332</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  First meeting of, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a></li>
+<li>  Fraternization between representatives, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>-<a href='#Page_287'>287</a></li>
+<li>  Grand Committee of Twenty, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a></li>
+<li>  Inception of, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a></li>
+<li>  Intermediate Authority proposal, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>-<a href='#Page_286'>286</a></li>
+<li>  Land Purchase Sub-Committee, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a></li>
+<li>  Personnel of, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a> ff.</li>
+<li>  Preliminaries, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></li>
+<li>  Procedure adopted, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a></li>
+<li>  Reports presented by, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li>
+<li>  Sinn Féin attitude to, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>-<a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>-<a href='#Page_268'>268</a></li>
+<li>  Spirit of, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>-<a href='#Page_280'>280</a></li>
+<li>  Ulster representatives, attitude of, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    attitude to Redmond, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>;</li>
+<li>    Report presented by, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+
+
+<li>Irish Council Bill (1907), <a href='#Page_31'>31</a> ff., <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></li>
+<li>_Irish Independent_, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li>
+<li>Irish Party, discipline of, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>-<a href='#Page_13'>13</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  personnel of, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>;</li>
+<li>  Redmond's relations with, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>-<a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Irish relations with England most cordial (1916), <a href='#Page_213'>213</a></li>
+<li>Irish suspicion, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>-<a href='#Page_90'>90</a></li>
+<li>Irish Volunteers, Redmond's policy repudiated by, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>-<a href='#Page_156'>156</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  collisions with National Volunteers, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>;</li>
+<li>  Rebellion of 1916, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a> ff.</li>
+<li>  (<i>See also</i> National Volunteers)</li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Jameson, Andrew, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a></li>
+<li>Judge, M.J., cited, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Kavanagh, W.M., <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a></li>
+<li>Kelley, Dr., Bp. of Ross, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a></li>
+<li>Kenny, Dr., <a href='#Page_38'>38</a></li>
+<li>Ker, S.P., quoted, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a></li>
+<li>Kettle, Prof., T.M., <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  recruiting work of, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a>;</li>
+<li>  killed in action, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a>;</li>
+<li>  estimate of, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Kitchener, Earl,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  attitude of, to Irish Volunteers, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>-<a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>;</li>
+<li>  Redmond's interview with, on recruiting, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>-<a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>;</li>
+<li>  letter on Irish recruiting, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>;</li>
+<li>  estimate of, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Knight, Mr., <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>-<a href='#Page_295'>295</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Labour Party, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li>
+<li>Land Act (1909), <a href='#Page_41'>41</a></li>
+<li>Land League, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a></li>
+<li>Land Purchase, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>-<a href='#Page_28'>28</a></li>
+<li>Lang, Dr., Abp. of York, on Ulster, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>-<a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li>
+<li>Lansdowne, Marquis of, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a></li>
+<li>Larkin, James, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a></li>
+<li>Larne Gun-running, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>-<a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li>
+<li>Law, A. Bonar,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  speeches of, on Ulster, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>;</li>
+<li>  Ulster policy, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>;</li>
+<li>  protest against enactment of Home Rule, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>;</li>
+<li>  quoted on Major Willie Redmond, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>;</li>
+<li>  estimate of, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Liberal Party, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a></li>
+<li>Lincolnshire, Marquis of,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Volunteer Bill of, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Liquor trade in Ireland, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></li>
+<li>Local Government Act (1897), <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></li>
+<li>Long, W., quoted, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></li>
+<li>Longford Election, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a></li>
+<li>Lonsdale, Sir John, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a></li>
+<li>Lords, House of,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Veto controversy, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a> ff., <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>;</li>
+<li>  Conference, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Loreburn, Lord, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a></li>
+<li>Lynch, Arthur, <a href='#Page_129'>129</a></li>
+<li>Lysaght, Edward, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a>-<a href='#Page_302'>302</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>McCarthy, Justin, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  quoted, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>McCullagh, Sir C., <a href='#Page_284'>284</a></li>
+<li>MacDermott, Dr., <a href='#Page_272'>272</a></li>
+<li>MacDonagh, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>MacDonnell, Sir Anthony,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  devolution scheme of, <a href='#Page_28'>28</a>-<a href='#Page_29'>29</a>;</li>
+<li>  supports Home Rule Bill, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>;</li>
+<li>  in the Convention, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>McDowell, Sir Alexander, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>-<a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>-<a href='#Page_308'>308</a></li>
+<li>MacNeill, Prof.,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  promotes Nationalist arming, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>;</li>
+<li>  volunteer following of, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>;</li>
+<li>  cited, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>-<a href='#Page_181'>181</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>MacRory, Dr., Bp. of Down and Connor, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a></li>
+<li>MacSweeney, Capt., <a href='#Page_153'>153</a></li>
+<li>Mahaffy, Dr., Provost of Trinity, <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li>
+<li>Maxwell, Sir John, <a href='#Page_225'>225</a>-<a href='#Page_226'>226</a></li>
+<li>Meath, Lord, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a></li>
+<li>Midleton, Lord, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Customs proposals, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a> ff.</li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Mooney, J.J., <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a></li>
+<li>Moore, Lt.-Col. M., <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>-<a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a></li>
+<li>Murphy, W.M., <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_295'>295</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_315'>315</a>, <a href='#Page_317'>317</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Nathan, Sir M., <a href='#Page_220'>220</a></li>
+<li>National Volunteers,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  establishment of, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>-<a href='#Page_92'>92</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>-<a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</li>
+<li>  Redmond's adhesion to, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>;</li>
+<li>  formidable character of, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>-<a href='#Page_115'>115</a>;</li>
+<li>  committee difficulties, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>  Bachelor's Walk affair, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>-<a href='#Page_125'>125</a>;</li>
+<li>  Redmond's offer of, for National Defence, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a> ff., <a href='#Page_203'>203</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>  general response, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>-<a href='#Page_138'>138</a>;</li>
+<li>  demand for recognition, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>-<a href='#Page_161'>161</a>, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>-<a href='#Page_203'>203</a>;</li>
+<li>  refused, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>-<a href='#Page_208'>208</a>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>;</li>
+<li>  secession of Irish Volunteers from, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>;</li>
+<li>  Asquith's pledge regarding, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a>;</li>
+<li>  Review of, in Phoenix Park, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>;</li>
+<li>  Bulmer Hobson's <i>History</i> of, quoted, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a></li></ul></li></ul>
+
+
+
+
+<ul><li>O'Brien, Patrick, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a></li>
+<li>O'Brien, William, attacks by,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  on Redmond and National Party, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>;</li>
+<li>  opposition to Budget (1909), <a href='#Page_42'>42</a>, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>;</li>
+<li>  to Home Rule Bill (1912), <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>;</li>
+<li>  to county option, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a>-<a href='#Page_112'>112</a>;</li>
+<li>  to the Convention, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>;</li>
+<li>  declines to serve, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>O'Cathasaigh, Mr., cited, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a></li>
+<li>O'Connor, "Long John," <a href='#Page_38'>38</a></li>
+<li>O'Connor, T.P.,</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Canadian tour 1910, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>;</li>
+<li>  recruiting successes of, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>;</li>
+<li>  motion for immediate Horns Rule, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>;</li>
+<li>  cited, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>-<a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>O'Donnell, Dr., Bp. of Raphoe, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  speech on Papal Decrees, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>-<a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Oranmore, Lord, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Paget, Gen. Sir Arthur, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>ff.</li>
+<li>Parliament, <i>see</i> Commons <i>and</i> Lords</li>
+<li>Parnell, C.S., <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>-<a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>-<a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  property of, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>;</li>
+<li>  power of, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>;</li>
+<li>  anecdote of Willie Redmond and House of Commons, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Parnellites, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>-<a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>-<a href='#Page_25'>25</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  fusion of, with anti-Parnellites, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Parsons, Lt.-Gen. Sir L., <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>ff., <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>-<a href='#Page_201'>201</a>, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>-<a href='#Page_205'>205</a></li>
+<li>Pearse, Patrick, speech of, in Dublin, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>-<a href='#Page_64'>64</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Limerick speech, quoted, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>;</li>
+<li>  secedes from National Volunteers, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Rebellion, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>-<a href='#Page_223'>223</a>;</li>
+<li>  execution, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li><i>Phoenix</i> Park murders, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a></li>
+<li>Pigott, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a></li>
+<li>Pirrie, Lord, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a></li>
+<li>Plunket, Count, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a></li>
+<li>Plunkett, Lord (Sir Horace),</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Conference scheme of (1895), <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</li>
+<li>  the Convention, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a>;</li>
+<li>  as Chairman, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>;</li>
+<li>  Lloyd George's letter to, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Poe, Col. Sir Hutcheson, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a></li>
+<li>Pollock, Mr., <a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a></li>
+<li>Primate, the, <i>see</i> Crozier</li>
+<li>Primrose, Neil, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>-<a href='#Page_69'>69</a></li>
+<li>Primrose Committee, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_293'>293</a>-<a href='#Page_294'>294</a></li>
+<li>Protestant Ascendency, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Raymond Le Gros, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>-<a href='#Page_3'>3</a></li>
+<li>Rebellion, Redmond's attitude to, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a></li>
+<li>Rebellion of 1916, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>-<a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  denounced by Redmond, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>-<a href='#Page_224'>224</a>;</li>
+<li>  suppression of, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a>;</li>
+<li>  Government's fomentation of <i>disaffection</i>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>-<a href='#Page_229'>229</a>;</li>
+<li>  comparison with South African Rebellion (1914), <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Recruiting, <i>see under</i> Army</li>
+<li>Redmond, John Edward, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a></li>
+<li>Redmond, John--</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Ancestry and family of, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>-<a href='#Page_4'>4</a></li>
+<li>  Career--</li>
+<li><ul><li>    education, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>;</li>
+<li>    clerkship in the House, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>;</li>
+<li>    returned for New Ross, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+<li>    Parliamentary <i>debut</i>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>-<a href='#Page_11'>11</a>;</li>
+<li>    Australian and American mission, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>;</li>
+<li>    marriage, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>;</li>
+<li>    second American mission, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>;</li>
+<li>    imprisoned (1888), <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>;</li>
+<li>    chosen leader of Parnellites, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>;</li>
+<li>    returned for Waterford, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>;</li>
+<li>    attitude to Roman Catholic Church, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>:</li>
+<li>    widowed, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>;</li>
+<li>    second marriage, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>-<a href='#Page_22'>22</a>;</li>
+<li>    work with Plunkett, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>-<a href='#Page_24'>24</a>;</li>
+<li>    on Commission on Financial Relations, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>;</li>
+<li>    Chairman of United Irish Party, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>;</li>
+<li>    his inner cabinet, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>;</li>
+<li>    attitude to Irish Council Bill, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>-<a href='#Page_33'>33</a>;</li>
+<li>    campaign for Home Rule (1907), <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>-<a href='#Page_35'>35</a>;</li>
+<li>    House of Lords controversy, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a>-<a href='#Page_46'>46</a>, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>;</li>
+<li>    "Dollar Dictator," <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>;</li>
+<li>    the Nottingham Meeting (1912), <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>;</li>
+<li>    Home Rule campaign (1912) following Carson, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>;</li>
+<li>    on proposed exclusion of Ulster, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>-<a href='#Page_86'>86</a>;</li>
+<li>    attitude to National Volunteers, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>;</li>
+<li>    speeches on the Ulster position, <a href='#Page_98'>98</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>-<a href='#Page_111'>111</a>;</li>
+<li>    the Ulster gun-running, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>;</li>
+<li>    relations with National Volunteers thereafter, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>    the Speaker's Conference, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>-<a href='#Page_122'>122</a>;</li>
+<li>    speech on outbreak of War, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>    offers the Volunteers for national defence, <a href='#Page_134'>134</a>ff;</li>
+<li>    Recruiting manifesto, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>;</li>
+<li>    refuses office in Coalition Government, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>;</li>
+<li>    interview with Kitchener on recruiting, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>;</li>
+<li>    Conference at Viceregal Lodge, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>-<a href='#Page_199'>199</a>;</li>
+<li>    visits Irish troops at the Front, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>-<a href='#Page_202'>202</a>;</li>
+<li>    opposes Conscription for Ireland, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a> ff.</li>
+<li>    letter to Asquith, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></li>
+<li>    Rebellion of 1916, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a> ff.</li>
+<li>    Government breach of faith, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>-<a href='#Page_240'>240</a>;</li>
+<li>    moves vote of censure, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>;</li>
+<li>    criticizes Lloyd George, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>;</li>
+<li>    renewed opposition to conscription, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>;</li>
+<li>    the Smuts dinner, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>;</li>
+<li>    the Convention, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>-<a href='#Page_263'>263</a>;</li>
+<li>    death of his brother, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>;</li>
+<li>    death of Pat O'Brien, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>;</li>
+<li>    in the Convention, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>-<a href='#Page_279'>279</a>;</li>
+<li>    relations with Nationalist representatives, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>-<a href='#Page_284'>284</a>;</li>
+<li>    speech in Belfast, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>    at Westminster, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>;</li>
+<li>    speech on vote of thanks to the Forces, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>-<a href='#Page_306'>306</a>;</li>
+<li>    Meetings of Committee of Nine, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a> ff.;</li>
+<li>    ill-health, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>;</li>
+<li>    attitude to Lord Midleton's proposals, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>-<a href='#Page_321'>321</a>;</li>
+<li>    tables motion conditionally accepting, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a>;</li>
+<li>    withdraws owing to Nationalist opposition, <a href='#Page_322'>322</a>-<a href='#Page_323'>323</a>;</li>
+<li>    illness, <a href='#Page_325'>325</a>;</li>
+<li>    operation, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a>;</li>
+<li>    death, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Characteristics--</li>
+<li><ul><li>    Ambition, lack of, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a>, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a></li>
+<li>    Caution, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a></li>
+<li>    Courtesy, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a></li>
+<li>    Eloquence, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li>
+<li>    Lucidity, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a>, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li>
+<li>    Moderation, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a></li>
+<li>    Modesty, <a href='#Page_36'>36</a>, <a href='#Page_336'>336</a></li>
+<li>    Optimism, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a></li>
+<li>    Peaceable temperament and tolerance, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_35'>35</a>, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li>
+<li>    Rest, love of, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a></li>
+<li>    Reticence, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a></li>
+<li>    Romantic strain, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a></li>
+<li>    Self-abnegation, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a></li>
+<li>    Sensitiveness, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a></li>
+<li>    Tact, <a href='#Page_88'>88</a></li>
+<li>    Trustworthiness, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Comparison of,</li>
+<li><ul><li>    with Campbell-Bannerman, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>;</li>
+<li>    with Parnell, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>;</li>
+<li>    position compared, with that of Botha, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Estimate of, <a href='#Page_335'>335</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    Birrell's estimate, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>;</li>
+<li>    Healy's tribute, <a href='#Page_256'>256</a>;</li>
+<li>    estimate as leader, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>-<a href='#Page_61'>61</a>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>;</li>
+<li>    estimate of his work, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>-<a href='#Page_341'>341</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Government slighting of, and disregard of his advice, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>-<a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>-<a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_220'>220</a>, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>, <a href='#Page_238'>238</a>-<a href='#Page_239'>239</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    instances of bad faith, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>-<a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>;</li>
+<li>    recruiting efforts handicapped, <a href='#Page_163'>163</a>, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>-<a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>-<a href='#Page_191'>191</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  House of Commons life of, <a href='#Page_111'>111</a></li>
+<li>  Imperialism of, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a></li>
+<li>  Irishmen, attitude towards, <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a></li>
+<li>  Military sympathies of, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a>-<a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li>
+<li>  Oratorical style of, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a></li>
+<li>  Recruiting efforts of, <i>see under</i> Army</li>
+<li>  Status of, in Ireland, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>-<a href='#Page_172'>172</a></li>
+<li>  Social isolation of, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a></li>
+<li>  Stephens' attack on, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>-<a href='#Page_277'>277</a></li>
+<li>  War policy of, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Redmond, Major "Willie,"</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Australian mission and marriage, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>;</li>
+<li>  imprisoned (1888), <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>;</li>
+<li>  returned for East Clare, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>;</li>
+<li>  War service, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>-<a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>-<a href='#Page_214'>214</a>, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a>;</li>
+<li>  position in his regiment, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>-<a href='#Page_189'>189</a>;</li>
+<li>  speeches in the House quoted, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>-<a href='#Page_216'>216</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>;</li>
+<li>  advises resignation of Parliamentary party, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>;</li>
+<li>  last speech in the House, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>-<a href='#Page_254'>254</a>;</li>
+<li>  killed in action, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>;</li>
+<li>  estimate of, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>;</li>
+<li>  mentioned, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Redmond, Major William Archer, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_185'>185</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>  on the Somme, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>;</li>
+<li>  wins D.S.O., <a href='#Page_306'>306</a>;</li>
+<li>  returned as Nationalist in 1918 election, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Redmond, William Archer, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a></li>
+<li>Richardson, Gen., <a href='#Page_163'>163</a></li>
+<li>Roberts, Lord, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a></li>
+<li>Roman Catholic Church, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a></li>
+<li>Russell, George ("A.E."), in the Convention, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a>, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Sclater, Sir Henry, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a>-<a href='#Page_205'>205</a></li>
+<li>Selborne, Lord, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a></li>
+<li>Seely, Col., <a href='#Page_108'>108</a>-<a href='#Page_109'>109</a></li>
+<li>Sexton, Th., <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></li>
+<li>Shaw, Mr., <a href='#Page_6'>6</a></li>
+<li>Sheehy-Skeffington, Mr., <a href='#Page_228'>228</a>, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a></li>
+<li>Sinn Féin--</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Convention ignored by, <a href='#Page_263'>263</a>-<a href='#Page_264'>264</a>, <a href='#Page_267'>267</a>-<a href='#Page_268'>268</a></li>
+<li>  Demonstration by, at funeral of Thomas Ashe, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li>
+<li>  Electoral successes of, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a></li>
+<li>  Growth of, from May 1916, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a></li>
+<li>  Propaganda, suspicion fostered by, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a></li>
+<li>  Rebellion of 1916, <i>see that heading</i></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Smith, F.E., quoted, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a></li>
+<li>South African War, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a></li>
+<li>Stephens, James, quoted, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>-<a href='#Page_277'>277</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Taylor, Capt., J.S., <a href='#Page_27'>27</a></li>
+<li>Tennant, H.J., <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a></li>
+<li>Thomas, J.H., <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li>
+<li><i>Times</i> forgeries, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Ulster--</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Administrative autonomy proposal, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a></li>
+<li>  Arms importation by, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>;</li>
+<li>  Larne gun-running, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>-<a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li>
+<li>  Asquith's moratorium concession to, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a></li>
+<li>  Belfast Convention (1916), <a href='#Page_235'>235</a></li>
+<li>  Churchill's speech (1912), <a href='#Page_62'>62</a></li>
+<li>  Convention, the (1917), representatives at, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>-<a href='#Page_272'>272</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    their attitude and procedure, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  County option proposals, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a> ff.;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    difficulties of the scheme, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Covenant, the, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    military covenanters, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Exclusion proposals, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>-<a href='#Page_234'>234</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    embodied in the Bill, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>;</li>
+<li>    time limit discussions, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>-<a href='#Page_103'>103</a>;</li>
+<li>    Council of 1916 accepts exclusion proposals, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Favouritism applied to, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_125'>125</a>, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a>, <a href='#Page_169'>169</a>, <a href='#Page_170'>170</a>, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a></li>
+<li>  Friendly relations with Nationalists, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a></li>
+<li>  Home Rule, resistance to, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a> ff.;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    Parliamentary majority for, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>;</li>
+<li>    distribution of Home Rulers, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Inseparability of, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>-<a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a></li>
+<li>  Lloyd George's scheme, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a></li>
+<li>  Protestant ascendency, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_101'>101</a></li>
+<li>  Provisional Government formed, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a></li>
+<li>  Rebellion preparations of, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a></li>
+<li>  Redmond's efforts to conciliate, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a>-<a href='#Page_77'>77</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>-<a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a></li>
+<li>  War, attitude on outbreak of, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a></li>
+<li><ul><li>    mistrustful of Irish Volunteers, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></li></ul></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>United Irish League, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a></li>
+<li>University Act (1908), <a href='#Page_41'>41</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Vatican Decrees, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<ul><li>Wallace, Col., <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></li>
+<li>Walsh, Abp., <a href='#Page_257'>257</a></li>
+<li>War--</li>
+<li><ul><li>  Outbreak, <a href='#Page_126'>126</a> ff.</li>
+<li>  Redmond's policy regarding, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>;</li>
+<li><ul><li>    Nationalist criticism of, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>-<a href='#Page_277'>277</a> (<i>see also</i> Army, recruiting)</li></ul></li>
+
+<li>  Ulster's attitude, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></li></ul></li>
+
+<li>Ward, Col. John, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li>
+<li>Waterford, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a></li>
+<li>Wexford, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a></li>
+<li><i>What the Irish Regiments have done</i> quoted, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a></li>
+<li>White, Capt., J.R., <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>-<a href='#Page_91'>91</a></li>
+<li>Whitley, H.T., <a href='#Page_320'>320</a></li>
+<li>Wicklow surroundings, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>-<a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li>
+<li>Wimborne, Lord, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a></li>
+<li>Windle, Sir B., <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li>
+<li>Wyndham, G., <a href='#Page_27'>27</a>-<a href='#Page_29'>29</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+<br /><br /><hr style="width: 65%;" /><br /><br />
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">Shall a man understand,<br /></span>
+<span>He shall know bitterness because his kind,<br /></span>
+<span>Being perplexed of mind,<br /></span>
+<span>Hold issues even that are nothing mated.<br /></span>
+<span>And he shall give<br /></span>
+<span>Counsel out of his wisdom that none shall hear<br /></span>
+<span>And steadfast in vain persuasion must he live,<br /></span>
+<span>And unabated<br /></span>
+<span>Shall his temptation be.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span>JOHN DRINKWATER, in <i>Abraham Lincoln</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's John Redmond's Last Years, by Stephen Gwynn
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Redmond's Last Years, by Stephen Gwynn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: John Redmond's Last Years
+
+Author: Stephen Gwynn
+
+Release Date: December 17, 2004 [EBook #14374]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS
+
+
+BY
+
+STEPHEN GWYNN
+
+
+LONDON
+
+EDWARD ARNOLD
+
+1919
+
+[All rights reserved]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+In writing this book, I have had access to my late leader's papers for
+the period beginning with the war. These were placed at my disposal by
+his son, Major William Archer Redmond, D.S.O., M.P. I had also the
+consent of Mrs. Redmond to my undertaking the task. But for the book and
+for the opinions expressed in it I am solely responsible. No condition
+having been imposed upon me, it seemed best, for many reasons, that it
+should be written, as it has been written, without consultation.
+
+A writer in whom such a trust has been placed may well be at a loss how
+to express his gratitude, but can never convey the measure of his
+anxiety. From those who cherish Redmond's memory, and especially from
+those who were nearest to him in comradeship and affection, I must only
+crave the indulgence which should be accorded to sincere effort.
+Differences of interpretation there will be in any review of past
+events, and others can claim with justice that on many points they were
+better situated for full understanding than was I. Yet for the period
+which is specially studied, if there is failure in comprehension it
+cannot be excused by lack of opportunity to be thoroughly informed.
+
+To readers at large I would say this--that if any sentence in these
+pages be uncandid or ungenerous, it is most unworthy to be found in the
+record of such a man.
+
+S.G.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                      PAGE
+
+I. INTRODUCTORY                                 1
+
+II. REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN                        23
+
+III. THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912                62
+
+IV. THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES                 90
+
+V. WAR IN EUROPE                              126
+
+VI. THE RAISING OF THE IRISH BRIGADES         152
+
+VII. THE REBELLION AND ITS SEQUEL             218
+
+VIII. THE CONVENTION AND THE END              259
+
+INDEX                                         343
+
+PORTRAIT OF JOHN REDMOND      _Frontispiece_
+
+
+
+
+JOHN REDMOND'S LAST YEARS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+I
+
+
+The time has not yet come to write the biography of John Redmond. Not
+until the history of the pledge-bound Irish Parliamentary party can be
+treated freely, fully and impartially as a chapter closed and ended will
+it be possible to record in detail the life of a man who was associated
+with it almost from its beginning and who from the opening of this
+century guided it with almost growing authority to the statutory
+accomplishment of its desperate task; who knew, in it and for it, all
+vicissitudes of fortune and who gave to it without stint or reservation
+his whole life's energy from earliest manhood to the grave.
+
+But when the war came, unforeseen, shifting all political balances,
+transmuting the greatest political issues, especially those of which the
+Irish question is a type, it imposed upon men and upon nations, but
+above all on the leaders of nations, swift and momentous decisions.
+Because that critical hour presented to Redmond's vision a great
+opportunity which he must either seize single-handed or let it for ever
+pass by; because he rose to the height of the occasion with the courage
+which counts upon and commands success; because he sought by his own
+motion to swing the whole mass and weight of a nation's feeling into a
+new direction--for all these reasons his last years were different in
+kind from any that had gone before; and as such they admit of and demand
+separate study. Intelligent comprehension of what he aimed at, what he
+achieved, and what forces defeated him in these last years of his life
+is urgently needed, not for the sake of his memory, but for Ireland's
+sake; because until his policy is understood there is little chance that
+Irishmen should attain what he aspired to win for Ireland--the strength
+and dignity of a free and united nation.
+
+It is of Redmond's policy for Ireland in relation to the war, and to the
+events which in Ireland arose out of the war, that this book is mainly
+designed to treat. Yet to make that policy intelligible some history is
+needed of the startling series of political developments which the war
+interrupted but did not terminate--and which, though still recent, are
+blurred in public memory by all that has intervened. Further back still,
+a brief review of his early career must be given, not only to set the
+man's figure in relation to his environment, but to show that this final
+phase was in reality no new departure, no break with his past, but a
+true though a divergent evolution from all that had gone before.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ireland, although so small in extent and population, is none the less a
+country of many and locally varying racial strains; and John Redmond
+sprang from one of the most typical. He was a Wexfordman; that is to
+say, he came from the part of Ireland where if you cross the Channel
+there is least difference between the land you leave and the land you
+sail to; where the sea-divided peoples have been always to some extent
+assimilated. Here in the twelfth century the first Norman-Welsh invaders
+came across. The leader of their first party, Raymond Le Gros, landed at
+a point between Wexford and Waterford; the town of Wexford was his
+first capture; and where he began his conquest he settled. From this
+stock the Redmond name and line descend.
+
+Thus John Redmond came from an invading strain in which Norman and Celt
+were already blended; and he grew up in a country thickly settled with
+men whose ancestors came along with his from across the water. Till a
+century ago the barony of Forth retained a dialect of its own which was
+in effect such English as men spoke before Chaucer began to write; and
+even to-day in any Wexford fair or market you will see among the strong,
+well-nourished, prosperous farmers many faces and figures which an
+artist might easily assimilate to an athletic example of the traditional
+John Bull. Redmond himself, hawk-faced and thick-bodied, might have been
+taken for no bad reincarnation of Raymond Le Gros. To this extent he was
+less of a Celt than many of his countrymen; but he was assuredly none
+the less Irish because he was a Wexfordman. The county of his birth was
+the county which had made the greatest resistance to English power in
+Ireland since Sarsfield and his "Wild Geese" crossed to Flanders. Born
+in 1857, he grew up in a country-side full of memories of events then
+only some sixty years old; he knew and spoke with many men who had been
+out with pike or fowling-piece in 1798. Rebel was to him from boyhood up
+a name of honour; and this was not only a phase of boyish enthusiasm. In
+his mature manhood, speaking as leader of the Irish party, he told the
+House of Commons plainly that in his deliberate judgment Ireland's
+situation justified an appeal to arms, and that if rebellion offered a
+reasonable prospect of gaining freedom for a united Ireland he would
+counsel rebellion on the instant.
+
+But if he was always and admittedly a potential rebel, no man was ever
+less a revolutionary. As much a constitutionalist as Hampden or
+Washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. The tradition
+of parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations.
+Two years after his birth his great-uncle, John Edward Redmond, from
+whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as Liberal member
+for the borough of Wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place,
+commemorating good service rendered. Much of the rich flat land which
+lies along the railway from Wexford to Rosslare Harbour was reclaimed by
+this Redmond's enterprise from tidal slob. On his death in 1872 the seat
+passed to his nephew William Archer Redmond, whose two sons were John
+and William Redmond, with whom this book deals. Thus the present Major
+William Archer Redmond, M.P., represents four continuous generations of
+the same family sent to Westminster among the representatives of
+Nationalist Ireland.
+
+Not often is a family type so strongly marked as among the men of this
+stock. But the portraits show that while the late Major "Willie" Redmond
+closely resembled his father, in John Redmond and John Redmond's son
+there were reproduced the more dominant and massive features of the
+first of the parliamentary line.
+
+To sum up then, John Redmond and his brother came of a long strain of
+Catholic gentry who were linked by continuous historic association of
+over seven centuries to a certain district in South Leinster, and who
+retained leadership among their own people. The tradition of military
+service was strong, too, in this family. Their father's cousin, son to
+the original John Edward Redmond, was a professional soldier; and their
+mother was the daughter of General Hoey. They were brought up in an
+old-fashioned country house, Ballytrent, on the Wexford coast, and the
+habits of outdoor country life and sport which furnished the chief
+pleasure of their lives were formed in boyhood. Their upbringing
+differed from that of boys in thousands of similar country houses
+throughout Ireland only in one circumstance; they were Catholics, and
+even so lately as in their boyhood Catholic land-owners were
+comparatively few.
+
+John Redmond was four years older than his younger brother, born in
+1861. He got his schooling under the Jesuits at Clongowes in early days,
+before the system of Government endowment by examination results had
+given incentive to cramming. According to his own account he did little
+work and nobody pressed him to exertion. But the Jesuits are skilful
+teachers, and they left a mark on his mind. It is scarcely chance that
+the two speakers of all I have heard who had the best delivery were
+pupils of theirs--Redmond and Sir William Butler. They taught him to
+write, they taught him to speak and to declaim, they encouraged his
+natural love of literature. His taste was formed in those days and it
+was curiously old-fashioned. His diction in a prepared oration might
+have come from the days of Grattan: and he maintained the old-fashioned
+habit of quotation. No poetry written later than Byron, Moore and
+Shelley made much appeal to him, save the Irish political ballads. But
+scarcely any English speaker quoted Shakespeare in public so often or so
+aptly as this Irishman.
+
+From Clongowes he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he matriculated
+in October 1874 at the age of seventeen. His academic studies seem to
+have been half-hearted. At the end of a year his name was taken off the
+College books by his father, but was replaced. At the close of his
+second year of study, in July 1876, it was removed again and for good.
+
+But apart from what he learnt at school, his real education was an
+apprenticeship; he was trained in the House of Commons for the work of
+Parliament. He was a boy of fifteen, of an age to be keenly interested,
+when the representation of Wexford passed from his great-uncle to his
+father. Probably the reason why he was removed from Trinity College was
+the desire of Mr. William Redmond to have his son with him in London.
+Certainly John Redmond was there during the session of 1876, for on the
+introduction of Mr. Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill he recalled a
+finely apposite Shakespearean quotation which he had heard Butt use in a
+Home Rule debate of that year. In May 1880 his father procured him a
+clerkship in the House. The post to which he was assigned was that of
+attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his
+nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members'
+Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and
+intrigue. Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the
+Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and
+listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical
+strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House. From this point
+of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr,
+Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority--and watched too the
+inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new
+parliamentary force which had come into being.
+
+Redmond himself described thus (in a lecture delivered at New York in
+1896) the policy which came to be known as "The New Departure":
+
+     "Mr. Parnell found that the British Parliament insisted upon
+     turning a deaf ear to Ireland's claim for justice. He resolved to
+     adopt the simple yet masterly device of preventing Parliament doing
+     any work at all until it consented to hear."
+
+In the task of systematic and continuous obstruction Parnell at once
+found a ready helper, Mr. Joseph Biggar. But Parnell, Biggar and those
+who from 1876 to 1880 acted generally or frequently with them were only
+members of the body led by Butt; though they were, indeed, ultimately in
+more or less open revolt against Butt's leadership. When Butt died, and
+was at least nominally replaced by Mr. Shaw, the growth of Parnell's
+ascendancy became more marked. In the general election of 1880 sixty
+Home Rulers were returned to Parliament; and at a meeting attended by
+over forty, twenty-three declared for Parnell as their leader. A
+question almost of ceremonial observance immediately defined the issue.
+Liberals were in power, and Government was more friendly to Ireland's
+claims than was the Opposition. Mr. Shaw and his adherents were for
+marking support of the Government by sitting on the Government side of
+the Chamber. Parnell insisted that the Irish party should be independent
+of all English attachments and permanently in opposition till Ireland
+received its rights. With that view he and his friends took up their
+station on the Speaker's left below the gangway, where they held it
+continuously for thirty-nine years.
+
+Mr. William Redmond was no supporter of the new policy. As the little
+group which Parnell headed grew more and more insistent in their
+obstruction, the member for Wexford spoke less and less. His
+interventions were rare and dignified. In the debate on the Address in
+the new Parliament of 1880 he acted as a lieutenant to Mr. Shaw. Yet he
+was on very friendly terms with Parnell--almost a neighbour of his, for
+the Parnell property, lying about the Vale of Ovoca, touched the border
+of Wexford.
+
+Mr. William Redmond's career in that Parliament was soon ended. In
+November 1880 he died, and, normally, his son, whose qualifications and
+ambitions were known, would have succeeded him. But collision between
+Government and the Parnellite party was already beginning. Mr. T.M.
+Healy, then Parnell's secretary, had been arrested for a speech in
+denunciation of some eviction proceedings. This was the first arrest of
+a prominent man under Mr. Forster's rule as Chief Secretary, and
+Parnell, with whom in those days the decision rested, decided that Mr.
+Healy should immediately be put forward for the vacant seat. In later
+days he was to remind Mr. Healy how he had done this, "rebuking and
+restraining the prior right of my friend, Jack Redmond." Redmond had not
+long to wait, however. Another vacancy occurred in another Wexford seat,
+the ancient borough of New Ross, and he was returned without opposition
+at a crucial moment in the parliamentary struggle.
+
+That struggle was not only parliamentary. From the famine year of 1879
+onwards a fierce agitation had begun, whose purpose was to secure the
+land of Ireland to the people who worked it. Davitt was to the land what
+Parnell was to the parliamentary campaign: but it was Parnell's genius
+which fused the two movements.
+
+To meet the growing power of the Land League, Mr. Forster demanded a
+Coercion Bill, and after long struggles in the Cabinet he prevailed.
+Against this Bill it was obvious that all means of parliamentary
+resistance would be used to the uttermost.
+
+They were still of a primitive simplicity. In the days before Parnell
+the House of Commons had carried on its business under a system of rules
+which worked perfectly well because there was a general disposition in
+the assembly to get business done. A beginning of the new order was made
+when a group of ex-military men attempted to defeat the measure for
+abolishing purchase of commissions in the Army by a series of dilatory
+motions. This, however, was an isolated occurrence. Any English member
+who set himself to thwart the desire of the House for a conclusion by
+using means which the general body considered unfair would have been
+reduced to quiescence by a demonstration that he was considered a
+nuisance. His voice would have been drowned in a buzz of conversation or
+by less civil interruptions. This implied, however, a willingness to be
+influenced by social considerations, and, more than that, a loyalty to
+the traditions and purposes of the House. Parnell felt no such
+willingness and acknowledged no such loyalty.
+
+"His object," said Redmond in the address already quoted, "was to injure
+it so long as it refused to listen to the just claims of his country."
+The House, realizing Parnell's intention, visited upon him and his
+associates all the penalties by which it was wont to enforce its wishes:
+but the penalties had no sting. All the displays of anger, disapproval,
+contempt, all the vocabulary of denunciation in debate and in the Press,
+all the studied forms of insult, all the marks of social displeasure,
+only served to convince the Irishmen that they were producing their
+effect. Still, the House continued to act on the assumption that it
+could vindicate its traditions in the old traditional way: it was
+determined to change none of the rules which had stood for so many
+generations: it would maintain its liberties and put down in its own way
+those who had the impertinence to abuse them. The breaking-point came
+exactly at the moment when Redmond was elected.
+
+On Monday, Jan. 24th, 1881, Mr. Forster introduced his Coercion Bill. It
+was open, of course, to any member to speak once, and once only, on the
+main motion. But every member had an indefinite right to move the
+adjournment of the debate, and on each such motion every member could
+speak again. The debate was carried all through that week. It was
+resumed on Monday, 31st. The declaration of Redmond's election was fixed
+for Tuesday, February 1st, in New Ross--there being no contest. A
+telegram summoned him to come instantly after the declaration to London.
+He took the train at noon, travelled to Dublin and crossed the Channel.
+At Holyhead about midnight another telegram told him that the debate was
+still proceeding. He reached Euston on the Wednesday morning, drove
+straight to the House, and there, standing at the bar, saw what he thus
+described:
+
+     "It was thus, travel-stained and weary, that I first presented
+     myself as a member of the British Parliament. The House was still
+     sitting, it had been sitting without a break for over forty hours,
+     and I shall never forget the appearance the Chamber presented. The
+     floor was littered with paper. A few dishevelled and weary Irishmen
+     were on one side of the House, about a hundred infuriated
+     Englishmen upon the other; some of them still in evening dress, and
+     wearing what were once white shirts of the night before last. Mr.
+     Parnell was upon his legs, with pale cheeks and drawn face, his
+     hands clenched behind his back, facing without flinching a
+     continuous roar of interruption. It was now about eight o'clock.
+     Half of Mr. Parnell's followers were out of the Chamber snatching a
+     few moments' sleep in chairs in the Library or Smoke Room. Those
+     who remained had each a specified period of time allotted him to
+     speak, and they were wearily waiting their turn. As they caught
+     sight of me standing at the bar of the House of Commons there was a
+     cheer of welcome. I was unable to come to their aid, however, as
+     under the rules of the House I could not take my seat until the
+     commencement of a new sitting. My very presence, however, brought,
+     I think, a sense of encouragement and approaching relief to them;
+     and I stood there at the bar with my travelling coat still upon me,
+     gazing alternately with indignation and admiration at the amazing
+     scene presented to my gaze.
+
+     "This, then, was the great Parliament of England! Of intelligent
+     debate there was none. It was one unbroken scene of turbulence and
+     disorder. The few Irishmen remained quiet, too much amused,
+     perhaps, or too much exhausted to retaliate. It was the
+     English--the members of the first assembly of gentlemen in Europe,
+     as they love to style it--who howled and roared, and almost foamed
+     at the mouth with rage at the calm and pale-featured young man who
+     stood patiently facing them and endeavouring to make himself
+     heard."
+
+An hour later the closure was applied, for the first time in
+Parliament's history. The records of Hansard spoil a story which Redmond
+was fond of telling--that he took his oath and his seat, made his maiden
+speech and was suspended all in the same evening. In point of fact he
+took his seat that Wednesday afternoon, when the House sat for a few
+hours only and adjourned again. Next day news came in that Davitt had
+been arrested in Ireland. Mr. Dillon, in the process of endeavouring to
+extract an explanation from the Government, was named and suspended.
+When the Prime Minister after this rose to speak, Mr. Parnell moved:
+"That Mr. Gladstone be not heard."
+
+The Speaker, ruling that Mr. Gladstone was in possession of the House,
+refused to put the motion. Mr. Parnell, insisting that his motion should
+be put, came into collision with the authority of the Chair and was
+formally "named." Mr. Gladstone then moved his suspension and a division
+was called--whereupon, under the rules which then existed, all members
+were bound to leave the Chamber. On this occasion the Irish members
+remained seated, as a protest, and after the division the Speaker
+solemnly reported this breach of order to the House. For their refusal
+to obey the Irish members present were suspended from the service of the
+House, and as a body they refused to leave unless removed by physical
+force. Accordingly, man by man was ordered to leave and each in turn
+rose up with a brief phrase of refusal, after which the Sergeant-at-Arms
+with an officer approached and laid a hand on the recusant's shoulder.
+Redmond, when his turn came, said:
+
+"As I regard the whole of these proceedings as unmitigated despotism, I
+beg respectfully to decline to withdraw."
+
+That was his maiden speech. Having delivered it, "Mr. Redmond," says
+Hansard, "was by desire of Mr. Speaker removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms
+from the House." It was a strange beginning for one of the greatest
+parliamentarians of our epoch--and one of the greatest conservatives.
+The whole bent of his mind was towards moderation in all things.
+Temperamentally, he hated all forms of extravagant eccentricity; he
+loved the old if only because it was old; he had the keenest sense not
+only of decorum but of the essential dignity which is the best guardian
+of order. Yet here he was committed to a policy which aimed deliberately
+at outraging all the established decencies--at disregarding
+ostentatiously all the usages by which an assembly of gentlemen had
+regulated their proceedings.
+
+What is more, it was an assembly which Redmond found temperamentally
+congenial to him--an assembly which, apart from its relation to Ireland,
+he thoroughly admired and liked. In 1896, when Irish members were
+fiercely in opposition to the Government, he concluded his description
+of Parliament with these words:
+
+     "In the main, the House of Commons is, I believe, dominated by a
+     rough-and-ready sense of manliness and fair-play. Of course, I am
+     not speaking of it as a governing body. In that character it has
+     been towards Ireland always ignorant and nearly always unfair. I am
+     treating it simply as an assembly of men, and I say of it, it is a
+     body where sooner or later every man finds his proper level, where
+     mediocrity and insincerity will never permanently succeed, and
+     where ability and honesty of purpose will never permanently fail."
+
+That was no mean tribute, coming from one who held himself aloof from
+all the personal advantages belonging to the society whose rules he did
+not recognize. The opinion to which the Irish members of Parnell's
+following were amenable was not made at Westminster; it did not exist
+there--except, and that in its most rigid form, amongst themselves.
+
+It is worth while to recall for English readers--and perhaps not for
+them only--what membership of Parnell's party involved. In the first
+place, there was a self-denying ordinance by which the man elected to it
+bound himself to accept no post of any kind under Government. All the
+chances which election to Parliament opens to most men--and especially
+to men of the legal profession--were at once set aside. Absolute
+discipline and unity of action, except in matters specially left open to
+individual judgment, were enforced on all. These were the essentials.
+But in the period of acute war between the Irish and all other parties
+which was opening when Redmond entered there was a self-imposed rule
+that as the English public and English members disapproved and disliked
+the Irishmen an answering attitude should be adopted: that even private
+hospitality should be avoided and that the belligerents should behave as
+if they were quite literally in an enemy's country.
+
+Later, when Mr. Gladstone had adopted the Irish cause and alliance with
+the Liberal party had begun, the rigour of this attitude was modified.
+Many Irish members joined the Liberal clubs and went freely to houses
+where they were sure of sympathy. Yet neither of the Redmonds followed
+far in this direction, and the habit of social isolation which they
+formed in their early days lasted with them to the end. If John Redmond
+ever went to any house in London which was not an Irish home it was by
+the rarest exception.
+
+For society, Parnell's party depended on themselves and their countrymen
+and sympathizers. But they were in no way to be pitied; they were the
+best of company for one another. It was a movement of the young, it had
+all the strength and audacity of youth, it was a great adventure. A few
+men from an older generation came with them, Mr. Biggar, Justin McCarthy
+and others. But their leader, though older than most of his followers,
+was a young man by parliamentary standards. In 1880 Parnell was only
+thirty-three; and within four years more he was as great a power in the
+House as Mr. Gladstone. Some few years back I heard Willie Redmond say
+in the Members' smoking-room, "Isn't it strange to think that Parnell
+would be sixty now if he had lived. I can't imagine him as an old man."
+Yet the accent of maturity was on Parnell's leadership; the men whom he
+led were essentially young. In 1881, when Redmond entered Parliament,
+Mr. Dillon was thirty, Mr. T.P. O'Connor and Mr. Sexton veterans of
+thirty-three, Mr. Healy twenty-six. Mr. William O'Brien (who did not
+come in until 1883) was of the same year as Mr. Dillon. Redmond was
+younger than any of them, being elected at the age of twenty-four. Yet
+nobody then thought it surprising that he should be sent in 1882 to
+represent the party on a mission to Australia and the United States at a
+most difficult time. The Phoenix Park murders had created widespread
+indiscriminating anger against all Irish Nationalists throughout the
+Empire, and Redmond found it difficult to secure even a hall to speak
+in. For support there was sent to him his brother, then a youth of
+twenty-one, and feeling ran so strong against the two that the Prime
+Minister of New South Wales (Sir Henry Parkes) proposed their expulsion
+from the colony. Nevertheless, Redmond made good. "The Irish working-men
+stood by me," he said, "and in fact saved the situation." Fifteen
+thousand pounds were collected before they left the island continent.
+
+It indicates well the changed conditions to remember that when in 1906
+Mr. Hazleton and the late T.M. Kettle were selected to go on a far less
+arduous and difficult mission to America, there was much talk about the
+astonishing youth of our representatives. Yet both were then older than
+John Redmond was in 1882--to say nothing of his brother, who must have
+been the most exuberantly youthful spokesman that a serious cause ever
+found.
+
+The Redmonds' stay in Australia, which lasted over a year, determined
+one important matter for both young men; they found their wives in the
+colony whose Prime Minister proposed to expel them. John Redmond married
+Miss Joanna Dalton and his brother her near kinswoman, Miss Eleanor
+Dalton. Willie Redmond was elected to Parliament in his absence for his
+father's old seat--Mr. Healy having vacated Wexford to fight and win a
+sensational election in county Monaghan.
+
+This early visit to the great transmarine dominions, and the ties which
+he formed there, left a marked impression on John Redmond's mind, which
+was reinforced by other visits in later years, and by all the growing
+associations that linked him to life and politics in the dominions.
+Redmond knew vastly more, and in truth cared vastly more, about the
+British Empire than most Imperialists. His affection was not based on
+any inherited prejudice, nor inspired by a mere geographical idea. He
+was attracted to that which he had seen and handled, in whose making he
+had watched so many of his fellow-countrymen fruitfully and honourably
+busy. He felt acutely that the Empire belonged to Irish Nationalists at
+least as much as to English Tories. America also was familiar to him,
+and he had every cause to be grateful to the United States; but his
+interest in the dominions was of a different kind. He felt himself a
+partner in their glories, and by this feeling he was linked in sympathy
+to a great many elements in British life that were otherwise uncongenial
+to him--and was, on the other hand, divided in sympathy from some who in
+Irish politics were his staunch supporters. He could never understand
+the psychology of the Little Englander. "If I were an Englishman," he
+once said to me, "I should be the greatest Imperialist living." From
+first to last his attitude was that which is indicated by a passage of
+his speech on Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill:
+
+     "As a Nationalist, I may say I do not regard as entirely palatable
+     the idea that for ever and a day Ireland's voice should be excluded
+     from the councils of an Empire which the genius and valour of her
+     sons have done so much to build up and of which she is to remain a
+     part."[1]
+
+
+
+II
+
+To follow in detail Redmond's career under Parnell's leadership would be
+beyond the scope of this book. Less conspicuous in Parliament than such
+lieutenants of "the Chief" as Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy, John
+Redmond acted as one of the party whips and was in much demand outside
+Parliament as a platform speaker. In August 1886 he was once more sent
+overseas to attend the Convention of the Irish Race at Chicago. He had
+to tell his hearers of victory and of repulse.
+
+     "When you last assembled in Convention, two years ago, the Irish
+     party in Parliament did not number more than forty; to-day we hold
+     five-sixths of the Irish seats, and speak in the name of
+     five-sixths of the Irish people in Ireland. Two years ago we had
+     arrayed against us all English political parties and every English
+     statesman; to-day we have on our side one of the great English
+     political parties, which, though its past traditions in Ireland
+     have been evil, still represents the party of progress in England,
+     and the greatest statesman of the day, who has staked his all upon
+     winning for Ireland her national rights. Two years ago England had
+     in truth, in Mitchel's phrase, the ear of the world. To-day, at
+     last, that ear, so long poisoned with calumnies of our people, is
+     now open to the voice of Ireland. Two years ago the public opinion
+     of the world--aye, and even of this free land of America--was
+     doubtful as to the justice of our movement; to-day the opinion of
+     the civilized world, and of America in particular, is clearly and
+     distinctly on our side."
+
+On the other hand, in England the forces of reaction had succeeded. The
+Home Rule Bill had been defeated and the Liberal party broken up. A
+Government was in power whose programme was one of coercion. But
+Ireland, Redmond said, was ready for the fight and confident that with
+the weapons at command the enemy could be defeated.
+
+Who were the enemy, and what the weapon? His speech made this plain.
+
+     "Once more Irish landlords have behaved themselves with
+     unaccountable folly and stupidity. They have once more stood
+     between Ireland and her freedom, and have refused even an
+     extravagant price for the land because the offer was coupled with
+     the concession of an Irish Parliament. So be it. I believe the last
+     offer has been made to Irish landlordism. The ultimate settlement
+     of this question must now be reserved for the Parliament of
+     Ireland, and meantime the people must take care to protect
+     themselves and their children. In many parts of Ireland, I assert,
+     rent is to-day an impossibility, and in every part of Ireland the
+     rents demanded are exorbitant, and will not, and cannot, be paid."
+
+He was wrong. The settlement of this vast question was to be
+accomplished through the Imperial Parliament, not the Irish. Yet it was
+accomplished in essence by an agreement between Irishmen for which
+Redmond himself was largely responsible.
+
+That settlement, however, merely ratified in 1903 the final stage in the
+conversion of both countries to Parnell's policy of State-aided land
+purchase. Tentative beginnings were made with it under the Government
+which was in power from 1886 to 1892; but the main characteristic of
+this period was a fierce revival of the land war. It was virulent in
+Wexford, and in 1888 Redmond shared the experience which few Irish
+members escaped or desired to escape; he was sentenced to imprisonment
+on a charge of intimidation for a speech condemning some evictions. He
+and his brother met in Wexford jail, and both used to describe with glee
+their mutual salutation: "Good heavens, what a ruffian you look!"
+Cropped hair and convict clothes were part of Mr. Balfour's resolute
+government.
+
+Yet in those days Ireland was winning, and winning fast. Mr. Gladstone's
+personal ascendancy, never stronger than in the wonderful effort of his
+old age, asserted itself more and more. Public sympathy in Great Britain
+was turning against the wholesale evictions, the knocking down of
+peasants' houses by police and military with battering-rams. The Tory
+party sought for a new political weapon, and one day _The Times_ came
+out with the facsimile of what purported to be a letter in Parnell's
+hand. This document implied at least condonation of the Phoenix Park
+murders.
+
+Other letters equally incriminating were published. Parnell denied the
+authorship, his denial was not accepted; fierce controversy ended in the
+establishment of one of the strangest Commissions of Enquiry ever set
+up--a semi-judicial tribunal of judges. Its proceedings created the
+acutest public interest, drawn out over long months, up to the day when
+Sir Charles Russell had before him in the witness-box the original
+vendor of the letters--one Pigott. Pigott's collapse, confession of
+forgery, flight and suicide, followed with appalling swiftness: and the
+result was to generate through England a very strong sympathy for the
+man against whom, and against whose followers, such desperate calumnies
+had been uttered and exploited. Parnell's prestige was no longer
+confined to his own countrymen: and the sense of all Home Rulers was
+that they fought a winning battle, under two allied leaders of
+extraordinary personal gifts.
+
+Then, as soon as it was clear that the attack of the Pigott letters had
+recoiled on those who launched it, came the indication of a fresh
+menace. Proceedings for divorce were taken with Parnell as the
+co-respondent: the case was undefended. Mr. Gladstone and probably most
+Englishmen expected that Parnell would retire, at all events
+temporarily, from public life, as, in Lord Morley's words, "any English
+politician of his rank" would have been obliged to do. Parnell refused
+to retire; and Gladstone made it publicly known that if Parnell
+continued to lead the Irish party, his own leadership of the Liberal
+party, "based, as it had been, mainly on the prosecution of the Irish
+cause," would be rendered "almost a nullity." The choice--for it was a
+choice--was left to the Irish. To retain Parnell as leader in
+Gladstone's judgment made Gladstone's task impossible, and therefore
+indicated Gladstone's withdrawal from public life. To part with Parnell
+meant parting with the ablest leader that Nationalist Ireland had ever
+found.
+
+A more heartrending alternative has never been imposed on any body of
+politicians, and John Redmond, unlike his younger brother, was not of
+those to whom decision came by an instinctive act of allegiance. His
+nature forced him to see both sides, but when he decided it was with his
+whole nature. The issue was debated by the Irish party in Committee Room
+15 of the House of Commons, with the Press in attendance. In this
+encounter Redmond for the first time stepped to the front. He had
+hitherto been outside the first flight of Irish parliamentarians. Now,
+he was the first to state the case for maintaining Parnell's leadership,
+and throughout the discussions he led on that side. When Parnell's death
+came a few months after the "split" declared itself, there was no
+hesitation as to which of the Parnellites should assume the leadership
+of their party. Redmond resigned his seat in North Wexford and contested
+Cork city, where Parnell had long been member. He was badly beaten, and
+for some three months the new leader of the Parnellites was without a
+seat in the House--though not during a session. Another death made a new
+opening, and in December 1891 his fight at Waterford against no less a
+man than Michael Davitt turned for a moment the electoral tide which was
+setting heavily against the smaller group. It was a notable win, and the
+hero of that triumph retained his hold on the loyalty of those with whom
+he won it when the rest of Ireland had turned away from him. The tie
+lasted to his death--and after it, for Waterford then chose as its
+representative the dead leader's son, and renewed that choice in the
+general election of 1918, when other allegiances to the old party were
+like leaves on the wind.
+
+Other ties were formed in these years, which lasted through Redmond's
+life. I have deliberately abstained from entering into either the merits
+or the details of the "split." But certain of its aspects must be
+recognized. In the division into Parnellites and Anti-Parnellites,
+Parnellites were a small but fierce minority. It needed resolution for a
+man to be a Parnellite, all the more because the whole force of the
+Catholic Church was thrown against them, and in some instances
+disgraceful methods were used. One of Redmond's best friends was the
+owner of a local newspaper; it was declared to be a mortal sin to buy,
+sell, or read his journal. The business was reduced to the verge of ruin
+but the man went on, till a new bishop came and gradually things mended.
+He, like Redmond, was a staunch practising Catholic, and later on was
+the friend and trusted associate of many priests; but he stood for an
+element in Ireland which refused to allow the least usurpation by
+ecclesiastical authority in the sphere of citizenship.
+
+Willie Redmond won East Clare, as his brother won Waterford city, after
+a turbulent election with the priests against him. He gave in that
+contest, as always, at least as good as he got; but his collision with
+individuals never affected his devotion or his brother's to their
+Church.
+
+But in social life the estrangements of these days were far-reaching,
+and, at least negatively, so far as Redmond was concerned, they were
+lasting. His existence had been saddened and altered shortly before the
+break up by the death of his first wife, which left him a young widower
+with three children. After the "split" the whole circle of friends among
+whom he had lived in Dublin and in London was shattered and divided; and
+in later life none, I think, of those broken intimacies was renewed.
+
+In Redmond's nature there was a total lack of rancour. Clear-sighted as
+he was, he realized how desperately difficult a choice was imposed on
+Nationalists by Parnell's situation, and he knew how honestly men had
+differed. He could command completely his intellectual judgment of their
+action, and there were many whom in later stages of the movement he
+trusted none the less for their divergence from him at this crisis. But
+he was more than commonly a creature of instinct; and the associations
+of his intimate life were all decided in these years. His affection was
+given to those who were comrades in this pass of danger. The only two
+exceptions to be made are, first and chiefly, Mr. Devlin, who was too
+young to be actively concerned with politics at the time of Parnell's
+overthrow; and, to speak truth, it is not possible to be so closely
+associated as Redmond was with this lieutenant of his, or to be so long
+and loyally served by him, and not to undergo his personal attraction.
+The other exception is Mr. J.J. Mooney, who entered Parliament and
+politics later than the "split," but whose personal allegiance to Mr.
+Redmond was always declared. He acted for long as Redmond's secretary
+and always as his counsellor--for in all the detail of parliamentary
+business, especially on the side of private bill legislation, the House
+had few more capable members. He was perhaps more completely than Mr.
+Devlin one of the little group of intimates with whom Redmond loved to
+surround himself in the country. All the rest were old champions of the
+fight over Parnell's body; but by far the closest friend of all was his
+brother Willie. Their marriages to kinswomen had redoubled the tie of
+blood.
+
+It should be noted here that Redmond married for the second time in
+1899, after ten years of widowerhood. His wife was, by his wish and her
+own, never at all in the public eye. All that should be said here is
+that his friends found friendship with him easier and not more difficult
+than before this marriage, and were grateful for the devoted care which
+was bestowed upon their leader. She accompanied him on all his political
+journeyings, whatever their duration, and gave him in the fullest
+measure the companionship which he desired.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: This speech is included in "Home Rule: Speeches of John
+Redmond, M.P.," a volume edited in 1910 by Mr. Barry O'Brien. It
+contains also the American addresses quoted in this chapter, and a
+speech to the Dublin Convention in 1907, quoted in the next.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+REDMOND AS CHAIRMAN
+
+I
+
+
+The Parliament of 1892-5 was barren of results for Ireland, being
+consumed by factious strife, at Westminster between the Houses and in
+Ireland between the parties. With Gladstone's retirement it seemed as if
+Home Rule were dead. But thinking men realized that the Irish question
+was still there to be dealt with, and approach to solution began along
+new lines. When Lord Salisbury returned to power in 1895, Land Purchase
+was cautiously extended with much success: the Congested Districts
+Board, originally established by Mr. Arthur Balfour, was showing good
+results, and his brother Mr. Gerald Balfour, now Chief Secretary, felt
+his way towards a policy which came to be described as "killing Home
+Rule with kindness." A section of Irish Nationalist opinion was scared
+by the menace contained in this epigram; and consequently, when in 1895
+Mr. Horace Plunkett (as he then was) put forward proposals for a
+conference of Irishmen to consider possible means for developing Irish
+agriculture and Irish industries under the existing system, voices were
+raised against what was denounced as a new attempt to divert Nationalist
+Ireland from its main purpose of achieving self-government. Mr.
+Plunkett's original proposal was that a body of four Anti-Parnellites,
+two Parnellites and two Unionists should meet and deliberate in Ireland,
+during the recess. In the upshot the Nationalist majority refused to
+take any part; but Redmond, with one of his supporters, Mr. William
+Field, served on the "Recess Committee" and concurred in its Report, out
+of which came the creation of the Department of Agriculture and
+Technical Instruction.
+
+In 1896 the Commission on Financial Relations, which had been set up by
+the Liberal Ministry in 1894, reported, and its findings produced a
+state of feeling which for a moment promised co-operation between
+divided interests in Ireland. Unionist magnates joined with Nationalists
+in denouncing the system of taxation, which the Commission--by a
+majority of eleven to two--had described as oppressive and unjust to the
+weaker country.
+
+Redmond was one of the members of this Commission, which included also
+distinguished representatives of his Nationalist opponents--Mr. Blake
+and Mr. Sexton; and he no doubt cherished hopes arising from the
+resolute demands for redress uttered by Lord Castletown and other Irish
+Unionist Peers. Those hopes were soon dispelled; nothing but much
+controversy came of the demand for improved financial relations. Mr.
+Gerald Balfour's schemes were more tangible, and in 1897 Redmond
+announced that the Government's proposal to introduce a measure of Local
+Government for Ireland should have his support. The Bill, when it came,
+exceeded expectation in its scope, and Redmond gave it a cordial welcome
+in the name of the Parnellites. The larger group, however, then led by
+Mr. Dillon, declined to be responsible for accepting it.
+
+Later, in the working of this measure, Redmond pressed strongly that
+elections under it should not be conducted on party lines and that the
+landlord class should be brought into local administrative work. His
+advice unfortunately was not taken.
+
+Then followed the South African struggle, and in giving voice to a
+common sentiment against what Nationalist Ireland held to be an unjust
+war the two Irish parties found themselves united and telling together
+in the lobby. Formal union followed. By this time the cleavage between
+Parnellite and Anti-Parnellite was less acute than that between Mr.
+Healy's section and the followers of Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien. The
+choice of Redmond as Chairman was due less to a sense of his general
+fitness than to despair of reaching a decision between the claims of the
+other three outstanding men.
+
+The sacrifice to be made was made at Mr. Dillon's expense, and he did
+not acquiesce willingly or cordially. The cordiality which ultimately
+marked his relations with Redmond was of later growth--fostered by the
+necessity which Mr. Dillon found imposed on him of defending loyally the
+party's leader against attacks from the men who had been most active in
+selecting him.
+
+A part of the compact under which Redmond was elected to the chair
+limited the power of the newly chosen. He was to be Chairman, not
+leader; that is to say, he was not to act except after consultation with
+the party as a whole: he was not to commit them upon policy. This meant
+in practice that he acted as head of a cabinet, which from 1906 onwards
+consisted of Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor--the last
+representing not only a great personal parliamentary experience and
+ability, but also the powerful and zealous organization of Irish in
+Great Britain. Redmond adhered scrupulously to the spirit of this
+compact. There was only one instance in which he took action without
+consultation. But that instance was the most important of all--his
+speech at the outbreak of the war.
+
+Another thing which governed his conduct in the chair of the party, as
+indeed it governed that of nearly all the rank and file, was his horror
+of the years which Ireland had gone through since Parnell's fall. He
+loathed faction and he had struggled through murky whirlpools of it; for
+the rest of his life he was determined, almost at any cost, to maintain
+the greatest possible degree of unity among Irish Nationalists. Yet in
+the end he unhesitatingly made a choice and took an action which risked
+dividing, and in the last event actually divided, Nationalist Ireland as
+it had never been divided before. There were things for which he would
+face even that supreme peril. Deep in his heart there was a vision which
+compelled him. It was the vision of Ireland united as a whole.
+
+All this, however, lay far in the future when he was elected to the
+chair; for the moment his task was to reunite Irish Nationalists, and it
+began prosperously. From the first his position was one of growing
+strength. Irishmen all the world over were heartsick of faction and
+rejoiced in even the name of unity. Redmond made it a reality. While
+leading the little Parnellite party, reduced at last to nine, his line
+of action was comparable to that pursued by Mr. William O'Brien from
+1910 onwards. It had, to put things mildly, not been calculated to
+assist the leader of the main Nationalist body. In 1904, Justin
+McCarthy, then retired from politics, wrote in his book on _British
+Political Parties_: "Parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service
+of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and
+was utterly unsparing in his denunciations of the men who maintained the
+other side of the controversy. From this it was not unnatural to expect
+difficulties occasioned both by the leader's temper and by the temper of
+those whom he led. But men who had been adverse assured me that they had
+changed their opinions and were glad to find they could work with
+Redmond in perfect harmony and that his manners and bearing showed no
+signs whatever of any bitter memories belonging to the days of internal
+dispute."
+
+In truth, the man's nature was kindly and tolerant; courtesy came more
+natural to him than invective. Above all, he was sensitive for the
+reputation of his country in the eyes of the world, and the spectacle of
+Irishmen heaping vilifications on each other always filled him with
+distaste. Whether the taunts passed between Nationalist and Unionist or
+Nationalist and Nationalist made little difference to his feeling. With
+him it was no empty phrase that he regarded all Irishmen in equal degree
+as his fellow-countrymen.
+
+In 1902 he was once more a party to a continued effort made by Irishmen
+outside of party lines to solve a part of the national difficulty. The
+policy of land purchase had proved its immense superiority over that of
+dual ownership and had even been introduced on a considerable scale. But
+its very success led to trouble, because on one side of a boundary fence
+there would be farmers who had purchased and whose annual instalments of
+purchase money were lower than the rents paid by their neighbours on the
+other side of the mearing. Renewed struggle against rent led to new
+eviction scenes on the grand scale; and by this time landlord opinion
+was half converted to the purchase policy, as a necessary solution. The
+persistency of one young Galway man, Captain John Shawe Taylor, brought
+about the famous Land Conference of 1902, in which Mr. O'Brien, Mr.
+Healy, Mr. Redmond and Mr. T.W. Russell on behalf of the tenants met
+Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Colonel Hutcheson Poe and Colonel Nugent
+Everard representing (though not officially) the landlord interest: and
+the result of the agreement reached by this body was seen in Mr.
+Wyndham's Land Purchase Act of 1903. This great and drastic measure
+altered fundamentally the character of the Irish problem. Directly by
+its own effect, and indirectly by the example of new methods, it changed
+opinion alike in Ireland and Great Britain. In Ireland hitherto, as has
+been already seen, resistance to Home Rule had come primarily from the
+landlord class, by whom the Nationalist desire for self-government was
+construed as a cloak for the wish to revive or reverse the ancient
+confiscations. Now, the land question was by general consent settled, at
+least in principle; in proportion as landlords were bought out the
+leading economic argument against Home Rule disappeared. The opposition
+reduced itself strictly to political grounds; and it began to be plain
+that the true heart of resistance lay in Ulster.
+
+Also, lines of cleavage in the Unionist camp began to appear. Already,
+landlords in the South and West had found a common ground of action with
+representatives of the tenants. It was felt, alike in Ireland and
+England, that this precedent might be developed further.
+
+In England political opinion was much affected by the apparent success
+of an attempt to deal with the Irish problem piecemeal. The Congested
+Districts Board had done much to relieve those regions where famine was
+always a possibility; Local Government had given satisfactory results;
+and now Land Purchase was hailed as the beginning of a new era. The idea
+of seeing how much farther the principle of tentative approach could be
+carried took strong hold of many minds, and the word "devolution" came
+into fashion.
+
+When it became known that Sir Antony MacDonnell, then Under-Secretary at
+Dublin Castle, had, in consultation with Lord Dunraven, drafted a scheme
+for transferring parts of Irish administration to a purely Irish
+authority, a situation rapidly defined itself in which Ulster broke away
+from the more liberal elements in Irish Unionism. The Ulster group
+demanded and obtained the resignation of Mr. George Wyndham; they
+demanded also the dismissal of the Under-Secretary. But Sir Antony
+MacDonnell was not of a resigning temper; he had not acted without
+authority, and he was defended zealously by the Irish members. The
+section of Liberal opinion which adhered rather to Lord Rosebery than to
+Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman probably drew the conclusion that the Irish
+party were prepared at least to tolerate the policy of approaching Home
+Rule step by step; and beyond doubt they were impressed by the prestige
+of Sir Antony MacDonnell's record and personality. The son of a small
+Irish Catholic landlord, educated at the Galway College of the Queen's
+University, he had entered the Indian Civil Service and in it risen to
+the highest point of power. The recommendation that he should be brought
+home to assist in the Government of Ireland had come from Lord
+Lansdowne, then Governor-General of India, who knew that the famous
+administrator of the Punjab was a Catholic Irishman of Nationalist
+sympathies. He had been accepted by Mr. Wyndham, his official chief,
+"rather as a colleague than as a subordinate." Officially and publicly,
+the credit for the Land Act of 1903 went to the Chief Secretary, and Mr.
+Wyndham deserves much of it. But no one who knew the two men could have
+doubted that in the shaping of a measure involving so wide a range of
+detail, the leading part must have been taken by the Irish Civil Servant
+who in India had acquired most of his fame from a sweeping measure of
+land reform.
+
+Proposals to alter the method and conduct of Irish administration before
+touching the parliamentary power to legislate and to tax came with
+extraordinary weight in coming from such a man; and the history of the
+previous Home Rule Bills was not encouraging to anyone, especially to
+those who had been members of Mr. Gladstone's two last administrations.
+From the time of the Parnell divorce case onwards, the Irish question
+had brought to Liberals nothing but embarrassment and embitterment. The
+enthusiasm for Home Rule which grew steadily from 1886 up to the
+severance between Gladstone and Parnell had vanished in the squalid
+controversies of the "split." Moreover, now, by the action of Mr.
+Chamberlain, a new dividing line had been brought into British politics.
+The cry of Protection seemed in the opinion of all Liberals to menace
+ruin to British prosperity; the banner of Free Trade offered a splendid
+rallying-point for a party which had known fifteen years of dissension
+and division. Prudent men thought it would be unsafe, unwise and
+unpatriotic to compromise this great national interest by retaining the
+old watch-word on which Gladstone had twice fought and twice been
+beaten.
+
+It was clear, too, that a Home Rule Bill would provoke a direct conflict
+with the House of Lords and would raise that great struggle on not the
+most favourable issue. Statesmen like Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith
+probably believed that a partial measure, an instalment of
+self-government, to which some influential sections of the Tory party
+would not be unfriendly, might have strong hopes of passing into law.
+
+So it came to pass that in the election of 1906 the Liberal Party came
+into power with a majority of unexampled magnitude, but with a
+Government pledged, negatively, not to introduce a Home Rule Bill in
+that Parliament, but, positively, to attempt an Irish settlement by the
+policy of instalments.
+
+In all this lay the seeds of trouble for the Irish leader. Liberals have
+never understood that Ireland will not take from them what it would take
+from the Tories. It will accept, as a palliative, from the party opposed
+to Home Rule what it will not accept from those who have admitted the
+justice of the national demand.
+
+
+II
+
+"For myself," said Redmond in his speech to the Irish Convention in May
+1907, "I have always expressed in public and in private my opinion that
+no half-way house on this question is possible; but at the same time I
+am, or at any rate I try to be, a practical politician. In the lodgment
+this idea of instalments had got in the minds of English statesmen I
+recognized the fact--and after all in politics the first essential is to
+recognize facts--I recognized the fact that in this Parliament we were
+not going to get a pure Home Rule Bill offered, and I consented, and I
+was absolutely right in consenting, that whatever scheme short of that
+was put forward would be considered calmly on its merits."
+
+This meant that during the whole of the year 1906 and a part of 1907 the
+proposal of the new Irish Bill was under discussion with the Irish
+leaders. The course of these deliberations was undoubtedly a
+disappointment. Mr. Bryce was replaced by Mr. Birrell as Chief
+Secretary, but the scheme still fell short of what Redmond had hoped to
+attain. Unfortunately, and it was a characteristic error, his sanguine
+temperament had led him to encourage in Ireland hopes as high as his
+own. The production of the Irish Council Bill and its reception in
+Ireland was the first real shock to his power.
+
+Mr. Birrell in introducing the measure spoke with his eye on the Tories
+and the House of Lords. He represented it as only the most trifling
+concession; he emphasized not the powers which it conveyed but the
+limitations to them. Redmond in following him was in a difficult
+position. He stressed the point that to accept a scheme which by reason
+of its partial nature would break down in its working would be ruinous,
+because failure would be attributed to natural incapacity in the Irish
+people. Acceptance, therefore, he said, could not be unconditional and
+undoubtedly to his mind it was conditioned by his hope of securing
+certain important amendments, which he outlined. None the less, the tone
+of his speech was one of acceptance, and he concluded:
+
+     "I have never in all the long years that I have been in this House
+     spoken under such a heavy sense of responsibility as I am speaking
+     on this measure this afternoon. Ever since Mr. Gladstone's Bill of
+     1886 Ireland has been waiting for some scheme to settle the
+     problem--waiting sometimes in hope, sometimes almost in despair;
+     but the horrible thing is this, that all the time that Ireland has
+     been so waiting there has been a gaping wound in her side, and her
+     sons have had to stand by helpless while they saw her very
+     life-blood flowing out. Who can say that is an exaggeration? Twenty
+     years of resolute government by the party above the gangway have
+     diminished the population of Ireland by a million. No man in any
+     position of influence can take upon himself the awful
+     responsibility of despising and putting upon one side any device
+     that may arrest that hemorrhage, even although he believed, as I
+     do, that far different remedies must be applied before Ireland can
+     stand upon her feet in vigorous strength. We are determined, as far
+     as we are concerned, that these other remedies shall be applied;
+     but in the meantime we should shrink from the responsibility of
+     rejecting anything which, after that full consideration which the
+     Bill will receive, seems to our deliberate judgment calculated to
+     relieve the sufferings of Ireland and hasten the day of her full
+     national convalescence."
+
+There is no doubt that the element in him which urged him to welcome
+anything that could set Irishmen working together on Irish problems made
+it almost impossible for him to throw aside this chance. It was clear to
+me also that by long months of work in secret deliberation the proposals
+originally set out had been greatly altered, so much so that in
+surveying the Bill he was conscious mainly of the improvements in it;
+and that in this process his mind had lost perception of how the measure
+was likely to affect Irish opinion--especially in view of his own
+hopeful prognostications. At all events, the reception of Mr. Birrell's
+speech, even by Redmond's own colleagues, marked a sudden change in the
+atmosphere. Some desired to vote at once against the measure; many were
+with difficulty brought into the lobby to support even the formal stage
+of first reading. In Ireland there was fierce denunciation. A Convention
+was called for May 21st. The crowd was so great that many of us could
+not make our way into the Mansion House; and Redmond opened the
+proceedings by moving the rejection of the Bill. In the interval since
+the debate he had been confronted with a definite refusal to concede the
+amendments for which he asked.
+
+These were mainly two, of principle: for the objection taken to the
+finance of the Bill was a detail, though of the first importance. The
+Bill proposed to hand over the five great departments of Irish
+administration to the control of an Irish Council. The decisions of that
+Council were to be subject to the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant, as are
+the decisions of Parliament to the veto of the Crown. But the Bill
+proposed not merely to give to the Viceroy the power of vetoing proposed
+action but of instituting other action on his own initiative. Secondly,
+the Council was to exercise its control through Committees, each of
+which was to have a paid chairman, nominated by the Crown.
+
+"It would be far better," Redmond had said in the House of Commons, "to
+have one man selected as the chairmen of these committees are to be
+selected, to have charge, so far as the Council is concerned, of the
+working of the Department, and then all these chairmen acting together
+could form a sort of organic body which would give cohesion, would
+co-ordinate and give stability to the whole of the work. I am afraid
+that the Government seem to have shrunk from that for fear the argument
+would be used against them that they were really creating a Ministry."
+
+That was the real difficulty. A Council subject only to a veto on its
+acts, even though it could neither pass a by-law nor strike a rate,
+would undoubtedly be said by the Unionist opposition to be a rudimentary
+parliament. A group of chairmen possessing administrative powers like
+those of Ministers would be labelled a Ministry; and the Liberals who
+had pledged themselves not to give effect to their Home Rule principles
+were sensitive to charges of breach of faith.
+
+It is a curious fact in politics that the public promise conveyed in
+the adoption of certain principles is generally taken to be on the level
+of ordinary commercial obligation. Failure to keep it jeopardizes a
+man's reputation for political stability, just as failure to pay a
+tailor's bill imperils a man's financial character. But a promise to
+political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles
+stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make
+good; and on this point Mr. Asquith in particular has always shown an
+adamantine resolution.
+
+From 1907 onwards it was with Mr. Asquith that Redmond had chiefly to
+count. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who, personally, had given no such
+limiting pledges, and who during his two years of leadership commanded a
+respect, an affectionate allegiance, from his followers in the House
+without parallel at all events since Mr. Gladstone's day, was fast
+weakening in health. He lived long enough to give freedom to South
+Africa, the one outstanding achievement of that Parliament; and by the
+success of that great measure he did more to remove British distrust of
+Home Rule than even Gladstone ever accomplished. It was no fault of his
+if Liberalism failed to settle the Irish question at the moment when
+Liberal power reached its highest point.
+
+The failure of the Council Bill had one good result, and one only. It
+cleared the way for a definite propaganda on Home Rule. But before this
+could be undertaken it was necessary to pull Nationalist Ireland
+together, for it was once more rent with division and distrust. Mr.
+Healy, who in 1901 had been expelled from the Irish party and its
+organization on the motion of Mr. O'Brien and against Redmond's advice,
+and Mr. O'Brien, who had subsequently retired from the party against
+Redmond's wish, were both of them formidable antagonists; and each was
+vehement in attack on the main body of Nationalists and their leader. It
+was some time before Redmond braced himself to the struggle; but from
+the opening of the autumn recess in 1907 he undertook a campaign
+throughout Ireland which it would be difficult to overpraise. In a
+series of speeches at chosen centres, delivered before great audiences,
+he laid down once more the national demand as he conceived it; and in
+each speech he dealt with a different aspect of the case for Home Rule.
+
+A formal outcome of this campaign was the re-establishment of national
+unity. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy returned to the Irish party for a brief
+period. But the more important result was the re-establishment of
+Redmond's personal position. He had made an effort which would have been
+great for any man, but for him was a victory over his own temperament.
+That temperament had in it, negatively, a great lack of personal
+ambition and, positively, a strong love for a quiet life. He did his
+work in Parliament regularly and conscientiously, always there day in
+and day out; and it was work of a very exacting kind. This had become
+the routine of his existence and he did it without strain. But to go
+outside it was for him always an effort. He hated town life; but more
+than this, he hated ceremonies, presentations, receptions in hotels, and
+all the promiscuous contact of political gatherings. Nevertheless, when
+he came to such an occasion no living man acquitted himself better.
+Apart from his oratory, he had an admirable manner, a dignified yet
+friendly courtesy which gained attachment. In the course of the autumn
+and winter following the Irish Council Bill he must have met and been
+seen by a hundred times more of his adherents than in any similar period
+of his leadership. People all over Ireland heard him not only on the
+public platform but in small addresses to deputations, in impromptu
+speeches at semi-public dinners, and all of this strengthened him where
+an Irish leader most needs to be strengthened--in the hearts of the
+people. The hold which he gained then stood to him during the years
+which followed and up to the outbreak of the war. But it could have
+been still further strengthened, and if ambition had been a motive force
+in him, he would have strengthened it. More than that, if he had
+realized his full value to Ireland, he would have felt it his duty to do
+so. Modesty, combined with a certain degree of indolence, made him leave
+all that contact with the mass of his followers which is necessary to
+leadership to be effected through his chief colleagues, Mr. Dillon and
+Mr. Devlin--who, through no will of theirs, became rather joint leaders
+than lieutenants, so far as Ireland was concerned.
+
+Circumstances helped to emphasize this tendency. His work lay very
+greatly in London, Parliament occupied every year a longer and longer
+space. The task of platform advocacy all over England was urgent, and in
+England Redmond stood out alone. It was little to be wondered at that
+when each long deferred recess came he made it a vacation and not a
+change of work. The seclusion from direct intercourse with the mass of
+his followers which conditions imposed upon him was further accentuated
+by his personal tastes and his choice of a dwelling.
+
+In the early years of the nineteenth century the mountain range which
+runs along the east coast from outside Dublin through Wicklow into
+county Wexford was a country difficult of access and unsubdued. Here in
+1803 Emmet found a refuge, and after Emmet's death here Michael Dwyer
+still held out: Connemara itself was hardly wilder or less accessible,
+till the "military road" was run, little more than a hundred years ago,
+from Dublin over the western slopes of Featherbed, past Glencree, and
+through Callary Bog, skirting Glendalough and traversing the wild
+recesses of Glenmalure, so that it cuts across the headwaters of those
+beautiful streams which meet in the Vale of Ovoca. From Glenmalure the
+road climbs a steep ridge and then travels in wide downward curves
+across the seaward side of Lugnaquilla--fifth in height among Irish
+mountains. Here, at the head of a long valley which runs down to the
+Meeting of the Waters, was built one of the barracks which billeted the
+original garrison of the road. Later, these buildings had been used for
+constabulary; but with peaceful times this grew needless, for there was
+little disturbance among these Wicklow folk, tenants of little farms,
+each with a sheep-run on the vast hills. Nothing could be less like the
+flat sea-bordering lands of the Barony of Forth in which the Redmonds
+spent their boyhood than these wild, sweeping, torrent-seamed folds of
+hill and valley; but the place came to him as part of his inheritance
+from "the Chief." Parnell's home at Avondale was some ten miles from
+here, lying in woods beside the Ovoca River; but the Parnell property
+stretched up to the slopes of Lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack
+was used by him as a shooting lodge. Here, in the early days before his
+life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to
+his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two Redmonds and those
+others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in
+this strange, gaunt survival of military rule. After Parnell's death
+Redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it
+became increasingly and exclusively his home in Ireland. It was, indeed,
+Ireland itself for him. In it and through it he knew Ireland intimately,
+felt Ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a
+way of being. Ireland to him meant Aughavanagh.
+
+Partly, no doubt, the almost unbroken wildness of his surroundings
+appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly
+emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have
+recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be
+difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are
+featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born
+artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to
+beauty in all kinds--yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical,
+graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its
+beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea--yet with a
+difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and
+Aughavanagh was a place of rest. Ireland is a good country to rest in.
+But it would have been far better for Redmond and for Ireland if Ireland
+had been the place not of his rest, but of his work.
+
+His work was essentially that of an agent of Ireland carrying on
+Ireland's affairs in a strange capital. He spent more of his time in
+London than in Ireland, but he was never part of the life of London,
+never in any sense a Londoner. He was part of the life of the House of
+Commons, for that was his place of work; and when he left it he went to
+Aughavanagh as a man returns from the City to his home. This home of his
+was in no sense connected with his active occupations. He was no lover
+of gardening or of farming; he had none of the Irishman's taste for the
+overseeing of stock or land; he enjoyed shooting, but he was not a
+passionate sportsman. What was a passion with him--- for he sacrificed
+much to it--was rest in the place of his choice.
+
+It was not a lonely habitation. He was no recluse, and when there he was
+always surrounded by his friends. I do not know precisely how one could
+constitute a list of them--but half a dozen men at least came and went
+there as they chose. Mr. Mooney, Mr. Hayden, "Long John" O'Connor, Dr.
+Kenny--these, and above all, Paddy O'Brien, the party's chief acting
+whip--were constant there. Some came to shoot, and Willie Redmond used
+to come over from his house at Delgany, where the Glen of the Downs
+debouches seaward; walking generally, for he was the fastest and most
+untiring of mountaineers: very few cared to keep beside him on the
+hills. Others were content to share the daily bathes, morning and
+afternoon, in a long deep pool where the little stream tumbling down a
+series of cascades makes a place to dive and swim in. These were the
+friends of Redmond's own generation, and they were also his son's
+friends; but the two daughters had their allies, and one way or another
+the party was apt to be a big one--very simply provided for. When I went
+there first (in 1907) you climbed a narrow stone stair to the first
+floor; on the left was a dining-room, beyond that a billiard-room; on
+the right, Redmond's study, and beyond that his bedroom. Another flight
+took you to the upper regions, where were two dormitories--the girls to
+the right, the men to the left. Later, he made some alterations, and the
+upstair rooms were subdivided off; the garden was developed; it became
+more of a house and less of a barrack; but the character of the life did
+not change. It was most simple, most hospitable, most unconventional and
+most remote.
+
+Certainly a great part of Aughavanagh's charm for him lay in its
+remoteness. It was seven Irish miles up a hilly road from the nearest
+railway station, post office or telegraph station. Aughrim was three
+hours' train journey from Dublin, on a tiny branch line, and trains were
+few. Until motors brought him (to his intense resentment) within reach,
+he was as inaccessible as if he had lived in Clare or Mayo.
+
+So it came to pass that though he knew to the very core one typical
+district of Ireland, and was far more closely in touch with a few score
+of Irish peasants through their daily life than any of his leading
+associates, he was yet cut off by his own choice from much that is
+Ireland--and perhaps from much that was most important to him. Political
+opinion is created in the towns, and he knew the Irish townsfolk, so far
+as he could manage it, only through his correspondence, and through
+those business visits to Dublin which he made as few as possible.
+
+If his work had lain, where it should by rights have lain, in a
+ministerial office in Dublin, all would have been well. As it was, the
+deliberate and extreme seclusion of his life in Ireland weakened his
+influence. He was far too shrewd not to know this, and far too
+unambitious to care. Work he never shrank from. But the daily
+solicitations of people with personal grievances to lay before him,
+personal interests which they desired him to promote, made a form of
+trouble which in his periods of rest from work he refused to undergo.
+
+The same qualities in him were responsible for his persistent refusal to
+accept private hospitality where he went on public business. Whether in
+Ireland or in Great Britain, he must stay at a hotel, and many were the
+magnates of Liberalism whose ruffled feelings it was necessary to smooth
+down on this account. He detested being lionized and wanted always, when
+the public affair was over, to get away to his own quarters.
+
+The demands on him in England for platform work were portentous. Every
+constituency which wanted a meeting on the Home Rule question wanted
+Redmond and no other speaker. Of course he could not go to one-twentieth
+of the places where he was asked for; and his objection to going was not
+the effort involved but the impossibility either of indefinitely
+repeating himself or of finding something new to say each time. "If it
+was in America," he would say, "I would speak as often as you asked me"
+(it was my misfortune to have to do the asking), "because they never
+report a speech." The fact is worth noting, for in scores of instances
+what was adduced by opponents as quotation from his utterances in the
+United States represented simply some American journalist's impression,
+perhaps less of what Redmond said than of what, in the reporter's
+opinion, he should have said. Those who represented him as putting one
+face on the argument in America and another in Great Britain did not
+know the man. "I have made it a rule," he said to me more than once, "to
+say the extremest things I had to say in the House of Commons."
+
+However, all the machinery which was employed by the opponents of Home
+Rule to prejudice Ireland's case in the British constituencies proved
+very ineffectual. For one thing, the lesson of South Africa had gone
+home. For another, and perhaps a greater, no cause ever had a missionary
+better adapted to the temperament of the British democracy. The dignity
+and beauty of Redmond's eloquence, the weight which he could give to an
+argument, his extraordinary gift for simplifying an issue and grouping
+thoughts in large bold masses--all these things carried audiences with
+them.
+
+
+III
+
+Between 1908 and 1910 we were still, though with rapidly increasing
+success, trying to get a hearing for the Irish question--trying to push
+it once more to the front. The change of leadership from Sir Henry
+Campbell-Bannerman to Mr. Asquith had damped Liberal enthusiasm. We got
+solid work done for Ireland in the University Act of 1908, though
+Redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like
+that in which he had himself been an undergraduate. A highly contentious
+measure was also carried in the Land Act of 1909. But a new power was
+coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts. Mr.
+Lloyd George put a new fighting spirit into Liberalism: but the objects
+which he had at heart could only be achieved by a great expenditure of
+electoral power, and among those objects Irish self-government found
+only a secondary place. When Mr. Gladstone spoke of liberty he thought
+of what he had helped to bring to Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and
+Montenegro--what he had tried to bring to Ireland. When Mr. Lloyd George
+spoke of liberty, he thought of what he wanted to bring to England
+first, and to Ireland by the way; his conviction that Ireland needed
+self-government was not so deeply rooted as his conviction that the poor
+throughout the United Kingdom needed help.
+
+Old Age Pensions had been popular, but had not been a fighting issue.
+Mr. Lloyd George provided the fighting issue with a vengeance when he
+set himself to pay for them. Unfortunately, Nationalist Ireland had no
+enthusiasm for the Budget which English Radicalism made its flag. A
+country of peasant proprietors was easily scared by the very name of
+land taxes. But above all the Finance Bill dealt drastically, and many
+thought unfairly, with the powerful liquor trade, which in its branches
+of brewing and distilling included the main manufacturing interest of
+southern Ireland, and on its retail side was incredibly diffused through
+the whole shopkeeping community.
+
+The dissident Nationalists saw their chance. Mr. O'Brien emerged from
+one of his periodic retirements to lead a whirlwind campaign against the
+"robber Budget." Redmond and our party were obliged to oppose a measure
+which pressed so hard as this undoubtedly did on Ireland. Our opposition
+to the land taxes was withdrawn when valuable concessions had been made,
+but no such compromise was considered possible on the liquor taxes. On
+the other hand, it grew clear that the measure was likely to produce a
+conflict in which the power of the House of Lords might be challenged on
+the most favourable ground: and for that reason, when the third reading
+was reached, the Irish party abstained from voting against it. This
+course, while it facilitated close co-operation with Liberalism in the
+general election which followed, weakened us in Ireland; and eleven out
+of the eighty-three Nationalist members returned in January 1910 ranked
+themselves as outside the party; though Mr. O'Brien's actual following
+was limited to seven Cork members and Mr. Healy.
+
+
+IV
+
+The action of the Lords in rejecting the Budget of 1909 had an important
+personal result. It placed Mr. Asquith in a role which no one was ever
+better qualified to fill--that of a Liberal statesman defending
+principles of democratic control menaced after a long period of
+security. The Prime Minister, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now
+became the protagonist; and this was to Redmond's liking, for he felt
+that Mr. Asquith was more concerned with the problems which had occupied
+Gladstone's closing years and Mr. Lloyd George with those of a later
+day.
+
+Yet in the first grave encounter after the rejection of the Budget,
+Redmond and the leader of the Liberal party came to sharp differences.
+The general election had amply justified the advice which was urged by
+him on Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman when the House of Lords rejected the
+Education Bill in 1906--namely, that the Liberal party should take up at
+once the inevitable fight before their enormous strength had been
+frittered away in a series of disappointments. The majority of 1906 was
+too swollen to be healthy: owing to the ruling out of Home Rule, it
+included a number of men only partial adherents of the full Liberal
+programme; and a diminution of its proportions owing to the traditional
+swing of the pendulum was certain. But in January 1910 the losses were
+more than even sanguine Tory prophets predicted. Tories came back equal
+in strength to the Liberals: Labour was only forty, so that the Irish
+party held the balance in the House.
+
+The election had been fought expressly on the issue of Government's
+claim to enable a Liberal Government to deal with certain problems,
+among which the Irish question occupied the foremost place. It was easy
+now for the Tories to argue that the Government appealing to the country
+on that issue had lost two hundred seats. They said: "You have authority
+to pass your Budget--but for these vast unconstitutional changes you
+have no mandate." The temper of their party, which had more than doubled
+its numbers, was very high: in the Liberal ranks depression reigned and
+counsels were divided.
+
+At the beginning of the election Mr. Asquith had made a great speech in
+the Albert Hall in which he outlined the Liberal policy. In it he
+declared that the pledge against introducing a Home Rule Bill was
+withdrawn, and that the establishment of self-government for Ireland,
+subject to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, was among the
+Government's main purposes. But the House of Lords was in the way.
+
+"We shall not assume office and we shall not hold office unless we can
+secure the safeguards which experience shows us to be necessary for the
+legislative utility and honour of the party of progress."
+
+This was universally taken to mean that he would obtain a guarantee that
+the King would, if necessary, consent to the creation of sufficient new
+peers to override the hostile majority. But as the election progressed,
+uncertainties developed and an alternative policy of attempting to
+reform the Upper House was advocated in certain quarters. The question
+arose also as to whether the first business of the new House should be
+to pass the Budget which the Lords had thrown out or to proceed with the
+attack on the power of veto.
+
+Redmond's view on this was not in doubt. At a meeting in Dublin on
+February 10, 1910, he declared in the most emphatic manner that to deal
+with the Budget first would be a breach of Mr. Asquith's pledge to the
+country, since it would throw away the power of the House of Commons to
+stop supply. This speech attracted much attention, and the memory of it
+was present to many a fortnight later when Mr. Asquith was replying to
+Mr. Balfour at the opening of the debate on the Address. The Prime
+Minister dwelt strongly on the administrative necessity for regularizing
+the financial position disturbed by the Upper House's unconstitutional
+action. He indicated also the need for reform in the composition of that
+House. But, above all, he disclaimed as improper and impossible any
+attempt to secure in advance a pledge for the contingent exercise of the
+Royal prerogative.
+
+"I have received no such guarantee and I have asked for no such
+guarantee," he said.
+
+The change was marked indeed from the moment when he uttered in the
+Albert Hall his sentence against assuming office or holding office
+without the necessary safeguards--an assurance at which the whole vast
+assembly rose to their feet and cheered. Every word in his speech on the
+Address added to the depression of his followers and the elation of the
+Opposition. Redmond followed him at once. In such circumstances as then
+existed, it was exceedingly undesirable for the Irish leader to
+emphasize the fact that his vote could overthrow the Government: and the
+least unnecessary display of this power would naturally and properly
+have been resented by the Government's following. No one knew this
+better than Redmond, yet the position demanded bold action. His speech,
+courteous, as always, in tone, and studiously respectful in its
+reference to the position of the Crown, was an open menace to the
+Government. He quoted the Prime Minister's words at the Albert Hall, he
+appealed to the House at large for the construction which had been
+everywhere put on them; and it was apparent that he had the full
+sympathy not only of his own party and of Labour, but of most of Mr.
+Asquith's own following. He concluded in these words:
+
+     "If the Prime Minister is not in a position to say that he has such
+     guarantees as are necessary to enable him to pass a Veto Bill this
+     year, and if in spite of that he intends to remain in office and
+     proposes to pass the Budget into law and then to adjourn--I do not
+     care for how short or how long--the consideration of the Bill
+     dealing with the veto of the House of Lords, that is a policy which
+     Ireland cannot and will not support."
+
+The effect on the House was such that no one rose to continue the
+debate. Next day it was resumed, and not only Labour speakers, but one
+after another of the Liberals, including some of the Prime Minister's
+most docile, old-fashioned supporters rose and declared that Redmond and
+not the Leader of the House had expressed their views. So began a
+remarkable struggle in which the combined forces of the private
+members--Liberal, Labour and Irish--united by a common desire to destroy
+the domination of the Peers, contended against the Cabinet's policy of
+attempting not merely to limit the power of veto but to reconstitute the
+Upper House. In such a process men saw that the driving force of the
+majority would waste away and that the composite character of their
+alliance would lead to certain disruption.
+
+Before the debate on the Address concluded it was plain that Redmond had
+won. From that period onwards his popularity, and, through him, the
+popularity of the party which he led, was immensely increased in Great
+Britain. He was regarded as one of the men who had rendered best service
+to democracy against privilege. He himself believed that in this first
+contest Ireland had decided the victory--had decided the overthrow of
+the House which had so long opposed its liberties. Labour had then
+neither the essential leader nor the necessary parliamentary strength:
+Liberalism was confused and uncertain at the critical moment.
+
+Yet in the very process of achieving this success Redmond laid himself
+open to attack. The Budget was regarded with dislike by a very large
+section of Irishmen, and apart from considerations of political strategy
+the Irish members would certainly have voted against it. Now, the power
+was in their hands to defeat it finally. By so doing they would, of
+course, justify to some degree the unconstitutional action of the Lords;
+but this consideration did not weigh with Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy.
+They accused Redmond of selling the real interests of Ireland to keep a
+Government in office which could offer nothing in return but a gambling
+chance of limiting the veto of the Lords. Mr. O'Brien was firmly
+confident that no such measure would ever pass. He denounced the
+bargain, not merely because it was a bargain in which Redmond accepted
+what was in his view a ruinous injustice to Ireland, but because it was
+a bargain in which the Irish had been outwitted. This line of argument
+was to be dinned into the ears of Ireland during all the remaining years
+of Redmond's life. The only conclusive answer to it was to gain Home
+Rule. If, in the long run, it came to appear that the attackers had been
+right in their contention, and that Ireland had never received the
+expected return, the fault for that result lay with Ireland itself no
+less than with England; it most assuredly did not lie with John Redmond.
+A great weight of responsibility rests on those who from the first hour
+of Ireland's opportunity ingeminated distrust to an over-suspicious
+people.
+
+For the moment, however, the attack made no headway. Irishmen have a
+shrewd political sense, and they felt that in the struggle to pin
+Liberal Ministers to the true fighting objective Redmond had won. They
+were also delighted to see the Irish party openly exert its power--not
+quite realizing that such exhibitions were against the interest of the
+democratic alliance, which had to undergo a grave test. The Government's
+vacillation had rendered another general election necessary if the Veto
+question were to be fought out.
+
+On April 29th the House adjourned for the Whitsuntide recess, after
+which the crisis was to come with the decision of the House of Lords
+whether to accept or reject the Veto Resolution, which had then passed
+the Commons. On May 7th, after a short and sudden illness, King Edward
+died. Both the great English parties were unwilling to renew the most
+acute political struggle of modern times at the opening of a new reign,
+and means of accommodation was sought through a Conference which sat
+first on June 16th and held twenty-one meetings. No representative of
+Ireland was on this body. On November 10th it reported that no result
+had come of its efforts, and a new general election was fixed for
+December 1st.
+
+When the Conference finally broke down Redmond was on his way back from
+America, whither he had gone accompanied by Mr. Devlin. Mr. T.P.
+O'Connor at the same time undertook a tour in Canada. The success of
+these missions showed that the interest and the confidence of the Irish
+race were higher than at any previous period: the ambassadors brought
+back a contribution of one hundred thousand dollars to the election
+funds, and the ship on which they came was saluted by bonfires all along
+the coast of Cork. Ireland, too, was subscribing as Ireland had not
+subscribed since Parnell's zenith: and this was an Ireland in which the
+land-hunger had been largely appeased. The theory that Ireland's demand
+for self-government was merely generated by Ireland's poverty began to
+look ridiculous.
+
+It was the cue of the Tory Press at this moment to excite prejudice
+against the Liberals by representing them as the bondslaves of the
+"dollar dictator"--ordered about by an Irish autocrat with swollen
+money-bags from New York. This line of argument did us little harm in
+Great Britain; in Ireland it improved Redmond's position, for it was a
+useful answer to Mr. O'Brien's representation of him as the abject tool
+of Liberal politicians. The election, on the whole, strengthened our
+party. Mr. Healy was thrown out; and Mr. O'Brien, though he retained the
+seven seats held by his adherents in Cork, failed in two out of three
+personal candidatures.
+
+In Great Britain the second election of the year 1910 had the surprising
+result of reproducing almost exactly the same division of parties: and
+this added greatly to the strength of the Government. The Tory leaders
+now, instead of insisting on a maintenance of the old Constitution, went
+into alternative proposals--including the adoption of the Referendum.
+This was their constructive line; the destructive resolved itself
+largely into an endeavour to focus resistance on the question of
+Ireland--the purpose for which alone, they said, abolition of the veto
+was demanded. As has often happened, action taken by the Vatican gave
+the opponents of Home Rule a useful weapon. The _Ne Temere_ decree,
+promulgated in the year 1908, laid down that any marriage to which a
+Roman Catholic was a party, if not solemnized according to the rites of
+the Church of Rome, should be treated as invalid from a canonical point
+of view. Although legally binding, it should be regarded as no marriage
+in the eyes of an orthodox Roman Catholic until it was regularized in
+the manner provided by the Church, The case of an unhappy mixed marriage
+in Belfast was exploited with fury on a thousand platforms. Another
+decree, the _Motu Proprio_, was construed as seeking to establish
+immunity for the clergy from proceedings in civil courts. This, however,
+was of less platform value, because no instance could be found of a
+practical application; whereas the McCann case unquestionably gave Tory
+disputants a formidable instrument for evoking the ancient distrust of
+Roman Catholicism which is so deeply ingrained in the Protestant mind.
+
+In spite of all, the English democracy remained steady in its purpose.
+Party feeling, however, ran to heights not known in living memory. In
+July 1911 the Parliament Bill went to the Lords, where it was altered
+out of all recognition. On July 20th Mr. Asquith sent a letter to Mr.
+Balfour stating that the King had guaranteed that he would exercise his
+prerogative to secure that the Bill should be passed substantially as it
+left the Commons. On the 24th the extreme section of the Tory party,
+headed by Lord Hugh Cecil, refused to allow the Prime Minister a hearing
+in the House of Commons.
+
+From an Irish point of view the episode was noteworthy. At the outset of
+this critical session Redmond had cautioned his party to abstain from
+giving provocation and from allowing themselves to be provoked. The
+counsel was the harder to follow because some of the most vehement of
+the younger Tories sat below the gangway, almost in physical contact
+with Irish members, and hot words passed. Still, it was grounded into
+all that we should not allow the great issue then at trial to be
+represented as an Irish quarrel. Our cause was linked with the whole
+cause of democracy as against privilege: it was an issue for the whole
+United Kingdom; and that was never plainer than on this day of July.
+English, Scottish and Welsh members hurled interruptions and taunts at
+each other across the floor of the House, while Irish members sat
+watching. Something older and more far-reaching than the opposition to
+Ireland's demand now was felt itself assailed; and a force in which the
+Irish movement was only one stream of many swept against it. Anger in
+the Tory party was not directed against Ireland's representatives; and
+an odd chance made this plain. The fierce scene in the House reached its
+culmination when Ministers withdrew in a body from the Treasury Bench
+and the two sides of the House stood up, one cheering, the other
+hooting, in opposite ranks. For a moment it seemed as if the affair
+would come to blows, till Mr. Will Crooks, with a genial inspiration,
+uplifted his voice in song: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" The
+tension was relaxed and members moved out in groups--we Irishmen
+necessarily among the Tories. In the movement I saw Willie Redmond go up
+to one of the fiercest among the Ulstermen, whose face was dark with
+passion. Colloquy began: "Isn't it a hard thing that you wouldn't let us
+speak?" The Ulsterman turned: "Not let you speak? My dear fellow, we'd
+listen to you for as long as you liked--it's only these accursed English
+Liberals." And upon this mutual understanding the two Irishmen walked
+down the floor into the Lobby exchanging expressions of mutual goodwill
+and possibly of mutual comprehension.
+
+This little piece of by-play, so full of Irish nature, struck me at the
+time as something more than amusing--as having in it a ray of hopeful
+significance. But the most sanguine imagination would never have
+foreseen the series of events which brought it to pass, not merely that
+these two men should wear the same uniform, on a common service, but
+that the same Gazette should publish both their names as enrolled on the
+same day in the French Legion of Honour. On that day Mr. Charles Craig
+was a prisoner in Germany, wounded in a famous fight; and Willie Redmond
+was in a grave towards which Ulster comrades had been the first to carry
+him. There is an Irish saying, "Men may meet, but the mountains stand
+apart." In July 1911 such an association as the Gazette of July 1917
+illustrated would have seemed hardly more possible than the meeting of
+the everlasting hills.
+
+The dramatic crisis of the parliamentary struggle between the two Houses
+of Parliament did not, and could not, come in the House of Commons. Its
+place was in the final citadel of privilege, and privilege surrendered
+on August 10th, when the Bill passed the Lords after the most exciting
+and uncertain division that is ever likely to be known. But there were
+elements in the Tory party which did not accept defeat, though they had
+not yet clearly decided on what battleground to renew their efforts. For
+the moment, however, men were disposed to pause and take stock of the
+new situation.
+
+But at such a time events cannot stand still, and almost at the same
+moment as the Parliament Act was carried, the Government took a step
+which gravely affected the Irish party. Payment of members was
+established by a resolution of the House of Commons.
+
+Irish Nationalist members had always been paid from the party fund, that
+is to say, by their supporters. Payment was conditional, not of right,
+and it was not made except when the member was in attendance: it
+amounted only to twenty pounds a month. The new payment came from the
+British Treasury; it was made irrespective of the desire of
+constituents, or of any other consideration; and it amounted to a sum
+which in a country of small incomes sounded very imposing.
+Unquestionably the receipt of it weakened the position of the party in
+the eyes of Ireland, and gave a new sting to the charge of a bargain.
+
+All this was clearly discerned in advance, by no one more than by
+Redmond; and an amendment was moved to strike Irish members out of the
+application of the resolution. But the situation was hopelessly
+involved, the Irish party having repeatedly voted for payment of members
+as part of the Radical programme which they supported as affecting any
+normally governed country; and Government refused to make the exception.
+
+As a result, Redmond's following lost much of the prestige which had
+resulted from scrupulous observance of the understanding that no
+Nationalist member should take office under Government. To join the
+Irish party had been, in effect, for most men, to make a vow of
+poverty. Now, on the contrary, it involved acceptance of what was in
+Ireland's eyes a well-paid and unlaborious office. The Irish are no less
+prone than any other nation to take a cynical view of these matters.
+
+Yet assuredly no man ever gave more service for less pay than the
+Nationalist leader, and it was the harder because he was a man who liked
+comfort and had no ambition. If at the time of the great "split" he had
+stood down from politics, success would have been assured to him at the
+Bar in Ireland, or, more surely still, and far more profitably, at
+Westminster itself. There never was anyone so well-fitted for the work
+of a parliamentary barrister who has to deal with great interests before
+a tribunal largely composed of laymen. No one had the House of Commons
+tone more perfectly than Redmond, and no one that I ever heard equalled
+his gift for making a complicated issue appear simple. When he was
+thrown out of Parliament at the Cork election, he thought of retirement,
+mainly for one reason: it would be better for his children. Yet, first
+by personal loyalty to Parnell, later by his loyalty to Ireland, he was
+held firm to his task--always a poor man, always knowing that it lay in
+his power, without the least sacrifice of principle, to become rich by a
+way of work less laborious and infinitely less harassing than that which
+he pursued.
+
+The effect upon the Irish situation produced by the payment of members
+was slow to develop, and obscure. But an obvious and grave complication
+was introduced into both British and Irish politics at the moment when
+the democratic alliance had achieved its first great objective.
+Parliament had been in session almost continuously since the beginning
+of 1909, with the added strain of two general elections thrown in. There
+was a widespread desire to clear the autumn of 1911, so that members
+might have some breathing space, and, not less important, devote
+themselves to propagandist work in their constituencies for the new
+struggle of carrying measures under the hardly won Parliament Act. Each
+of these measures must involve a fight prolonged over three years.
+
+But this desire ran against the purposes of Mr. Asquith's chief
+lieutenant, whose power and popularity were now at their height. Mr.
+Lloyd George in the course of the session had introduced his Insurance
+Bill, and it was welcomed with astonishing effusion from both sides of
+the House. As discussion proceeded, however, the complexity and
+difficulty of its proposals, and the number of oppositions which they
+provoked, became so apparent that it was not in human nature for
+politicians at such a crisis to forgo the opportunity. Most of the
+Liberal party would have preferred to drop the Bill temporarily and
+refer it to a Committee of Enquiry. Mr. Lloyd George was convinced that
+this would be fatal to his measure, concerning which he was possessed by
+a missionary zeal. Probably when his career comes under the study of
+impartial history it will be perceived that never at any moment was he
+so passionately and so honestly in earnest as upon this quest. But it is
+certain that by pursuit of it he created enormous difficulties in the
+way of those reforms which the democratic alliance at large most desired
+to achieve. He carried his point; an autumn session followed, in which
+the mind of the electorate was diverted from the Irish question and all
+other questions except that of Insurance, and Parliament itself was
+jaded to the brink of exhaustion.
+
+The matter was difficult for us in Ireland because, owing to the
+different system of Public Health Administration, many of the most
+important provisions could not apply, and because the Bill as a whole
+was framed to meet the needs of a highly industrialized and crowded
+community. Broadly speaking, it was less desired in Ireland than in
+Great Britain; and even for Great Britain Mr. Lloyd George was
+legislating in advance of public opinion rather than in response to it.
+Mr. O'Brien and his following vehemently opposed the application of the
+Bill to Ireland; and the Irish Catholic Bishops, by a special
+resolution, expressed their view to the same effect. The Bill, however,
+had a powerful advocate in Mr. Devlin, and the Irish party decided to
+support its extension to Ireland, subject to certain modifications which
+they obtained.
+
+Apart from the new unsettlement of public opinion which it created both
+in Great Britain and in Ireland, the Insurance Act added to our
+difficulties on the Home Rule question. It was clear already that the
+question of finance lay like a rock ahead. Up to 1908 the proceeds of
+Irish revenue had always given a margin over the cost of all Irish
+services, though that margin had dwindled almost to vanishing-point. Old
+Age Pensions completely turned the beam and left us in the position of
+costing more than we contributed. Now the outlay on Insurance added half
+a million a year to the balance against us.
+
+Still, difficulties and perplexities were not limited to one side. The
+Tory party were much divided since the crisis on the Parliament Act. A
+section, and the most active section, had been violently opposed to the
+surrender on the critical division, and these men were profoundly
+discontented with Mr. Balfour's leadership; so Mr. Balfour, yielding to
+intimations, suddenly resigned. Somewhat unexpectedly, Mr. Bonar Law was
+chosen to succeed him, Mr. Long and Mr. Chamberlain waiving their
+respective claims.
+
+This choice was of sinister augury. Mr. Law did not know Ireland. But,
+Canadian-born, he came from a country in which the Irish factions and
+theological enmities had always had their counterpart; his father, a
+Presbyterian Minister, came of Ulster stock. All the blood in him
+instinctively responded to the tap of the Orange drum. As far back as
+January 27, 1911, he had urged armed resistance to Home Rule.
+
+This was a line which Mr. Balfour did not see his way to take, and
+probably here rather than elsewhere lay the reason for the choice of Mr.
+Bonar Law. The most active section of the Tory party--probably a
+minority, for in such cases minorities decide--regarded the passing of
+the Parliament Act as an outrage on the Constitution, which should be
+resisted by any means, constitutional or unconstitutional. But no
+possibility existed of mobilizing a force in Great Britain to fight for
+the veto of the House of Lords, nor again did the resistance to a new
+Franchise Act, or even to Welsh Disestablishment, promise to be
+desperate. In one part only of these islands was there material for a
+form of struggle in which the ballot-box and the division lobby might be
+supplemented, if not replaced, by quite other methods of political war.
+The Tory party saw in Ulster their best fighting chance. There was no
+use in telling them that they jeopardized the British Constitution; from
+their point of view the British Constitution--as they had known it--was
+already gone; it was destroyed in principle and must be either restored
+or refashioned according to their mind.
+
+This temper, with the attitude towards parliamentary tradition which it
+produced, rendered the political history of the next two and a half
+years unlike any other in the history of these countries. The main
+purpose of this book is to record and illustrate Redmond's action during
+the period which began with the opening of the Great War. But since that
+action was conditioned by the circumstances preceding the war--since in
+two notable ways it aimed at a solution of the fierce political struggle
+which the war interrupted--the political history connected with the
+passage of the Home Rule Bill through Parliament must be outlined in
+detail, with avoidance, so far as may be, of a controversial tone.
+
+
+V
+
+It is however necessary, before closing this preliminary review, to take
+some account of Redmond's relation to his party, and, in general, of the
+working of the parliamentary machine. Difficulties were imposed on him
+and on the party from 1910 onwards by our very success.
+
+Electoral chances had placed us apparently in the position of maximum
+power. From January 1910 onwards we had a Government committed to Home
+Rule, yet so far dependent on us that we could put it out at any moment.
+Yet this was by no means an ideal state of affairs. The Government's
+weakness was our weakness, and they were liable to the reproach that
+they never proposed a Home Rule measure except when they could not
+dispense with the Irish vote. Still, from this embarrassing position we
+achieved an extraordinary result. Right across our path was the obstacle
+of the House of Lords. It was not an impassable barrier for measures in
+which the British working classes were keenly interested--for it let the
+Trades Disputes Bill go through; but it was wholly regardless of Irish
+and of Welsh popular opinion. Under Redmond's leadership we smashed the
+House of Lords. The English middle class instinct for compromise was
+asserting itself, when he took hold and gave direction to the great mass
+of popular indignation which the hereditary chamber had roused against
+itself.
+
+Yet guiding action in an alliance of which he was not the head was
+delicate work. A clumsy speaker in debate might do infinite mischief.
+When a party is in opposition, all its members can talk, and are
+encouraged to talk, to the utmost; little harm can be done to one's own
+side by what is said in criticism of measures proposed. Support and
+exposition is a much more ticklish business. Add to this the fact that
+under the fully developed system of parliamentary obstruction--that is,
+of using discussion to prevent legislation from being put through--the
+best service that a member can render to Government is to say nothing,
+but vote.
+
+The tactics of limiting discussion to chosen speakers in important
+debates and of discouraging sharply any intervention which might help to
+delay a division were pushed further in the Irish party than elsewhere.
+We were there under different conditions from the rest; our objective
+was as clearly defined as in a military operation: and we all understood
+the position. We recognized also that negotiation must be a matter for
+Redmond and his inner cabinet of three, and that many things could not
+be usefully discussed in a body of seventy men. But the net result was
+that the bulk of the party lost interest in their work, and, which was
+worse, that Ireland lost interest in the bulk of the party. It followed,
+not unnaturally, that the constituencies held one voting machine to be
+as good as another, and they did not generally send any men who could
+have been of service in debate. They did not any longer see their
+members heading a fiery campaign against rents, or flamboyant in attack
+on the Government; they heard very little of them at all. They knew
+little and cared less about the work of education in British
+constituencies, which had to be carried on through the mouths of Irish
+members.
+
+Redmond has often been blamed, but quite unjustly, for failure to
+attract men of talent into his ranks. Parnell had that power. He had,
+and used, the right of suggesting names. But under the constitution of
+the United Irish League (originally the work of Mr. William O'Brien when
+reunion was accomplished in 1900) the machinery of local conventions was
+set up and no interference with their choice was permitted to the
+central directorate--which could only insist that a man properly
+selected must take the party pledge. Whether this machinery was
+inevitable or no, cannot be argued here; but Redmond himself complained
+repeatedly in public that it worked badly. Candidates were often chosen
+purely for local and even personal considerations, and seldom with any
+real thought of finding the man best fitted to do Ireland's work at
+Westminster.
+
+This evil, for it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in
+a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others.
+There being no Unionist candidature possible in the majority of
+constituencies, any contest was deprecated--and from some points of view
+rightly--as leading to possible faction between Nationalists. The choice
+of a member really fell into too few hands; the electorate as a whole
+was not sufficiently interested. Nevertheless, several able men came
+into our ranks, and under the conditions it was not possible to utilize
+their talents fully, as they would have been utilized had we been in
+opposition, not in support of the Government. More could have been done,
+however, to give them their opportunity, and the responsibility for not
+varying the list of speakers rests on Redmond. It was his policy to
+avoid personal intervention, and to leave such choices to be settled by
+proposals from the party itself. This was a real limitation to his
+excellence as leader--for leader he was.
+
+There was, however, an even more important limitation arising out of his
+personal temperament. As chairman, I never expect to see his equal. He
+had the most perfect public manners of any man I have known, whether in
+dealing with some vast assembly or small confidential gathering. The
+latter type of meeting is the more difficult to handle, and nothing
+could exceed his gift for presiding over and guiding debate. He could
+set out a political situation to his party with extraordinary force and
+lucidity. He could also, when he chose, so present an issue as to
+suggest almost irresistibly the conclusion which he desired--and this
+was how he led. Where he came short in the quality of leadership was in
+the personal contact.
+
+His relations with all his followers in the party were courteous and
+cordial; yet without the least appearance of aloofness he was always
+aloof. He did not invite discussion. It needed some courage to go to him
+with a question in policy, and if you went, the answer would be simply a
+"Yes" or "No." He lacked what Lord Morley attributed to Gladstone, "the
+priceless gift of throwing his mind into common stock." No one thought
+more constantly, or further ahead; but he could not, rather than would
+not, impart his mind by bringing it into contact with others. Men like
+being taken into their leader's confidence, and he knew this and, I have
+reason to believe, knew the disability which his temperament laid upon
+him. Yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly I think from
+pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not
+going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more
+enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one
+who liked discussion for discussion's sake.
+
+Profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. I
+cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently
+aware of the qualities which made T.M. Kettle difficult to handle in his
+team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and
+a force in our party. A more serious aspect of this conservatism was the
+separation which it produced between him and the newer Ireland. He
+welcomed the Gaelic League and disliked Sinn Fein, but undervalued both
+as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. Ideally
+speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented
+mainly the standpoint of Parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the
+new Young Ireland.
+
+But from the point of view of those who shared his outlook--and they
+were the vast majority, in Ireland and in the party--Redmond's essential
+limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities
+which produce idolatry and blind allegiance. What his followers gave him
+was admiration, liking and profound respect. No less than this was
+strictly due to his high standard of honour, his scorn of all personal
+pettiness, his control of temper. In twelve years I heard many
+complaints of the manner in which things were managed in the party: I
+scarcely ever remember to have heard anyone complain of him. He was
+always spoken of as "The Chairman"; no one attributed to him sole
+responsibility; and he was the last on whom any man desired to lay a
+fault.
+
+Yet when it came, as it often did, to a question of weighing advices one
+against the other, there was no mistake how men's opinions inclined. He
+had taught his party by experience to have almost implicit confidence in
+his judgment; and by this earned confidence he led and he ruled.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912
+
+
+The year 1912, in which the straight fight on Home Rule was to begin,
+opened stormily. Mr. Churchill was announced to speak under the auspices
+of the Ulster Liberal Association in the Ulster Hall at Belfast. It was
+the hall in which his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had used the
+famous phrase "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." Belfast was
+determined that the son should not unsay what the father had said in
+this consecrated building; it would be, as an Ulster member put it in
+the House of Commons, "a profanation." On this first round, Ulster won;
+Mr. Churchill spoke at Belfast, but not in the Ulster Hall. There were
+angry demonstrations against him; his person had to be strongly
+protected and he went away from the meeting by back streets. It was
+noticeable that no such precautions were needed for Redmond, who
+attended the meeting and walked quite unmolested through the crowd. The
+British electorate, as a whole, was somewhat scandalized by the
+exhibition of so violent a temper; but the education of the British
+electorate was only beginning.
+
+Congestion of business from the previous session deferred the
+introduction of the Home Rule Bill till April. Great demonstrations for
+and against it were held in advance. In Dublin on March 31st was such a
+gathering as scarcely any man remembered. O'Connell Street is rather a
+boulevard than a thoroughfare; it is as wide as Whitehall and its length
+is about the same. On that day, from the Parnell monument at the north
+end to the O'Connell monument at the south, you could have walked on the
+shoulders of the people. Four separate platforms were erected, and
+Redmond spoke from that nearest to the statue of his old chief. He dwelt
+on the universality of the demonstration; nine out of eleven
+corporations were represented officially by their civic officers;
+professional men, business men, were all fully to the fore. But one
+section of his countrymen were conspicuously absent. To Ulster he had
+this to say:
+
+"We have not one word of reproach or one word of bitter feeling. We have
+one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the
+arrival of the day of reconciliation."
+
+A feature of that gathering, little noted at the time, assumes strange
+significance in retrospect. At one platform Patrick Pearse, then
+headmaster of St. Enda's school, spoke in Irish. What he said may be
+thus roughly rendered:
+
+"There are as many men here as would destroy the British Empire if they
+were united and did their utmost. We have no wish to destroy the
+British, we only want our freedom. We differ among ourselves on small
+points, but we agree that we want freedom, in some shape or other. There
+are two sections of us--one that would be content to remain under the
+British Government in our own land, another that never paid, and never
+will pay, homage to the King of England. I am of the latter, and
+everyone knows it. But I should think myself a traitor to my country if
+I did not answer the summons to this gathering, for it is clear to me
+that the Bill which we support to-day will be for the good of Ireland
+and that we shall be stronger with it than without it. I am not
+accepting the Bill in advance. We may have to refuse it. We are here
+only to say that the voice of Ireland must be listened to henceforward.
+Let us unite and win a good Act from the British; I think it can be
+done. But if we are tricked this time, there is a party in Ireland, and
+I am one of them, that will advise the Gael to have no counsel or
+dealings with the Gall [the foreigner] for ever again, but to answer
+them henceforward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. Let the
+Gall understand that if we are cheated once more there will be red war
+in Ireland."
+
+The platform where Pearse spoke was set up within a stone's throw of the
+General Post Office in which, four years later, he was to give effect to
+the words he spoke then and to earn his own death in undoing the work of
+Redmond's lifetime. At that moment no one heeded his utterance, nor the
+speech, also in Irish, of Professor John MacNeill from another platform,
+which went, as its speaker was destined to go, half the way with Pearse.
+
+But Redmond never attempted to conceal the existence of this element in
+Ireland. Speaking on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill on April
+11th, he dealt at the very opening with the charge that the Irish people
+wanted separation and that the Irish leaders were separatists in
+disguise:
+
+"I will be perfectly frank on this matter. There always has been, and
+there is to-day, a certain section of Irishmen who would like to see
+separation from this country. They are a small, a very small section.
+They were once a very large section. They are a very small section, but
+the men who hold, these views at this moment only desire separation as
+an alternative to the present system, and if you change the present
+system and give into the hands of Irishmen the management of purely
+Irish affairs, even that small feeling in favour of separation will
+disappear; and if it survives at all, I would like to know how under
+those circumstances it could be stronger or more powerful for mischief
+than at the present moment."
+
+Sincerer words were never spoken, nor, I think, a better justified
+forecast. Where Redmond and all of us were wrong was that we
+underestimated the possibility of accomplishing what Pearse ultimately
+accomplished, even when assisted by the widespread disillusionment and
+sense of betrayal which was the atmosphere of 1916.
+
+But no one in Ireland in 1912 thought of a separatist rebellion. What
+was on all tongues was the possibility of physical resistance to Home
+Rule. The debate on the first reading went by with little reference to
+this contingency, but Mr. Bonar Law closed his speech on that note. He
+had attended the great counter-demonstration in Belfast which followed
+ours in Dublin and had seen in it "the expression of the soul of a
+people."
+
+"These people look upon their being subject to an executive Government
+taken out of the Parliament in Dublin with as much horror, I believe
+with more horror, than the people of Poland ever regarded their being
+put under subjection by Russia; they say they will not submit except by
+force to such government. These people in Ulster are under no illusion.
+They know they cannot fight the British Army. But these men are ready,
+in what they believe to be the cause of justice and liberty, to lay down
+their lives."
+
+Bloodshed, if bloodshed there was to be, was anticipated in Ulster only,
+and the resistance indicated at this point was purely passive. But even
+after the Bill had been introduced, Tories entertained the hope that a
+Nationalist Convention might save them trouble and reject what the
+Government offered. Even Mr. O'Brien, however, had given the Bill a
+lukewarm approval, and at this moment Redmond's prestige stood very
+high. When the Convention assembled, he utilized that advantage to the
+full. These assemblies presented a problem which might intimidate the
+most capable chairman. Theoretically deliberative, they had at least a
+representative character; all branches of the United Irish League, all
+branches of the Hibernians and Foresters, all county and district
+councils sent up their chosen men, to whom were added such clergy as
+chose to attend. The result was a mass of over two thousand persons
+packed into a single room; they deliberated in the physical conditions
+of a crowd; hearing was difficult, disorder only too easily brought
+about. I have seen one of these Conventions sharply divided in opinion,
+and counting of votes would have been impossible. On this day, however,
+there was only one opinion: the business was to manifest support and to
+strengthen the leader's hand, Redmond at the outset laid down the
+proposition that it was their "duty" as Nationalists to accept what he
+described as a far better Bill than Gladstone ever offered. He further
+indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting,
+proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the Irish party.
+This was promptly carried by acclamation. All decisions were unanimous
+that day.
+
+But before this or any other resolution was put to the Convention,
+Redmond asked the multitude there to give, what they gave most
+willingly, a welcome to Mr. Gladstone's grandson, who as a young member
+of Parliament had just voted for the Bill. The greeting which he
+received showed that Ireland had not forgotten what Gladstone's last
+years had been.
+
+In the first of his speeches upon the Bill, Sir Edward Grey, a survivor
+from Gladstone's Ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the
+struggle from 1886 to 1893:
+
+"Two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still. One is Mr.
+Gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in
+Ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to
+acknowledge and reconcile that spirit. The other is the Irish response
+to Mr. Gladstone. It was not the assent of mere tacticians who had
+gained an advocate and a point. It was genuine, warm and living feeling,
+a response of gratitude and sympathy the same in kind and as living as
+his own."
+
+If Redmond's task from 1912 onwards was not lightened by the existence
+of any such genuine, warm and living feeling for any of Mr. Asquith's
+Ministry, perhaps Ireland is not to blame. There was no intense grip of
+any fact in the Government's attitude, and on one cardinal point they
+were unstable as water. Sir Edward Carson, in opposing the introduction
+of the Bill, had used the words: "What argument is there that you can
+raise for giving Home Rule to Ireland that you do not equally raise for
+giving Home Rule to that Protestant minority in the north-east
+province?" Redmond, following him, made one of his few false moves in
+debate. "Is that the proposal? Is that the demand?" he asked. Sir Edward
+Carson shot the question at him: "Will you agree to it?" Seldom does the
+House see a practised speaker so much embarrassed; Redmond in confusion
+passed to another topic. He was soon to be confronted with that same
+line of reasoning, pushed not dialectically by an opponent, but as a
+step in parliamentary negotiation from the Treasury Bench. Mr.
+Churchill, who introduced the Second Reading, made it apparent that the
+demonstration in Belfast had not been wasted on him.
+
+"Whatever Ulster's rights may be," he said, "they cannot stand in the
+way of the whole of the rest of Ireland. Half a province cannot impose a
+permanent veto on the nation. The utmost they can claim is for
+themselves. I ask, do they claim separate treatment for themselves? Do
+the counties of Down and Antrim and Londonderry, for instance, ask to be
+excepted from the scope of this Bill? Do they ask for a parliament of
+their own, or do they wish to remain here? We ought to know."
+
+This was to proceed at once into the region of a bargain. Mr. Gladstone,
+with his grip on the existence of a national spirit in Ireland, would
+have known that concession on such point was a very different matter
+from some alteration in the financial terms or in the composition of the
+Parliament. It admitted, in fact, the contention that Ireland was not a
+nation but a geographical expression.
+
+As soon as the Bill went into Committee, the result was seen. The first
+serious amendment proposed to exclude the four counties, Antrim, Down,
+Armagh, and Derry, and it was moved from the Liberal benches. Three
+Liberal speakers supported it in the early stages of a debate which
+lasted to the third day--and on the division the majority, which had
+been 100 for the Second Reading, fell to 69. Mr. Churchill did not
+vote--nor, although this was not then so apparently significant, did Mr.
+Lloyd George.
+
+Thus from the very first the point of danger revealed itself. By the
+mere threat of a resistance which could only be overcome through the use
+of troops, Ulster had made the first dint for the insertion of a wedge
+into the composite Home Rule alliance, and into the Cabinet itself. All
+this had been gained without any tactical sacrifice, without even
+anything like a full disclosure of the force which lay behind this line
+of attack.
+
+Nor was the full extent of weakness revealed. In such a case, much
+depended on the personality of the man who moved the amendment, and Mr.
+Agar-Robartes was one of the most whimsically incongruous figures in the
+Government ranks. Twentieth-century Liberalism wears a somewhat drab and
+serious aspect, but this ultra-fashionable example of gilded youth would
+have been in his place among the votaries of Charles James Fox. The
+climax of his incongruity was a vehement and rather antiquated
+Protestantism; he was, for instance, among the few who opposed the
+alteration of the Coronation oath to a formula less offensive to
+Catholics. Nobody doubted that his Cornish constituents would endorse
+whatever he did, for the House held few more popular human beings, but
+no one took him very seriously as a politician. This particular view of
+his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable associate,
+Mr. Neil Primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against
+Ulster's claims as Agar-Robartes did for them.--_Sunt lacrimae rerum_.
+I remember vividly in August 1914 the sudden apparition of this pair,
+side by side as always, in their familiar place below the gangway, but
+in quite unfamiliar guise, for khaki was still new to the benches. The
+two brilliant lads--for they were little more--have gone now, swept into
+the abyss of war's wreckage; the controversy which divided them remains,
+virulent as ever.
+
+Agar-Robartes stuck to his guns and voted against the Bill henceforward;
+the other Liberals who supported him were ultimately brought into the
+Government lobby. What had really mattered was Mr. Churchill's speech on
+the Second Reading. Captain Pirrie, one of Redmond's few closely
+attached friends outside the Irish party, bound, I think, far more in
+affection to the Irish leader than to his own chiefs, complained angrily
+of the Government's evasive reticence. This brought up the Prime
+Minister, whose speech was brief and direct:
+
+"This amendment proceeds on an assumption which I believe is radically
+false, namely, that you can split Ireland into parts. You can no more
+split Ireland into parts than you can split England or Scotland into
+parts."
+
+When Sir Edward Carson had spoken, the Ulster leader's speech enabled
+Redmond to point out that Ulstermen refused to accept this proposal as a
+means by which Ulster might be reconciled to Home Rule, but were ready
+to vote for it simply as a wrecking amendment. General opinion on both
+sides of the House agreed that the amendment made the Bill impossible;
+and the majority held that therefore Ulster must give way. Ulster, on
+the other hand, held that therefore there must be no Home Rule Bill. But
+there was a Liberal element evidently not convinced that Home Rule might
+not be possible with Ulster excluded. Mr. Birrell admitted that the plan
+of segregating a portion had been considered, but had been rejected, on
+the merits, as unworkable. Still he professed himself open to
+conviction. The argument which Mr. Bonar Law decided to use was a
+threat. Government are saying to the people of Ulster, he said,
+"Convince us that you are in earnest, show us that you will fight, and
+we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else." Captain
+Craig, following, said that the Prime Minister anticipated that Ulster's
+objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface. "If
+the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his Majesty's
+dominions to civil war, we accept the challenge."
+
+This temper soon had ugly expression. On June 29th an excursion party of
+the Ancient Order of Hibernians (the Roman Catholic counterpart to the
+Orange Order) met with another excursion party of Protestants, mainly
+Sunday-school children, at a place called Castledawson. Taunts were
+exchanged and one of the Hibernians tried to snatch a flag from the
+other procession; so a disturbance began in which some of the children
+were hurt and many frightened. This discreditable incident was magnified
+with all the rancour of partisanship--as in the state of feeling must
+have been expected. But the reprisals were startling. All Catholics were
+driven out of the Belfast shipyards; many were injured, and over two
+thousand men were still deprived of work on July 12th, when the Unionist
+party held a great meeting at Blenheim. Mr. Bonar Law, facing for the
+first time a vast typical gathering of his supporters, said that, on a
+previous occasion, when speaking as little more than a private member of
+Parliament, he had counselled action outside constitutional limits. Now,
+he emphasized it that he took the same attitude as leader of the
+Unionist party.
+
+"We shall use any means--whatever means seem to us to be most likely to
+be effective--any means to deprive them" (the Government) "of the power
+they have usurped and to compel them to face the people whom they have
+deceived. The Home Rule Bill in spite of us may go through the House of
+Commons. There are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. I can
+imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall
+not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by
+the overwhelming majority of the British people."
+
+Sir Edward Carson said on behalf of Ulster: "It will be our duty shortly
+to take such steps--and, indeed, they are already being taken--as will
+perfect our arrangements for making Home Rule absolutely impossible. We
+will shortly challenge the Government to interfere with us if they dare.
+We will do this regardless of consequences, of all personal loss and
+inconvenience. They may tell us, if they like, that this is treason."
+
+Well might Mr. Bonar Law say in returning thanks that this day "would be
+a turning-point in their political history."
+
+Moderate opinion was by no means glad to have reached this
+turning-point, and _The Times_ rebuked Mr. Law for his violence. But,
+tactically, the Unionists were right: they had a Government indisposed
+to action and they made the most of their opportunity. Mr. Churchill
+again took up the conduct of the controversy, and in the recess
+proceeded to outline a policy which he described as federal devolution.
+The Prime Minister had said you could no more split Ireland into parts
+than England or Scotland. But Mr. Churchill argued that, in the interest
+of efficiency, England must be divided into provincial units with
+separate assemblies; that Lancashire, for instance, had on many matters
+a very different outlook from that of Yorkshire. He did not draw the
+conclusion; but it was not difficult to infer that Mr. Churchill was at
+least as ready to give separate rights to Ulster as to any group of
+English counties, and was equally ready to pitch overboard the Prime
+Minister's argument for refusing partition in Ireland.
+
+In the meantime Ulster's preparations continued. It was indicated that
+they would bear a religious character, and the Protestant Churches were
+deeply involved. The proposal of a Covenant was made public in August,
+though the actual signing of it was deferred to "Ulster Day," September
+28th. Sir Edward Carson was provided with a guard carrying swords and
+wooden rifles, and in one instance dummy cannon made a feature of the
+pageant. These things excited a good deal of derision, and the language
+of the Covenant was held to be only "hypothetical treason." The main
+words were:
+
+"We stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our
+cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and in
+using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present
+conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland."
+
+The Covenant in that committed the signatories to no breach of the law;
+it was only a pledge to refuse to recognize the authority of a
+Parliament not yet in being. All Ulster's proceedings might so far be
+dismissed, as the Attorney-General, Mr. Rufus Isaacs, dismissed them, as
+being "a demonstration admirably stage-managed, and led by one of great
+histrionic gifts." The threats of the use of force, said the
+Attorney-General, would not turn them aside by a hair's-breadth. Mr.
+Asquith, equally vigorous in his speech, was less decisive in his
+conclusions. Speaking at Ladybank on October 5th, he denounced "the
+reckless rodomontade of Blenheim, which furnishes forth the complete
+grammar of anarchy." But he was careful to point out that there was no
+demand for separate treatment for Ulster, and that Irish Unionists were
+simply refusing to consent to Home Rule under any conditions. He
+refrained from saying how a demand for separate treatment of Ulster
+would be dealt with if it were made.
+
+When Parliament resumed its sittings, in a temper much heated by all the
+challenge and controversy of the recess, Mr. Lloyd George pushed this
+line of argument a shade further. He argued that Sir Edward Carson
+himself persisted in treating Ireland as a unit.
+
+"Until Ulster departs from that position there is no case. Ulster has a
+right to claim a hearing for separate treatment; she has no right to
+say, 'Because we do not want Home Rule ourselves the majority of
+Irishmen are not to have Home Rule.'"
+
+Yet upon the balance of events, Unionists were probably disappointed. A
+very strong British feeling against Sir Edward Carson and his Belfast
+following had been generated by the expulsion of Catholics from the
+shipyards and in general by the advocacy of civil war. In October 1912
+several notable men who had previously counted as Unionists--Sir Arthur
+Conan Doyle, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir J. West-Ridgway--all declared
+for Home Rule. Exasperation against the incidence of the new Insurance
+Act lost the Government votes at every by-election; but the Irish cause
+on the whole gained ground, and the chief cause of that advance was the
+respect universally felt for Redmond's personality and leadership. On
+November 22nd he attended a huge meeting of the National Liberal
+Federation at Nottingham along with the Prime Minister and received a
+wonderful welcome. The step was novel. Never since Parnell's work began
+had the leader of the Irish people stood on the same platform in Great
+Britain with the leader of any English party. It was, however, the
+return of a compliment, for Mr. Asquith had come to Dublin in the summer
+and there spoken along with the Irish leader. Moreover, a recent
+incident had shown how necessary it was to maintain the closest
+co-operation; a snap division on November 11th had inflicted defeat on
+the Government and occasioned loss of perhaps a fortnight's
+parliamentary time.
+
+But in the very act of thus strengthening his hold on the British
+electorate, Redmond gave ground to those in Ireland who desired to
+represent him as a mere tool of the Liberal party, a pawn in Mr.
+Asquith's game. Foreseeing this evil did not help to combat it, and on
+the whole it was Redmond's inclination to take a sanguine view of his
+country's good sense and generosity.
+
+The Committee stage of discussion lasted beyond the end of the year. On
+the finance arrangements Redmond had to face fierce opposition from Mr.
+O'Brien's party, which was endorsed by the Irish Council of County
+Councils. Here difficulties were inevitable, and attack was easy either
+for the Unionists, who pressed the argument that Ireland was to be
+started on its career of self-government with a subsidy of some two
+millions per annum from Great Britain, or for the O'Brienites, who urged
+that the country was already overtaxed in proportion to its resources,
+that it needed large expenditure for development, and that the possible
+budget indicated by the Bill left no serious possibility for reducing
+taxes or for undertaking even necessary expenditure. Redmond, on the
+other hand, was bound to conciliate the vested interests of civil
+servants, officials in all degrees, and the immense police force.
+Retrenchment on the vast area of unproductive expenditure which Castle
+government had created could only be hoped for at a very distant date.
+He could not therefore promise substantial economy; nor could he argue
+for a further increase of subsidy without playing into the Tories'
+hands. On all this detail of the measure, the attack in debate was bound
+to be very powerful.
+
+So far as Great Britain was concerned, the reply of Home Rulers was
+tolerably effective. In 1886 it had been feasible to propose Home Rule
+with an Imperial contribution of two and a half millions. By 1893 the
+possible margin had dropped heavily, and Mr. Gladstone had foretold that
+within fifteen years Ireland would absorb more money for purely Irish
+services than Irish taxation produced. This prophecy had been fulfilled
+to the letter, and everyone saw that to continue the Union meant
+increasing this charge automatically. It was better to cut the loss and
+at least say that it should not exceed a fixed figure.
+
+But in Ireland men dwelt always on the Report of the Financial Relations
+Commission, which had represented the balance as heavily against England
+and the account for overtaxation of the poorer country as reaching three
+hundred millions. No man quoted this document oftener than Redmond, and
+none was a firmer believer in its justification. But he realized, as his
+countrymen did not, that such a claim could never hope for cash
+settlement, that its value was as an argument for the concession of
+freedom upon generous terms. How could he urge that the terms proposed
+were ungenerous, when Great Britain offered to pay the cost of all Irish
+services--amounting to a million and a half more than Irish revenue--and
+to provide over and above this a yearly grant of half a million,
+dropping gradually, it is true, but still remaining at a subsidy of two
+hundred thousand a year so long as the finance arrangements of the Bill
+lasted?
+
+Nevertheless, these arrangements were bad ones, and this was where the
+Bill was most vulnerable on its merits; for self-government without the
+control of taxation and expenditure is at best an unhopeful experiment.
+
+But in the public mind at large only one difficulty bulked big, and that
+was Ulster. Men on both sides began to be uneasy about the consequences
+of what was happening, and this temper reflected itself in the House. On
+New Year's Day 1913, at the beginning of the Report stage, Sir Edward
+Carson moved the exclusion of the province of Ulster. His speech was in
+a new tone of studied conciliation. But, as the Prime Minister
+immediately made clear, there was no offer that if this concession were
+made opposition would cease. It was merely recommended as the sole
+alternative to civil war. Redmond, in following, let fall an _obiter
+dictum_ on the position of the Irish controversy:
+
+"No one who observes the current of popular opinion in this country can
+doubt for one instant that if this opposition from the north-east corner
+of Ulster did not exist, Home Rule would go through to-morrow as an
+agreed Bill."
+
+For this reason, he said, he would go almost any length within certain
+well-defined limits to meet that section of his fellow-countrymen. His
+conditions were, first, that the proposal must be a genuine one, not put
+forward as a piece of tactics to wreck the Bill, but frankly as part of
+a general settlement of the Home Rule question; secondly, that it must
+be of reasonable character; and thirdly, not inconsistent with the
+fundamental principle of national self-government. Ulster's present
+proposal, if accepted, carried with it no promise of a settlement; it
+was unreasonable as proposing to strike out of Ireland five counties
+with Nationalist majorities. But finally, on a broader ground, it
+destroyed the national right of Ireland.
+
+"Ireland for us is one entity. It is one land. Tyrone and Tyrconnell are
+as much a part of Ireland as Munster or Connaught. Some of the most
+glorious chapters connected with our national struggle have been
+associated with Ulster--aye, and with the Protestants of Ulster--and I
+declare here to-day, as a Catholic Irishman, notwithstanding all the
+bitterness of the past, that I am as proud of Derry as of Limerick. Our
+ideal in this movement is a self-governing Ireland in the future, when
+all her sons of all races and creeds within her shores will bring their
+tribute, great or small, to the great total of national enterprise,
+national statesmanship, and national happiness. Men may deride that
+ideal; they may say that it is a futile and unreliable ideal, but they
+cannot call it an ignoble one. It is an ideal that we, at any rate, will
+cling to, and because we cling to it, and because it is there, embedded
+in our hearts and natures, it is an absolute bar to such a proposal as
+this amendment makes, a proposal which would create for all times a
+sharp, eternal dividing line between Irish Catholics and Irish
+Protestants, and a measure which would for all time mean the partition
+and disintegration of our nation. To that we as Irish Nationalists can
+never submit."
+
+Later in the debate, Mr. Bonar Law admitted quite frankly the argument
+against treating all Ulster as Unionist, and he proceeded to suggest
+that any county in Ulster might be given power to decide whether or not
+it should come into the new Parliament. It was plain, however, and Mr.
+Churchill made it plainer, that the Unionist leader did not speak for
+Ulster; Ulster's intention was still to use its own opposition to Home
+Rule as a bar to self-government for the whole of Ireland.
+
+Equally was it plain that the plebiscite by counties would not be
+unacceptable to Mr. Churchill.
+
+The proposal for the exclusion of the entire province was defeated by a
+majority of 97 and the Third Reading was carried by 110. A few days
+later the city of Derry returned a Home Ruler, and the Ulster
+representation became seventeen for the Bill and sixteen against. This
+dramatic change produced a considerable effect on British opinion.
+Redmond, speaking at a luncheon given to the winner, Mr. Hogg, indicated
+the lines on which he was disposed to bargain. He would be willing to
+give Ulster more than its proportional share of representation in the
+Irish Parliament.
+
+The debate in the House of Lords was marked by certain speeches which
+showed that public opinion had moved considerably. Lord Dunraven
+declared for the Second Reading, though pressing all the line of
+objection to the Bill which had been taken by Mr. O'Brien and his party.
+He heaped scorn also as an Irishman upon "this absurd theory of two
+nations which is only invented to make discord where accord would
+naturally be." Lord MacDonnell, whose administrative experience could
+no more be questioned than his genius for administration, held that
+though amendment was needed the framework of the Bill was good, and that
+urgent necessity existed for the change to self-government. He alluded
+to the opinion expressed by Mr. Balfour in 1905, that the proper way of
+reforming Dublin Castle was by increasing the power of the Chief
+Secretary and his Under-Secretary, and thereby getting a stronger grip
+on the various departments of the "complicated system" prevailing. "I
+thought so too," said Lord MacDonnell, who in 1905 as Under-Secretary
+had tried his hand at this reform. "It was one of the illusions that I
+took with me to Ireland twenty years ago--but I am now a wiser man....
+My observation of the Boards had convinced me before I left Ireland that
+no scheme of administrative reform which depends on bureaucratic
+organization for its success, or which has not behind it a popular
+backing, has the least chance of success in an attempt to establish in
+Ireland a government that is satisfactory to the Imperial Parliament or
+acceptable to the Irish people."--This was a repudiation of the Irish
+Council Bill of 1907 by its main author.
+
+Lord Grey, a vivid and attractive personality, declared strongly for
+"such a measure of Home Rule as will give the Irish people power to
+manage their own domestic affairs." It was a conviction that had been
+forced upon him by his experience of Greater Britain. "Practically every
+American, every Canadian, every Australian is a Home Ruler." But the
+settlement must proceed upon federal lines; his ideal for Ireland was
+the provincial status of Ontario or Quebec, linked federally to a
+central parliament at Westminster.
+
+The most significant speech, however, came from the Archbishop of York.
+Disclaiming all party allegiance, Dr. Lang claimed to express "the
+opinions of a very large number of fair-minded citizens." He admitted
+that there was an Irish problem, which could not be solved by "a policy
+however generous of promoting the economic welfare of Ireland." "Some
+measure of Home Rule is necessary not only to meet the needs of Ireland
+but the needs of the Imperial Parliament." This Bill, however, in his
+opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. It would be a block
+rather than a relief to the congestion of business. But these objections
+were "abstract and academic" in face of the real governing fact.
+
+"The figure of Ulster, grim, determined, menacing, dominates the
+scene.... We may not like it. Frankly, I do not like it. It carries
+marks of religious and racial bitterness and suspicion. It uses language
+about dis-obedience to the law which must provoke disquiet and dislike
+in the minds of all who care for the good government of the country. I
+am not competent, because I have not shared in the experience of the
+history of the Ulster people, to decide whether or not their fears are
+groundless. All these things seem to me to be beside the point. If
+Ulster means to do what it says, then the results are certainly such as
+no citizen can contemplate without grave concern.... I admit, everyone
+must admit, that there are circumstances in which a Government is
+entitled and bound to run this kind of risk. At the present time I think
+we all feel that there is a call upon Governments to stiffen rather than
+to slacken their determination in the presence of threats of
+dis-obedience or disorder. I will go further and admit that there is one
+condition which would justify in my mind His Majesty's Government in
+running the risk of the forcible coercion of Ulster. That condition is
+that they should have received from the people of this country an
+authority, clear and explicit, to undertake that risk. It is perfectly
+true that the Prime Minister gave notice that if his party were returned
+to power they would be free to raise again the question of Home Rule,
+but there is a great difference between the abstract question of Home
+Rule and a concrete Home Rule Bill."
+
+That speech undoubtedly represented the temper prevailing in the class
+of balancing electors which is so largo in England. Some of us who read
+it at the time recognized how far the long struggle for autonomy had
+prevailed, but also how strong were the forces which no argument could
+reach. Men like Dr. Lang might be offended, even shocked by the action
+of those who claimed to be England's garrison in Ireland; but they would
+be very slow to use force against such a section, although quite ready
+to justify coercion of the Irish majority. Yet what impressed Redmond
+was the advance made, rather than the revelation of what resistance
+remained. Ho had been more than thirty years an advocate of Ireland's
+cause; and now by the spokesman of the impartial educated mind of
+England the justice of that cause was admitted. The argument that a
+general election was necessary, or would be efficacious in solving the
+problem, was one with which he felt well able to contend. In that speech
+the Archbishop of York admitted his impression that in by-elections
+there had been "much more of Food Taxes and the Insurance Act than of
+Home Rule."
+
+On the other hand, for Ulster such a speech had the plainest possible
+moral: Ulster's game was to become more grim, more determined, more
+menacing. The Home Rule controversy had now resolved itself into a
+question whether Ulster really meant business. Sir Edward Carson set
+himself to make that plain beyond yea or nay.
+
+In a speech delivered in Belfast, at the opening of a new drill hall, he
+asked and answered the question, "Why are we drilling?" He and his
+colleagues did not recognize the Parliament Act, he said; a law passed
+under it would be only an act of usurpation, a breach of right. "We seek
+nothing but the elementary right implanted in every man: the right, if
+you are attacked, to defend yourself."
+
+Ulster was going to stand by its Covenant.
+
+"When we talk of force, we use it, if we are driven to use it, to beat
+back those who will dare to barter away those elementary rights of
+citizenship which we have inherited.... Go on, be ready, you are our
+great army. Under what circumstances you have to come into action, you
+must leave with us. There are matters which give us grave consideration
+which we cannot and ought not to talk about in public. You must trust us
+that we will select the most opportune methods of, if necessary, taking
+on ourselves the whole government of the community in which we live. I
+know a great deal of that will involve statutory illegality, but it will
+also involve much righteousness."
+
+Some of the questions which needed grave consideration were suggested by
+happenings that followed hard on this speech. Much ridicule had been
+poured on the drillings with dummy muskets. Ulster evidently decided to
+push the matter a step further. A consignment of one thousand rifles
+with bayonets, in cases marked "electrical fittings," was seized at
+Belfast on June 3, 1913. Other incidents of the same nature followed. It
+was argued, by those who sought to represent the whole campaign as an
+elaborate piece of bluff, that the weapons were useless and that they
+were deliberately sent to be seized. A feature which scarcely bore out
+this view was that one consignment was addressed to the Lord-Lieutenant
+of an Ulster county who was also an officer in the Army. A justice of
+the peace, or an officer, to whom a consignment of arms had been sent
+for a Nationalist organization would have been ordered to clear himself
+in the fullest way of complicity, and even of sympathy, or he would have
+forfeited his commission. The noble-man involved, however, made no
+explanation, and was probably never officially asked to do so.
+
+It was commonly believed in the House of Commons that at some point, if
+not repeatedly, Government consulted the Irish leader or his principal
+advisers as to whether measures of repression should be undertaken
+against Ulster. No such consultation took place. But the opinion
+prevailing among the leading Nationalists was no doubt known or
+inferred. Mr. Dillon, speaking on June 16, 1914, when the danger-point
+had been clearly reached, justified the previous abstinence from
+coercion.
+
+"I have held the view from the beginning that it would not have been
+wise policy for a Government engaged in the great work of the political
+emancipation of a nation to embark on a career of coercion. I knew, and
+knew well, all the difficulties and all the reproaches that the
+Government would have to face if they abstained from coercion. It is a
+difficult and almost unprecedented course for a Government to take, and
+it is, as the Chief Secretary said, a courageous one. But with all its
+difficulties and dangers it is the right course. We who have been
+through the mill know what the effect of coercion is. We know that you
+do not put down Irishmen by coercion. You simply embitter them and
+stiffen their backs."
+
+It is therefore unquestionable that the decision to do nothing had
+Redmond's approval. Whatever may be thought of that policy, one factor
+was assuredly underestimated--the effect produced on the public mind by
+the spectacle of highly placed personages defying the law and defying it
+with impunity. It was possible to argue that a conviction for
+hypothetical treason would be difficult to secure and that failure in a
+prosecution would only encourage lawless conduct. But Privy Councillors
+who made preparations for prospective rebellion and remained Privy
+Councillors were a new phenomenon. The public thought, and it was
+apparent that the public would think, that Government was afraid to
+quarrel with what is called Society. Society shared that belief and
+began to extend its influence in a new direction. No Government can
+permit itself to be defied without general relaxation of discipline, and
+the effects extended themselves to the Army. At a meeting on July 12th
+in Ulster a telegram was read out from "Covenanters" in an Ulster
+regiment, urging "No surrender until ammunition is spent and the last
+drop of blood." In his speech on that occasion Sir Edward Carson
+declared that every day brought him at least half a dozen letters from
+British officers asking to be enrolled among the future defenders of
+Ulster. One officer, he said, having signed the Covenant, was ordered to
+send in his papers and resign his commission. The officer refused to do
+so, and after a short time was simply told to resume his duty.
+
+"We have assurance from the Prime Minister," said Sir Edward Carson,
+"that the forces of the Crown are not to be used against Ulster.
+Government know that they could not rely on the Army to shoot down the
+people of Ulster."
+
+Later events in Ireland furnished a grim commentary as to what the Army
+would be willing, and would not be willing, to do in the way of shooting
+down in Ireland; and such words as these of Sir Edward Carson were
+destined to be among the chief difficulties which Redmond had to
+encounter when he sought to lead Ireland into the war.
+
+At the meeting of that day, delegates were present from a British League
+to assist Ulster in her resistance. Behind this new quasi-military
+organization stood now the whole of one great party. Sir Edward Carson
+transmitted a message from Mr. Bonar Law in these words:
+
+"Whatever steps we may feel compelled to take, whether they be
+constitutional, or in the long run whether they be unconstitutional, we
+will have the whole of the Unionist party under his leadership behind
+us."
+
+Later in the autumn, on the first anniversary of Ulster Day, there was
+formally announced the formation of an Ulster Provisional Government,
+with a Military Committee attached to it. A guarantee fund to indemnify
+all who might be involved in damaging consequences was set on foot, and
+a million sterling was indicated as the necessary amount to be obtained.
+
+In the meantime signs of distress came from the Liberal camp. Mr.
+Churchill, in speeches to his constituents, renewed the suggestions for
+partition. More notable was a letter from Lord Loreburn, who had till
+recently been Lord Chancellor, and who was known as a steady and
+outspoken Home Ruler. He appealed in _The Times_ of September 11, 1913,
+for a conference between parties on the Irish difficulty. Irish
+Nationalist opinion grew profoundly uneasy, and Redmond at Limerick on
+October 12th set out his position with weighty emphasis. He referred to
+the fact that during the summer he himself, assisted by Mr. Devlin, had
+followed Sir Edward Carson and other Ulster speakers from place to place
+through Great Britain, and on the same ground had stated the case for
+Home Rule. He claimed, and with justice, a triumphant success for this
+counter-campaign.
+
+"The argumentative opposition to Home Rule is dead, and all the violent
+language, all the extravagant action, all the bombastic threats, are but
+indications that the battle is over."
+
+Still, he was too old a politician, he said, not to build a bridge of
+gold to convenience his opponents' retreat, provided that the fruits of
+victory were not flung away. Mr. Churchill had told the Ulstermen that
+there was no demand they could make which would not be matched, and more
+than matched, by their countrymen and the Liberal party. On this it was
+necessary to be explicit.
+
+"Irish Nationalists can never be assenting parties to the mutilation of
+the Irish nation; Ireland is a unit. It is true that within the bosom of
+a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government
+and of administration, but a unit Ireland is and Ireland must
+remain.... The two-nation theory is to us an abomination and a
+blasphemy."
+
+These were carefully chosen words, and they indicated a possible
+acceptance of the proposal that Ulster should have control of its own
+administration in regard to local affairs, but that Irish legislation
+should be left to a common parliament.
+
+This plan Sir Edward Grey described as his "personal contribution" to a
+discussion of possibilities which had been inaugurated by a notable
+speech from the Prime Minister. At Ladybank, on October 25th, Mr.
+Asquith invited "interchange of views and suggestions, free, frank, and
+without prejudice." Nothing, however, could be accepted which did not
+conform to three governing considerations. First, there must be
+established "a subordinate Irish legislature with an executive
+responsible to it"; secondly, "nothing must be done to erect a permanent
+and insuperable bar to Irish unity"; and thirdly, though the process of
+relieving congestion in the Imperial Parliament could not be fully
+accomplished by the present Bill, Ireland must not be made to wait till
+a complete scheme of decentralization could be carried out.
+
+The second of these conditions was plainly the most significant. It was
+taken to mean that "county option"--the right for each county to decide
+whether it would come under a Home Rule Government--would not create "a
+permanent and insuperable" obstacle, since each county could be given
+the opportunity to vote itself in at any time. Redmond's next important
+speech in England showed by its emphasis that he felt a danger. He
+denounced "the gigantic game of bluff and black-mail" which was in
+progress. The proposed exclusion of Ulster was not a proposition that
+could be considered. It would bring about, he thought, the ruin of
+Ulster's prosperity. "For us it would mean the nullification of our
+hopes and aspirations for the future." It would stereotype an old evil
+in the region where it still existed. What Ulster really feared, he
+said, was the loss, not of freedom or prosperity, but of Protestant
+ascendancy.
+
+This was the truth; Protestant ascendancy, which in his boyhood had
+existed throughout all Ireland, was in consequence of the Irish party's
+work dead in three provinces. It remained and must remain in Ulster,
+where Protestants were a majority, but it would be qualified if that
+region came under the control of a parliament elected by all Ireland.
+That was and is the true reason of Ulster's resistance to national
+self-government. What he would concede and what he would reject, Redmond
+indicated in general words: "There is no demand, however extravagant and
+unreasonable it may appear to us, that we are not ready carefully to
+consider, so long as it is consistent with the principle for which
+generations of our race have battled, the principle of a settlement
+based on the national self-government of Ireland. I shut no door to a
+settlement by consent, but ... we will not be intimidated or bullied
+into a betrayal' of our trust."
+
+It was noted at that time that he had said nothing to rule out Sir
+Edward Grey's proposal, which would have left the local majority
+predominant in Ulster's own affairs; and on December 4th Sir Edward Grey
+spoke again, showing a firmness that was the more impressive because of
+his habitual moderation of tone. One thing, he said, was worse than
+carrying Home Rule by force, and that would be the abandonment of Home
+Rule. Two suggestions had been made--a proposal for the temporary
+exclusion of Ulster and a plan for giving to Ulster administrative
+autonomy. Neither had been received by Ulster "in a spirit which seemed
+likely to lead to a settlement.... Was it a settlement by consent they
+wanted, or was their aim simply the destruction of the Bill?"
+
+This emphasized what Redmond had said a few days earlier at Birmingham,
+when he declared that the fight against Home Rule was not an honest one,
+that its real purpose was to defeat the Parliament Act and restore to
+the Tory party its special control over the legislative machine.
+
+The facts were plain on the surface. The Tories clamoured for a fresh
+general election, urging that the electors never realized that the
+Liberal programme involved civil war. But to concede this claim
+indirectly defeated the Parliament Act, which would then have broken
+down at the first attempt to apply it. What added to the insincerity of
+the argument was Ulster's repeated refusal to be influenced by the
+result of any election. Under no circumstances, speaker after speaker
+from Ulster declared, would they submit to Home Rule. The prospect of
+civil war remained, with only one limitation. Mr. Bonar Law undertook
+that if a general election took place and the Liberals again came back,
+the British Unionist party would not support Ulster in physical
+resistance. They would, however, continue to oppose a Home Rule Bill by
+all constitutional means.
+
+Nevertheless, the English disposition to compromise was already
+operating. Mr. Asquith was the last of mankind to make a quixotic stand
+for principle, and the most disposed to pride himself on a practical
+recognition of realities. His Government was in rough water. During the
+summer Mr. Lloyd George's transaction in Marconi shares had been
+magnified by partisan rancour into a crime. Much more serious was the
+split with Labour, which led to the loss of seat after seat at
+by-elections, when the allied forces which stood behind the Parliament
+Act attacked each other and let the Tories in. The Women's Franchise
+agitation was also coming to its stormiest point.
+
+Redmond's part was one of extraordinary difficulty. The cause for which
+he stood was one affecting the interests of only a small minority of the
+total electorate concerned in the struggle which now spread over both
+islands. The Irish problem belonged in reality to the Victorian era;
+those in the British electorate whom it could stir to enthusiasm were
+stirred by a memory, not by a new gospel. Normally, but for the chance
+of Parnell's overthrow, it would have been solved in Gladstone's last
+years. For most Liberals, for all Labour men, the fact that it had
+passed beyond the sphere of argument meant a lack of driving force. It
+was a part of accepted Liberal orthodoxy; minds were centred rather on
+those social controversies in which Mr. Lloyd George was the dominant
+figure, and upon which opinion had not yet crystallized.
+
+Further, the cry of Protestant liberties in danger, the cause of
+Protestants who conducted their arming to the accompaniment of hymns and
+prayer, made inevitably a searching appeal to the feelings of an island
+kingdom where the prejudice against Roman Catholics is more instinctive
+than anywhere else in the world. Looking back on it all, I marvel not at
+the difficulties we encountered, but at the success with which we
+surmounted them; and the great element in that success was Redmond's
+personality. His dignity, his noble eloquence, his sincerity, and the
+large, tolerant nature of the man, won upon the public imagination. His
+tact was unfailing. In all those years, under the most envenomed
+scrutiny, he never let slip a word that could be used to our
+disadvantage. This is merely a negative statement. It is truer to say
+that he never touched the question without raising it to the scope of
+great issues. Nothing petty, nothing personal came into his discourse;
+he so carried the national claim of Ireland that men saw in it at once
+the test and the justification of democracy.
+
+That is why the Irish cause, instead of being a millstone round the neck
+of the parliamentary alliance, was in truth a living cohesive force. But
+in order to keep it so it must be pleaded, not as a question for Ireland
+only but for the democracy of Great Britain and, in a still larger
+sense, for the Commonwealth of the British Empire.
+
+Liberal statesmen in their desire to simplify their own task
+underestimated altogether the difficulty which their professed
+short-cuts to the goal--or rather, their attempted circuits round
+obstacles--created inevitably for the Irish leader. They did not realize
+that his genuine feeling--based on knowledge--for the British democracy
+at home, and still more for its offshoots overseas, was unshared by his
+countrymen, still aloof, still suspicious, and daily impressed by the
+spectacle of those who most paraded allegiance to British Imperialism
+professing a readiness to tear up the Constitution rather than allow
+freedom to Ireland. Liberal statesmen did not understand that Redmond
+could only justify to Ireland the part which he was taking if he won,
+and that he and not they must be the judge of what Ireland would
+consider a defeat. In all probability, also, they overrated his power
+and that of the party which he led. They did not guess at the potency of
+new forces which only in these months began to make themselves felt, and
+which in the end, breaking loose from Redmond's control, undid his work.
+A new phase in Irish history had begun, of which Sir Edward Carson was
+the chief responsible author.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES
+
+
+The first stir of a new movement in Nationalist Ireland outside the old
+political lines came from Labour--from Irish Labour, as yet unorganized
+and terribly in need of organization. On August 26, 1913, a strike in
+Dublin began under the leadership of Mr. Larkin. It had all the violence
+and disorder which is characteristic of economic struggles where Labour
+has not yet learned to develop its strength; it opened new cleavages at
+this moment when national union was most necessary: it was fought with
+the passion of despair by workers whose scale of pay and living was a
+disgrace to civilization; and after five months it was not settled but
+scotched, leaving dark embers of revolutionary hate scattered through
+the capital of Ireland.
+
+One incident showed some of the consequences ready to spring, even in
+England itself, from the action taken in Ulster. Mr. Larkin at the end
+of October 1913 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sedition
+and inciting to disturbance. A fierce outcry ran through the Labour
+world in Great Britain; by-elections were in progress, and Government
+was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for
+the poor, one law for Labour and another for the Unionist party. To this
+pressure Government yielded, and Mr. Larkin was liberated after a few
+days in jail.
+
+But in Ireland more formidable symptoms soon made themselves manifest.
+Captain J.R. White, son of Sir George White, the defender of Ladysmith,
+was a soldier by hereditary instinct and had won the Distinguished
+Service Order in South Africa. But some strain in his composition
+answered to other calls, and upon Tolstoyan grounds he ceased to be a
+soldier, without ceasing to be a natural leader of men. His first public
+appearance was at a meeting in London in support of Home Rule addressed
+by a number of prominent persons who were not Roman Catholics. But his
+interests were plainly not so much Nationalist as broadly humanitarian;
+freedom for the individual soul rather than for the nation was his
+object: and he suddenly enrolled himself among Mr. Larkin's allies. His
+proposal was outlined to a great assembly of the strikers gathered in
+front of Liberty Hall: Mr. Larkin set it out. They must no longer be
+"content to assemble in hopeless haphazard crowds" but must "agree to
+bring themselves under the influences of an ordered and sympathetic
+discipline." "Labour in its own defence must begin to train itself to
+act with disciplined courage and with organized and concentrated force.
+How could they accomplish this? By taking a leaf out of the book of
+Carson. If Carson had permission to train his braves of the North to
+fight against the aspirations of the Irish people, then it was
+legitimate and fair for Labour to organize in the same militant way to
+preserve their rights and to ensure that if they were attacked they
+would be able to give a very satisfactory account of themselves."
+
+Thus began in a small sectional manner a national movement which led far
+indeed. Mr. O'Cathasaigh, from whose _Story of the Irish Citizen Army_ I
+quote, attributes the failure of that purely Labour organization chiefly
+to the establishment of the Irish Volunteers.
+
+This was a development which Redmond on his part neither willed nor
+approved, yet one which in the circumstances was inevitable. Who could
+suppose that the formation of combatant forces would remain a monopoly
+of any party? There was no mistaking the weight which a hundred thousand
+Ulster Volunteers, drilled and regimented, threw into Sir Edward
+Carson's advocacy. As early as September 1913, during the parliamentary
+recess, Redmond received at least one letter--and possibly he received
+many--urging him to raise the standard of a similar force, and pointing
+out that if he did not take this course it might be taken by others less
+fit to guide it. The letter of which I speak elicited no answer. It was
+never his habit to reply to inconvenient communications--a policy which
+he inherited from Parnell, who held that nearly every letter answered
+itself within six months, if it were let alone. Certainly in this case
+it so happened. Long before six months were up, facts had made argument
+superfluous.
+
+Wisdom is easy after the event, and few would dispute now that the
+constitutional party ought either to have dissociated itself completely
+from the appeal to force, or to have launched and controlled it from the
+outset. Neither of these lines was followed, and the responsibility for
+what was done and what was not done must lie with Redmond. Yet, as I
+read it, the key to his policy lay in a dread, not of war, but of civil
+war. To arm Irishmen against each other was of all possible courses to
+him the most hateful. It opened a vision of fratricidal strife, of an
+Ireland divided against itself by new and bloody memories.
+
+Moreover, though he had, as the world came to know, soldiering in his
+blood--though the call to war, when he counted the war righteous,
+stirred what was deepest in him--by training and conviction he was
+essentially a constitutionalist: he realized profoundly how strong were
+the forces behind constitutionalism in Great Britain, how impregnable
+was the position of British Ministers if they boldly asserted the law
+with equality as between man and man. Where he was mistaken was in his
+estimate of the Government with which he had to deal, and especially of
+Mr. Asquith. Speaking to his constituents early in the New Year of 1914
+he said, "The Prime Minister is as firm as a rock, and is, I believe,
+the strongest and sanest man who has appeared in British politics in our
+time." The verdict of history might have borne out this judgment had Mr.
+Asquith never been forced to face extraordinary times. In the event, it
+was Mr. Asquith's lack of firmness and failure in strength which drove
+Redmond into belated acceptance of a policy modelled on Sir Edward
+Carson's.
+
+As early as July 1913 the demonstrations in Ulster led to discussion of
+a countermove among young men in Dublin. But there was no public
+proposal, until at the end of October Professor MacNeill, Vice-President
+of the Gaelic League, published an article in the League's official
+organ calling on Nationalist Ireland to drill and arm. The first meeting
+of a provisional committee followed a few days later. Support was asked
+from all sections of Nationalist opinion; but, as a whole, members of
+the United Irish League and of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, who
+constituted the bulk of Redmond's following, refused to act. Still,
+about a third of the committee were supporters of the parliamentary
+party; they included Professor Kettle, who was from 1906 to 1910 among
+its most brilliant members. It was, however, significant that the Lord
+Mayor, a prominent official Nationalist, refused the use of the Mansion
+House for a meeting at which it was proposed to start the enrolment of
+Irish Volunteers. As a result, the venue was changed to the Rotunda, and
+so great enthusiasm was shown that the Rink was used for the assembly.
+Even that did not suffice for half the gathering. Three overflow
+meetings were held, and four thousand men are said to have been enrolled
+that evening.
+
+Yet the movement did not spread at once with rapidity. By the end of
+December recruits only amounted to ten thousand. For this two causes
+were answerable. The first was the honourable refusal of the committee
+to allow companies to be enrolled except according to locality. They
+would have no sectional companies of Sinn Fein volunteers, of United
+Irish League Volunteers, of Hibernian Volunteers. All must mix equally
+in the ranks. The second was the fear of most Nationalists that by
+joining an organization with which the national leader was not
+identified they might weaken his hand. This operated, although the
+declared intention of the organization was to strengthen Redmond's
+position. At Limerick in January Pearse said: "In the Volunteer movement
+we are going to give Mr. Redmond a weapon which will enable him to
+enforce the demand for Home Rule."
+
+Briefly, for several months the numbers of the new force did not show
+that the whole of Nationalist Ireland was in support of it. Ireland was
+waiting for a sign from Redmond, and it did not come. The events which
+literally drove Irish constitutional Nationalists into following
+Ulster's example had still to occur.
+
+There was, however, a wide extension of the cadres of the organization,
+and it was being spread by men some of whom--like Professor
+MacNeill--dissented from Redmond's attitude of quiescence, while some
+were general opponents of the whole constitutional policy. They covered
+the country with committees, recruited, it is true, from all sections of
+Nationalist Ireland. But it was inevitable that the element who
+distrusted Redmond, and whose distrust he reciprocated, should attain an
+influence out of all proportion to its following in the country.
+
+Government's action--and this sentence will run like a refrain through
+the rest of this book--contributed largely to strengthen the extremists
+and to weaken Redmond's hold on the people. During eleven months the
+Ulster Volunteers had been drilling, had been importing arms, and no
+step was taken to interfere. Within ten days after the Irish Volunteer
+Force began to be enrolled, a proclamation (issued on December 4, 1913)
+prohibited the importation of military arms and ammunition into Ireland.
+A system of search was instituted. But the Ulstermen were already well
+supplied. Redmond was blamed for not forcing the withdrawal of the
+proclamation. He controlled the House of Commons, it was said. This was
+the line of argument constantly taken by dissentient Nationalists; and
+it was true that he could at any moment put the Government out. Critics
+did not stop to ask for whose advantage that would be. Government by
+issuing this proclamation had effected no good: they had embarrassed
+their chief ally, and they had laid the foundation for an imposing
+structure of incidents which grew with pernicious rapidity into a
+monumental proof that law, even under a Liberal administration, has one
+aspect for Protestant Ulster and quite another for the rest of Ireland.
+
+But in England at the beginning of the fateful year 1914 the Irish
+Volunteers had not yet become recognized as a factor in the main
+political situation. An attitude of mind had been studiously fostered
+which found crude expression soon after the House met. One of the
+Liberal party was arguing that Ulster had made Home Rule an absolute
+necessity, because Nationalists would have "fourfold justification if
+they resisted in the way you have taught them to resist the Government
+of this country in maintaining the old system." "They have not the
+pluck," interjected Captain Craig, the most prominent of the Ulster
+members. The present Lord Chancellor, Mr. F.E. Smith, was voluble in
+declarations that Nationalists would "neither fight for Home Rule nor
+pay for Home Rule." These taunts did not ease Redmond's position,
+especially as it became plain that Ulster's threat of violence had
+succeeded.
+
+Mr. Asquith, referring to the "conversations" between leaders which had
+taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had
+been reached the Government had decided to reopen the matter in the
+House. This meant, as Redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the
+Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in
+making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not
+admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward
+some plan.
+
+Yet Redmond's attitude, and the attitude of the House, was considerably
+affected by an unusual speech which had been delivered by the Ulster
+leader.
+
+Sir Edward Carson, as everyone knows, is not an Ulsterman, and the chief
+of many advantages which Ulster gained from his advocacy was that
+Ulster's case was never stated to Great Britain as Ulstermen themselves
+would have stated it. It is not true to say that Ulstermen by habit
+think of Ireland as consisting of two nations, for all Ulstermen
+traditionally regard themselves as Irish and so have always described
+themselves without qualification. But it is true to say that Ulster
+Protestants have regarded Irish Catholics as a separate and inferior
+caste of Irishmen. The belief has been ingrained into them that as
+Protestants they are morally and intellectually superior to those of the
+other religion. Their whole political attitude is determined by this
+conviction. They refuse to come under a Dublin Parliament because in it
+they would be governed by a majority whom they regard as their
+inferiors. It is in their deliberate view natural that Roman Catholics
+should submit to be controlled by Protestants, unnatural that
+Protestants should submit to be controlled by Roman Catholics.
+
+It does not express the truth to say that Sir Edward Carson was adroit
+enough to avoid putting this view of the case to the electors of Great
+Britain or to the House of Commons. Temperamentally and instinctively,
+he did not share it. He was a Southern Irishman who at the opening of
+his life held himself, as not one Ulsterman in a thousand does,
+perfectly free to make up his mind for or against the maintenance of the
+Union. He reached the conclusion not only that Home Rule would be
+disastrous for Ireland, for the United Kingdom, and for the British
+Empire, but that it would mean for Irishmen the acceptance of an
+inferior status in the Empire. As citizens of the United Kingdom, he
+held, they were more honourably situated than they could be as citizens
+of an Irish State within the Empire. This was an attitude of mind which
+Ulster could endorse, although it did not fully represent Ulster's
+conviction: but this was the case which Sir Edward Carson always made on
+behalf of Ulster, and he made it as an Irishman whose personal interests
+and connections lay in the South of Ireland, not in the North. His
+argument was the more persuasive because it was based on a view of
+Ireland's true interest--not of Ulster's only; and it was the harder on
+that account for Redmond to repel peremptorily. More than this, between
+him and Redmond there was an old personal tie. The Irish Bar is a true
+centre of intercourse between men of varying political and religious
+beliefs, and as junior barristers Edward Carson and John Redmond went
+the Munster circuit together.
+
+All this lay behind the appeal which on February 11, 1914, was implied
+rather than expressed in the novel phrase and still more unaccustomed
+tone of a consummate orator.
+
+"Believe me," Sir Edward Carson said, "whatever way you settle the Irish
+question" (and that phrase threw over the cry of "No Home Rule"), "there
+are only two ways to deal with Ulster. It is for statesmen to say which
+is the best and right one. She is not a part of the community which can
+be bought. She will not allow herself to be sold. You must therefore
+either coerce her if you go on, or you must in the long run, by showing
+that good government can come under the Home Rule Bill, try and win her
+over to the case of the rest of Ireland. You probably can coerce
+her--though I doubt it. If you do, what will be the disastrous
+consequences not only to Ulster, but to this country and the Empire?
+Will my fellow-countryman"--and at this emphatic word, which jettisoned
+absolutely the theory of two nations, the speaker turned to his left,
+where Redmond sat in his accustomed place below the gangway--"will my
+fellow-countryman, the leader of the Nationalist Party, have gained
+anything? I will agree with him--I do not believe he wants to triumph
+any more than I do. But will he have gained anything if he takes over
+these people and then applies for what he used to call--at all events
+his party used to call--the enemies of the people to come in and coerce
+them into obedience? No, sir; one false step taken in relation to Ulster
+will, in my opinion, render for ever impossible a solution of the Irish
+question. I say this to my Nationalist fellow-countrymen, and, indeed,
+also to the Government: you have never tried to win over Ulster. You
+have never tried to understand her position. You have never alleged, and
+can never allege, that this Bill gives her one atom of advantage."
+
+Then, carried away by the course of his argument, an angry note came
+into his voice, and before a minute had passed we were back in the old
+atmosphere. He accused us of wanting "not Ulster's affections but her
+taxes."
+
+Well might Redmond say when he rose that Sir Edward Carson had been
+heard by all of us with very mixed feelings. "I care not about the
+assent of Englishmen," he said; "I am fighting this matter out between a
+fellow-countryman and myself, and I say that it was an unworthy thing
+for him to say that I am animated by these base motives, especially
+after he had lectured the House on the undesirability of imputing
+motives."
+
+On the personal note Redmond was to the full as effective as his
+opponent, and his speech of that day was memorable. It was also very
+much more to the taste of the Liberal rank and file than what came from
+their own front bench. "We do not by any means take the tragic view of
+the probabilities or even the possibilities of what is called civil war
+in Ulster," he said; and added that the House of Commons ought, in his
+opinion, "to resent as an affront these threats of civil war." Yet in
+the end he promised, for the sake of peace, "consideration in the
+friendliest spirit" (not very different from acceptance) of any
+proposals that the Government might feel called upon to put forward.
+
+It is noteworthy that in this prolonged debate there was no reference to
+the new fact of a second volunteer force. But on February 12th a
+question was asked about it. On the 17th there was allusion to another
+growing element of danger--the discussions among officers of the Army of
+a combined refusal to serve against Ulster. All these factors must have
+weighed with Redmond and with his chief colleagues in their discussions
+with the Government during the next three weeks. "Friendly
+consideration" passed into acceptance on March 9th, when Mr. Asquith,
+introducing the Home Rule Bill for its passage in the third consecutive
+session (as required by the Parliament Act), outlined the proposed
+modifications in it. They involved partition. But the exclusion was to
+be optional by areas and limited in time.
+
+The proposal to take a vote by counties had, it will be remembered, been
+originally suggested by Mr. Bonar Law, and in following the Prime
+Minister he could not well repudiate it. The test, however, which he now
+put forward was whether or not the proposals satisfied Ulster: and he
+fixed upon the time-limit of six years as being wholly unacceptable.
+Redmond, on the other hand, while declaring that the Government had gone
+to "the extremest limits of concession," said that the proposals had one
+merit: they would "elicit beyond doubt or question by a free ballot the
+real opinion of the people of Ulster." This indicated his conviction
+that if Home Rule really came the majority in Ulster would prefer to
+take their chances under it; the proposal of exclusion being merely a
+tactical manoeuvre to defeat Home Rule by splitting the Nationalists.
+
+Its efficacy for that purpose was immediately demonstrated. Mr. O'Brien
+followed Redmond with a virulent denunciation of "the one concession of
+all others which must be hateful and unthinkable from the point of view
+of any Nationalist in Ireland." Opposition from Mr. O'Brien and from Mr.
+Healy was no new thing. But by acceptance of these proposals the
+Nationalist leader made their opposition for the first time really
+formidable. Telegrams rained in that March afternoon--above all on Mr.
+Devlin, from his supporters in Belfast, who felt themselves betrayed and
+shut out from a national triumph which they had been the most zealous to
+promote. From this time onward the position of Redmond personally and of
+his party as a whole was perceptibly weakened. Especially an alienation
+began between him and the Catholic hierarchy. It was impossible that the
+clergy should be well disposed towards proposals which, as Mr. Healy put
+it, would make Cardinal Logue a foreigner in his own cathedral at
+Armagh.
+
+Yet upon the whole the shake to Redmond's power was less than might have
+been expected--largely, no doubt, because the offer was repelled. Sir
+Edward Carson described it as "sentence of death with stay of execution
+for six years." With a great advocate's instinct, he fastened on the
+point in the Government's proposal which was least defensible.
+
+In my opinion these modifications of the Bill were never adequately
+discussed in the meetings of the Irish party. All was done between the
+Government and Redmond's inner cabinet, consisting of Redmond himself,
+Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor. The negotiations were most
+delicate and difficult, and above all secrecy is hard to maintain when a
+body of over seventy men, each keenly concerned for the view of his
+constituents, comes to be consulted. Yet I think it a pity that the
+party never thrashed this question out. Once the principle of option was
+admitted, a great deal had to be considered. Voting must be a referendum
+either to the province as a whole, to the constituencies separately, or
+to local units of administration. A referendum by constituencies was as
+impossible as one by parishes: for instance, Mr. Devlin's West Belfast,
+out of the city's four divisions, would certainly have voted to remain
+under the Irish Parliament, and an absurd situation would have resulted.
+The choice lay between a vote by counties or by the province as a whole.
+In the province, three counties out of nine were as predominantly
+Nationalist as any part of Leinster. In two others, Tyrone and
+Fermanagh, Nationalists were about 55 per cent of the electorate. But
+the bulk of the population of Ulster resided in four counties of the
+north-east, so that Protestants over the whole province had a majority
+of some two hundred thousand. An appeal to the province, therefore,
+might involve the exclusion from Home Rule of a very large area which
+was thoroughly Nationalist. On the other hand, every scheme of exclusion
+had in view the possibility of the excluded area changing its mind on
+the question after a short trial. To separate the four overwhelmingly
+Protestant counties was to set up a body in which a change of vote would
+be much harder to bring about than in the province. As a matter of
+statesmanship there was much to be said for closing with the Ulstermen's
+original demand that the province should come in or stay out as a whole.
+It satisfied Ulster's sentiment and lessened the chances of
+crystallizing a Protestant block of excluded territory, which would tend
+to become less and less Irish.
+
+The answer to this was that Nationalists would never consent and did
+never consent to the possibility of permanent exclusion for any part.
+Insistence on the time-limit was from this point of view a matter of
+absolute principle. Yet many believed then, and believe now, that if
+any part of Ulster were excluded by legislation it would certainly come
+in voluntarily after a short period. On the other hand, if any part were
+excluded even for a year, it was difficult to believe that it could ever
+be brought in except by its own consent. The view, however, to which we
+were committed (with the party's general approval), was expressed by
+Redmond at the customary St. Patrick's Day Nationalist banquet in
+London.
+
+"To agree to the permanent partition of Ireland would be," he said, "an
+outrage upon nature and upon history." He quoted a phrase used by Mr.
+Austen Chamberlain, who had described it as "the statutory negation of
+Ireland's national claim." But, he argued, no such sacrifice of
+principle had been made. The demand of Nationalists was for a Parliament
+for the whole of Ireland, having power to deal with "every purely Irish
+matter." Temporary limitations of this demand had already been accepted.
+
+"We have agreed, as Parnell agreed in the Bill of 1886, and as we all
+agreed in the Bill of 1893, that the power of dealing with some of the
+most vital of Irish questions should not come within the purview of the
+new Parliament for a definite number of years." The control of police,
+for instance, was reserved to the Imperial Parliament in all those Bills
+for a term of years. But this did not mean that Parnell or we abandoned
+Ireland's right to manage her own police. Reservation of the police in
+perpetuity would have been impossible to accept. In the same way, said
+Redmond, "the automatic ending of any period of exclusion is for us a
+fixed and immutable principle."
+
+To maintain this conformity with national sentiment great advantages
+were sacrificed. The whole debates of this period turned on the question
+of the time-limit. If it had never been raised, opposition would still
+have existed, but the fact would have been plain from the outset that
+Protestant Ulster claimed to dictate not only where it had the majority,
+but where the majority was against it. Redmond probably believed that
+the opinion of Nationalists in the North could not be brought to consent
+to abandonment of the time-limit. If so, he probably underrated, then as
+always, the influence he possessed. It is always easy to persuade
+Irishmen that if you are going to do a thing you should do it
+"decently." What is more, a real effect could have been produced on much
+moderate opinion in Ulster by saying to Ulster: "Stay out if you like,
+and come in when you like. When you come in, you will be more than
+welcome." But the decision for this course would have needed to be taken
+before the proposals were made, since any attempt to enlarge them was
+bound to renew and intensify the inevitable storm of Nationalist
+dissent. Whatever the proposal, it should have been absolutely the last
+word of concession.
+
+If a clear proposal of local option by counties without time-limit had
+been put before Parliament and the electorate, I do not think our
+position in Ireland would have been worse than it was made by the
+proposal of temporary exclusion, and it would have been greatly
+strengthened in Parliament and in the United Kingdom. All moderate men,
+and many pronounced Unionists, were becoming uneasy under the perpetual
+menace of trouble. Events which now followed rapidly turned the
+uneasiness into grave anxiety, but did not turn it to the profit of the
+Government.
+
+The policy which was adopted in Mr. Asquith's proposal of March 9th was
+the policy which Mr. Churchill had pushed from the first introduction of
+the Home Rule Bill, even when it was formally disavowed by the Prime
+Minister. Contemptuous rejection of it by the Ulstermen when it was
+proposed was not calculated to strengthen Mr. Churchill's personal
+position, or to soothe his temper, and on March 14th he made a speech at
+Bradford which very greatly stirred public feeling. If Ulster really
+rejects the offer, said Mr. Churchill, "it can only be because they
+prefer shooting to voting and the bullet to the ballot." Should civil
+war break out in Ulster, the issue would not be confined to Ireland: the
+issue would be whether civil and parliamentary government in these
+realms was to be beaten down by the menace of armed force. Bloodshed was
+lamentable, but there were worse things. If the law could not prevail,
+if the veto of violence was to replace the veto of privilege, then, said
+the orator, "let us go forward and put these grave matters to a proof."
+
+When Mr. Churchill next appeared in the House of Commons, a great
+outburst of cheering showed what a volume of feeling had found
+expression in his speech. Redmond came to the St. Patrick's Day banquet
+under the impression of that scene, and he spoke with a confidence which
+gives to his words a tragic irony to-day. He cited "the superb speech of
+Mr. Churchill" as evidence that "what is our last word is also the last
+word of the Government."
+
+"If the Opposition have spoken their last word," he said, "the Bill will
+now proceed upon its natural course. It will proceed rapidly and
+irresistibly, and in a few short weeks become the law of the land."
+
+The weeks have lengthened into years, and so much has happened in them
+that I keep no clear memory of that evening, though I was present. But
+it represented the temper of the time, among Home Rulers, and more
+particularly among Irish Nationalists, who generally held the opinion
+that the military preparations in Ulster were, as Mr. Devlin called
+them, "a hollow masquerade."
+
+We saw the other side of the picture on Thursday, March 19th, when a
+Vote of Censure was moved. Mr. Bonar Law launched on the House of
+Commons a new and sinister suggestion.
+
+"What about the Army? If it is only a question of disorder, the Army I
+am sure will obey you, and I am sure that it ought to obey you; but if
+it really is a question of civil war, soldiers are citizens like the
+rest of us."
+
+Sir Edward rose immediately the Prime Minister had replied to Mr. Bonar
+Law, and his speech was furious. "In consequence of the trifling with
+this subject by the Prime Minister and the provocation, which he has
+endorsed, by the First Lord of the Admiralty last Saturday, I feel I
+ought not to be here but in Belfast," he said; and he indicated his
+intention of proceeding there as soon as he had spoken. What he had to
+say chiefly concerned the Army, and the preparations which were being
+made at the War Office for the despatch of troops to Ulster. He
+suggested that there was the intention to provoke an attack so that
+there might be "pretext for putting them down."
+
+"You will be all right. You will be no longer cowards. The cowardice
+will have been given up. You will have become men in entrenching
+yourselves behind the Army. But under your direction they will have
+become assassins."
+
+With these words--memorable in connection with what happened later, but
+not in Ulster--the Ulster leader left the House, followed by Captain
+Craig. Friday's papers were of course full of the debate. At noon on
+that day, March 20, 1914, General Sir Arthur Paget, Commander-in-Chief
+in Ireland, held a meeting with the officers at the Curragh and received
+the intimation that the majority of them would resign their commissions
+rather than go on duty which was likely to involve a collision with
+Ulster.
+
+It seems only fair in dealing with this whole incident to print here an
+account of what happened, written from the soldier's point of view, by
+the man who was the spokesman and leader of the resigning
+officers--Brigadier (now Lieutenant) General Sir Hubert Gough.[2]
+
+     '"I never refused to obey orders. On the contrary, I obeyed them. I
+     was ordered to make a decision--namely, to leave the Army or 'to
+     undertake active operations against Ulster.' These were the very
+     words of the terms offered. As I was given a choice, I accepted it,
+     and chose the first alternative, and as a matter of fact I have a
+     letter in existence written the night before the offer was made by
+     Sir A. Paget to my brother, saying: 'Something is up' (we had been
+     suddenly ordered to a conference). 'What is it? If I receive orders
+     to march North, of course I will go.'"
+
+     'All the officers of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade took the same line'
+     (continues the correspondent of the _Manchester Guardian_) 'and
+     resigned. This decision seems not to have been expected by the
+     authorities, and caused great perturbation. General Gough was urged
+     by Sir Arthur Paget to withdraw the resignation. Sir Arthur Paget
+     told them that the operations against Ulster were to be of a purely
+     defensive nature. Unfortunately, Sir Arthur Paget based his appeal
+     on expediency and private interest, and not sufficiently on the
+     call of public duty. This failed to influence the officers. They
+     persisted in their resignations, and only finally withdrew them on
+     receiving a written undertaking from the War Office that they would
+     not be again presented with the alternative of resigning or
+     attacking Ulster.'
+
+The Irish Party had no guess at the inner aspect of the occurrence.
+Naturally, but regrettably, we were the section of the House which had
+least touch with what was thought and felt in barrack-rooms and
+regimental messes. Naturally, but most regrettably, the opinion of the
+Army regarded us traditionally as a hostile body; and at this time every
+effort to accentuate that belief was made by the political party with
+which the Army had most intercourse and connection.
+
+Writing now, as I hope I may write without offence, of a state of things
+not far off in time, but divided from us of to-day by the marks of a
+vast upheaval, it can be said that the old professional Army was a
+society governed in an extraordinary degree by tradition. Part of that
+tradition was that the Army had no politics; and as everyone knows, the
+man who says he has no politics is in practice almost invariably a
+Conservative. In the Army, usage was at its strongest--stronger even
+than at a public school; it was almost bad manners, "bad form," to hold
+political opinions differing from those of your mess. Political
+discussion was sharply discouraged; but this never meant that a man
+might not express vehemently the prevailing opinion. On the broad facts
+it was inevitable that the prevailing opinion should be unfriendly to
+Irish Nationalists. Irish Nationalists had taken passionately the line
+of opposition to the South African War; they had been sharply critical
+of all the minor campaigns in which the Army had been engaged for
+repression or for conquest during the whole period since Parnell began
+his leadership. In Ireland itself, every man who reflected for a moment
+saw at the Curragh the very embodiment of that force which had
+maintained for over a hundred years a Government which had not the
+consent of the governed; and unless he was one of those who regarded
+themselves as "England's faithful garrison in Ireland," protestations of
+enthusiasm for the armed forces of the Crown could not be the natural
+expression of his feelings.
+
+Yet mingled with the Nationalists' attitude of estrangement from the
+forces which upheld a detested system of government there was a
+deep-seated pride in the exploits of Irish troops; and no man ever felt
+this more strongly than Redmond. He seldom spoke of the distinguished
+men he met, but again and again I remember hearing him mention with
+pleasure some talk over a dinner-table with this or that famous
+soldier--Sir John French (as he then was), for instance. It was
+happiness for him to find himself on friendly terms with the service to
+which so many sentiments bound him. The Curragh incident was to him more
+than a grave political event; it pained him beyond measure that this
+opposition should be headed by a representative of one of the Irish
+families most famous for their military record. In the debates which
+dealt with all this matter he said no word, and he kept our party
+silent--a wise course, and one to which every instinct prompted him.
+
+In its political aspect, this action of General Gough and the fifty
+officers allied with him revealed a new and formidable impediment on the
+path to Home Rule; yet it was one of those barriers which rally forces
+rather than weaken them, and in surmounting which, or sweeping them
+aside, a new impetus may be gained. The incident was first discussed in
+the House on Monday, March 23rd, and continued to dominate all other
+questions for several days. From the Labour benches Mr. John Ward (now
+Colonel), who had been a private soldier, gave the first indication of
+the volume of resentment. His speech, remarkable in its power both of
+phrasing and of thought, was delivered quite unexpectedly in a thin
+House; but its effect was electrical. Later, Mr. J.H. Thomas spoke in
+the same strain. When a railway strike was threatened, the soldiers had
+been called out and had come without a murmur. Was the Army to be used
+against all movements except those under the patronage of the Tory
+party? If so, he would tell his four hundred thousand railway men to
+equip themselves to defend their own interests.
+
+These speeches set people thinking very gravely, but their effect was to
+increase the confidence of Home Rulers--the more so as Sir Edward Grey,
+in one of his rare moments of emphasis, declared his determination to go
+as far as either speaker if the case which they foreshadowed should
+arise. But new occurrences disquieted the public; the bungling which had
+characterized dealings with the officers at the Curragh was not ended
+there. General Gough received a document from Colonel Seely, Secretary
+of State for War, countersigned by Sir John French and Sir Spencer
+Ewart, the military heads of the War Office; and this document was in
+part disavowed by the Cabinet. The two Generals resigned and Colonel
+Seely followed their example. I have never seen the House of Commons so
+completely surprised as on the afternoon when the Prime Minister
+announced that he himself would succeed to the vacant office. The
+surprise passed at once into a feeling of immense relief, very widely
+shared by all parties. The right thing had been done in the right way,
+and it was clear that Mr. Asquith possessed enormous authority, if he
+chose to assert it.
+
+The effect of all these happenings was immediately perceptible in the
+resumed discussion on the Home Rule Bill. Mr. Dillon, speaking on the
+second day, said: "Yesterday for the first time I heard this question
+debated in a spirit of reasonableness and conciliation and with an
+evident desire on both sides to reach an agreement." A proposal
+frequently put forward from the Tory side suggested exclusion until a
+federal arrangement for the United Kingdom could be completed. The
+official Tory demand was for either a referendum or a general election.
+But, as Redmond pointed out when he spoke on the fourth and last day of
+the debate, any proposal for a settlement must be a settlement which
+Ulster would accept, and Ulster declared that it would not be influenced
+by any vote of the British people or by any Act of Parliament. In a
+passage of very genuine feeling he indicated what Ulster might do to
+assist him in securing for Ulster the extremest limit of concession:
+
+"Anything which would mean burying the hatchet, anything which would
+mean the consent of these Ulstermen to shake hands frankly with their
+fellow-countrymen across the hateful memories of the past, would be
+welcomed with universal joy in Ireland, and would be gladly purchased by
+very large sacrifices indeed. If the right honourable and learned
+gentleman (Sir Edward Carson) would say to me, 'We are both Irishmen; we
+both love our country; we both hate--and I am sure this is absolutely
+true of both of us--we both hate all the old sectarian animosities, all
+the old wrongs, all the old memories which have kept Irishmen apart; let
+us come together and see what we can do for the welfare of our common
+country, so that we can hand down to those who come after us an Ireland
+more free, more peaceful, more tolerant, an Ireland less cursed by
+racial and religious differences'; if an appeal like that were made to
+me, I say without the smallest hesitation that there are no lengths that
+Nationalist Ireland would not be willing to go to assuage the fears,
+allay the anxieties, and remove the prejudices of their Ulster
+fellow-countrymen.
+
+"But, alas! that is not the position. Even the permanent exclusion of
+Ulster is not put forward as the price of reconciliation; it is simply
+put forward as the one and sole condition upon which they will give up
+their avowed intention of levying war upon their fellow-countrymen."
+
+He dealt with the federal proposal, and once more avowed his desire for
+that solution. "I have been all my political life preaching in favour of
+federalism." But he could not consent that the exclusion of Ulster
+should be prolonged indefinitely pending a settlement on federal lines,
+nor consent to any "watering down of the powers in the present Home Rule
+Bill."
+
+What remained then, if Ulster would not accept the offer? Nothing but
+"to proceed calmly with the Bill." Threats of civil war he discounted.
+Disturbances there would probably be; but when the first Home Rule Bill
+was defeated, there were weeks of the most terrible riots in Belfast.
+The House could not afford to be deterred from any course by threats of
+violence; and he was confident that the Bill would pass into law and
+profoundly confident it would never be revoked.
+
+He gave his reasons for that confidence in a passage almost
+autobiographical in character--if only because it made the House realize
+how completely this man's whole adult life had been devoted to this one
+long service, and how far the labours of our party had achieved their
+purpose.
+
+"In a sense I may say I have lived my whole life within these walls. I
+came in here little more than a boy, and I have grown old in the House
+of Commons, and in the long space of years which have passed since then
+I have witnessed the most extraordinary transformation of the whole
+public life of this country, and I have witnessed an almost miraculous
+change in the position and the prospects of the Irish National Cause.
+When I came to this House, Irish Nationalist members, in a sense, were
+almost outcasts. Both the great British parties--there was no Labour
+party then--divided on everything else, were united in hostility to the
+national movement and the national ideal. Home Rule seemed hopelessly
+out of the range of practical politics. There were only a handful of men
+in this whole House of Commons besides us who were in favour of any
+measure of Home Rule for Ireland. Outside, the public opinion of this
+country was ignorant, and it was actively hostile, and we found it
+impossible to gain the ear of the democracy of England for the voice of
+Ireland. All that has vanished into thin air. All that has radically
+changed. The change has been slow and gradual, but it has been
+continuous and sure. Such a change as that can never be reversed. You
+might as well talk of the world going back to the days before
+electricity or petrol as hope to bring back the prejudices and the
+ignorance of the masses of the people in this country about Ireland, as
+they existed in the past."
+
+His confidence was strong and it communicated itself to Ireland. But
+whatever could be said to shake confidence was said by Mr. O'Brien and
+Mr. Healy, who denounced the Bill as worthless when linked to the plan
+of even temporary partition, and declared that, whatever the Government
+might say at present, we had not yet reached the end of their
+concessions. On the division they and their party abstained, so that the
+majority dropped to 77.
+
+Up to this point it is still true to say that the Nationalist party were
+constant to their faith in strictly constitutional action. But a new
+development was imminent. On the night of Friday to Saturday, April
+24th-25th, Ulstermen brought off their first overt act of rebellion.
+They seized the ports of Larne and Donaghadee, cut off telephone and
+telegraph, landed a very large quantity of rifles and ammunition, and
+despatched them to every quarter of the province by means of a great
+fleet of motor-cars which had been mobilized for the occasion. It was a
+clean and excellent piece of staff work, planned by a capable soldier
+and carried out under military direction: and the Tory Press hailed it
+with no less enthusiasm than was elicited by the most important
+victories in the recent war.
+
+One coastguard, running to give the alarm, died of heart failure:
+otherwise there was no casualty. The police and customs officers were
+confronted with _force majeure_ and submitted without show of
+resistance. The Prime Minister, in answering a question as to the action
+which he proposed to take, used these words:
+
+"In view of this grave and unprecedented outrage the House may be
+assured that His Majesty's Government will take without delay
+appropriate steps to vindicate the authority of the law and protect
+officers and servants of the King and His Majesty's subjects in the
+exercise of their legal rights."
+
+The Opposition was noticeably silent, and next day some embarrassment
+was apparent when they proceeded with a previously arranged Vote of
+Censure on the Government for the military and naval movements in
+connection with which the Curragh incident had occurred. The sum of
+these movements amounted to despatching four companies to points in
+Ulster at which very large stores of arms and ammunition were lying
+under very small guard--and at one of which there was a battery of field
+guns with no protecting infantry. It was regarded as at least possible
+that the stores might be rushed by "evil-disposed persons, not fully
+under the control of their leaders." It was also regarded as possible
+that the movement of these companies might be resisted and that much
+larger operations might be thereby involved. The stationing of the Fleet
+opposite the Belfast coast was part of the measures taken against this
+latter contingency.
+
+All this preparation was denounced as a conspiracy organized by Mr.
+Churchill with intent to provoke rebellion and put it down by a
+massacre. In view of the important military operation which Ulster had
+just carried out against the Crown, Mr. Churchill was not without
+justification in comparing the motion to a vote of censure by the
+criminal classes on the police. Yet, after much hard hitting in speech,
+he once more led the way in retreat from the Government's position. Sir
+Edward Grey had declared, speaking for the Government, that beyond the
+six years' limit they could not go. Mr. Churchill himself had declared
+the Government's offer would be and should be their last word. Yet now,
+avowedly on his own account, and not speaking for the Cabinet, he
+proposed that a new negotiation should be opened with Sir Edward Carson.
+
+This proposal elicited no response, and the debate continued that day in
+a line of violent recrimination. But next day Sir Edward Carson rose and
+affirmed that he had previously declared his willingness to advise
+Ulster to close with a proposal giving exclusion until a Federal scheme
+had been considered, when the whole matter should be reviewed "in the
+light of the action of the Irish Parliament and how they got on." Now he
+said:
+
+"I shall try to make an advance on what I said before. I will say
+this--and I hope the House will believe me, because, though I do not
+want to be introducing my own personality into it, I am myself a
+southerner in Ireland--I would say this: That if Home Rule is to pass,
+much as I detest it, and little as I will take any responsibility for
+the passing of it, my earnest hope, and indeed I would say my most
+earnest prayer, would be that the Government of Ireland for the South
+and West would prove, and might prove, such a success in the future,
+notwithstanding all our anticipations, that it might be even for the
+interest of Ulster itself to move towards that Government, and come in
+under it and form one unit in relation to Ireland. May I say something
+more than that? I would be glad to see such a state of things arising in
+Ireland, in which you would find that mutual confidence and goodwill
+between all classes in Ireland as would lead to a stronger Ireland as an
+integral unit in the federal scheme. While I say all that, that depends
+upon goodwill, and never can be brought about by force."
+
+Redmond remained silent; but months later it became known that he had
+taken action to foster this new spirit. He advised the Prime Minister
+not to proceed with the prosecution which had been threatened against
+the Larne gun-runners. But at the same time he urged upon Government
+that they should withdraw the proclamation against importing arms: and
+for this he had good reason. The Larne affair had rendered the movement
+in support of the Irish Volunteers irresistible, and Redmond had decided
+to throw himself in with it.
+
+The result was an amazing upward leap in the numbers of the Volunteers.
+On June 15th a question brought out that they were estimated at 80,000
+against 84,000 of the Ulster force; but the Nationalist body was
+increasing at the rate of 15,000 a week. By July 9th they were reckoned
+(on police information) at 132,000, of whom nearly forty thousand were
+Army reservists.
+
+These facts now dominated the situation. It was now abundantly clear
+that if passing Home Rule meant civil war, so also would the abandonment
+of Home Rule. On June 16th Lord Robert Cecil raised a debate on the new
+danger. In that debate words were quoted from Sir Roger Casement, one of
+the most active promoters of the movement: "When you are challenged on
+the field of force, it is upon that field you must reply." Mr. Dillon,
+who exulted in the "splendid demonstration of national sentiment shown
+in the uprising of the National Volunteers," urged strongly that the
+growth of a rival body was not a menace to public order but an added
+security. The armed Ulstermen would be "much slower to break the peace"
+when they realized the certainty of formidable resistance--and this, be
+it said, was no ungrounded observation. Yet at the same time the very
+success of the Volunteer movement was disquieting Redmond. He was not in
+the same position as Sir Edward Carson, who from the first had directed,
+presided over, and controlled the raising and equipment of his force;
+and unless the force were to be a menace to his leadership, he must
+secure control. As Mr. Bulmer Hobson puts it in his _History of the
+Irish Volunteers_:
+
+"The Volunteers had men in their ranks who were political followers of
+Mr. Redmond's, and men who were not, and who never had been. The latter
+were willing to help him if he had been ready to help them; they would
+have made terms with him, but were not prepared to be merely absorbed
+into his movement."
+
+The strength of Redmond's position lay in the fact that the vast
+majority of the enrolled men looked to him as their leader: his
+weakness, in that the committees under which enrolment had taken place
+were largely composed of the extremist section. He now determined to
+unite the Volunteers with the parliamentary party as the Ulster
+Volunteers were linked with Sir Edward Carson and his civilian
+organization.
+
+The men with whom he had to deal were principally Professor MacNeill and
+Sir Roger Casement. His first proposal was to replace the existing
+Provisional Committee by another, consisting of nine members, with
+Professor MacNeill, who was regarded as a general supporter of
+Redmond's, in the chair. Oddly enough, the negotiations broke down
+because Redmond nominated Michael Davitt's son along with Mr. Devlin and
+his own brother to be representatives. The young Davitt had at an early
+stage expressed dissent from the movement, and this, coming from his
+father's son, left bitter resentment. The existing Committee now
+proposed to call a National Convention of the Volunteers. Such a body
+would clearly have become a rival, and a powerful rival, to the National
+Convention of a purely citizen type, and Redmond felt himself forced to
+take drastic action. In a public letter dated June 9th he wrote:
+
+"I regret to observe the controversy which is now taking place in the
+Press on the Irish National Volunteer movement. Many of the writers
+convey the impression that the Volunteer movement is, to some extent at
+all events, hostile to the objects and policy of the Irish party. I
+desire to say emphatically that there is no foundation for this idea,
+and any attempts to create discord between the Volunteer movement and
+the Irish party are calculated in my opinion to ruin the Volunteer
+movement, which, properly directed, may be of incalculable service to
+the National Cause.
+
+"Up to two months ago I felt that the Volunteer movement was somewhat
+premature, but the effect of Sir Edward Carson's threats upon public
+opinion in England, the House of Commons, and the Government; the
+occurrences at the Curragh Camp, and the successful gun-running in
+Ulster, have vitally altered the position, and the Irish party took
+steps about six weeks ago to inform their friends and supporters in the
+country that in their opinion it was desirable to support the Volunteer
+movement, with the result that within the last six weeks the movement
+has spread like a prairie fire, and all the Nationalists of Ireland will
+shortly be enrolled.
+
+"Within the last fortnight I have had communications from men in all
+parts of the country, inquiring as to the organization and control of
+the Volunteer movement, and it has been strongly represented to me that
+the Governing Body should be reconstructed and placed on a thoroughly
+representative basis, so as to give confidence to all shades of National
+opinion."
+
+Redmond's proposal was that to the existing Committee there should be
+added twenty-five representative men from different parts of the
+country, nominated at the instance of the Irish party and in sympathy
+with its policy and aims. Failing this, he intimated that it would be
+"necessary to fall back on county control and government until the
+organization was sufficiently complete to make possible the election of
+a fully representative Executive by the Volunteers themselves."
+
+The intimation was not at once accepted. An order was issued calling on
+the Volunteers to elect additional representatives by counties to be
+added to the Committee. Redmond at once publicly declared that this
+amounted to refusal of his offer, and he put the issue very plainly. The
+Provisional Committee was originally self-constituted and had been
+increased only by co-option. The majority of its members, he was
+informed, were not supporters of the Irish party: of the rank and file
+at least 95 per cent., he said, were supporters of the Irish party and
+its policy.
+
+"This is a condition of things which plainly cannot continue. The rank
+and file of the Volunteers and the responsible leaders of the Irish
+people are entitled, and indeed are bound, to demand some security that
+an attempt shall not be made in the name of the Volunteers to dictate
+policy to the National party who, as the elected representatives of the
+people, are charged with the responsibility of deciding upon the policy
+best calculated to bring the National movement to success.
+
+"Moreover, a military organization is of its very nature so grave and
+serious an undertaking that every responsible Nationalist in the country
+who supports it is entitled to the most substantial guarantees against
+any possible imprudence. The best guarantee to be found is clearly the
+presence on the Governing Body of men of proved judgment and
+steadiness."
+
+As a last word he renewed his threat of calling on his supporters to
+organize separate county committees independent of the Dublin centre.
+This was carrying matters with a high hand, and the fact that he
+succeeded proves the greatness of his prestige at the moment. The
+Committee in a published manifesto accepted his terms, but accepted them
+with declared regret, and eight of the original members seceded. Among
+them was Patrick Pearse, with whom went three others who suffered death
+in Easter week two years later.
+
+All this was a disastrous business, and the worst part of it lay in the
+public avowal of divided councils. Moreover, a committee so constituted
+could not, and did not, operate efficiently. The original members were
+primarily interested in the Volunteer Force; the added ones primarily in
+the parliamentary movement. Nearly all of the latter--selected for their
+"proved judgment and steadiness"--were men past middle age; and of the
+whole twenty-five Willie Redmond alone subsequently bore arms.
+
+There was indeed an underlying difference of principle. Redmond knew
+well, and all parliamentarians with him, that under the terms of the
+Home Rule Bill no army could be raised or maintained in Ireland without
+the consent of the Imperial Parliament. The original Volunteer Committee
+laid it down as an axiom that the Volunteer Force should be permanent;
+they were, as Casement put it, "the beginning of an Irish army." Sir
+Edward Carson's policy had produced a new mentality among Irish
+Nationalists, and it made many take Redmond's constitutionalism for
+timidity.
+
+But in the eyes of the world and of Ireland generally, Redmond was just
+as much as Sir Edward Carson the accredited and accepted leader of his
+Volunteer organization, and to him the Volunteers looked for provision
+of arms and equipment. One of his chief preoccupations in those months
+was with this matter, and it explains his desire to have the
+proclamation against the import of arms withdrawn. The Larne exploit had
+proved the futility of it; articles by Colonel Repington in _The Times_
+testified to the completeness of the provision which had been made for
+Ulster. But smuggling is always a costly business, and Nationalists were
+hampered by the cost. More than that, there was ground for suspicion
+that the scales were not equally weighted as between Ulster and the rest
+of the country. On June 30th Redmond wrote a letter to the Chief
+Secretary repeating his case for withdrawal of the proclamation. It is
+all memorable, but especially the warning which concludes the following
+passages from it:
+
+"In the South and West of Ireland, not only are the most active measures
+being taken against the importation of arms, but many owners of vessels
+are harassed unnecessarily.
+
+"The effect of this unequal working of the proclamation has been grave
+amongst our people, and has tended to increase both their exasperation
+and their apprehensions.
+
+"The apprehensions of our people are justified to the fullest. They find
+themselves, especially in the North, faced by a large, drilled,
+organized and armed body. Furthermore, the incident at the Curragh has
+given them the fixed idea that they cannot rely on the Army for
+protection. The possession of arms by Nationalists would, under these
+circumstances, be no provocation for disorder, but a means of preserving
+the peace by confronting one armed force with another, not helpless
+but, by being armed, fully able to defend themselves.
+
+"Finally, we want to call your most serious attention to the grave and
+imminent danger of a collision between Nationalists and the police in
+the effort to import arms. The police in the South and West might not be
+so passive as they were in the recent affair at Larne, and there might
+be serious conflicts, and even loss of life, and from this day forward
+every day which the proclamation is enforced as strictly as it is now
+against the Nationalists brings increased danger of disastrous collision
+between the police and the people."
+
+Within a fortnight a minor incident illustrated the "unequal working"
+referred to in the first of these points. General Richardson, who
+commanded the Ulster Force, had issued on July 1st an order authorizing
+all Ulster Volunteers to carry arms openly and to resist any attempt at
+interference. In Ulster accordingly no search was ever attempted. But on
+July 15th Mr. Lawrence Kettle, brother to Professor Kettle, who had from
+the first been a prominent official of the Volunteers, was returning in
+his motor from the electric works at the Pigeon House; he was stopped by
+the police and his car searched for arms. Such an occurrence in Ulster
+would have been held to justify immediate rebellion, and would have been
+carefully avoided. In Dublin there was no such avoidance of provocation.
+
+Yet the avoidance of anything which might precipitate strife was indeed
+in these days most desirable. June 28th saw the murder of the Archduke
+at Sarajevo. The European sky grew rapidly overcast. Days passed, and
+the possibility of civil war was exchanged for the near probability of
+European war which might find the British Empire divided against itself.
+
+It was necessary in the highest interests of State for the Government to
+make an effort to compose the cause of so much violent faction, which
+might at any moment assume acute form. The Amending Bill, introduced in
+the House of Lords with the Government's offer embodied in it, had been
+altered by the Peers in a manner which Lord Morley described as
+tantamount to rejection. In this shape it was to come before the House
+of Commons on July 20th. But on that Monday, when the House reassembled
+after the weekly holiday, the Prime Minister rose at once and announced
+in tones of no ordinary solemnity that the King had thought it right to
+summon representatives of parties both British and Irish to a Conference
+next day at Buckingham Palace, over which Mr. Speaker would preside.
+
+Redmond in two brief sentences guarded his attitude. He disclaimed all
+responsibility for the policy of calling the Conference and expressed no
+opinion as to its chances of success. The invitation had reached him and
+Mr. Dillon in the form of a command from the King, and as such they had
+accepted it.
+
+Some may remember how radiantly fine were those far-off days in July
+which led us up to the brink of such undreamt-of happenings. On the
+Tuesday night I was sitting alone on the Terrace, when Redmond came out.
+For once, he was in a mood to talk. His mind was full of the strangeness
+and interest of that first day's Conference--a council, or parley, so
+momentous, so unprecedented. It touched what was very strong in him--the
+historic imagination. He told me how the King had received them all,
+stayed with them for some intercourse of welcome, and had been specially
+marked in his courtesy to Redmond himself, who had of course never
+before been presented to him. Then, he had accompanied them to the room
+set apart for their deliberations and had left them with their chairman,
+the Speaker. When I think over Redmond's description of the Sovereign's
+personality, it seems to me that he was describing one so paralysed, as
+it were, by anxiety as to have lost the power of easy, genial and
+natural speech. But the dominant thought in his mind did not concern
+King George. One figure stood out--Sir Edward Carson. "As an Irishman,"
+Redmond said, "you could not help being proud to see how he towered
+above the others. They simply did not count. He took charge absolutely."
+
+As I gathered, the eight members sat four on each side of a long table,
+with the Speaker at the head. The Irish leaders were on his right and
+left, and the discussion was chiefly between them.
+
+It turned mainly on the question of the area to be excluded. Enormous
+trouble had been taken, and Redmond told me later that a great map in
+relief had been constructed, showing the distribution of Protestant and
+Catholic population. This brought out with astonishing vividness the
+contrast: the Catholics were on the mountains and hill-tops, the
+Protestants down along the valley lands.
+
+Nothing could be more cordial, Redmond said, than Sir Edward Carson's
+manner to him. They met as old friends, and I believe that when they
+parted, one asked the other that they should have "one good shake-hands
+for the sake of old times on the Munster circuit." But it was clearly
+recognized that there was a point beyond which neither of them could
+take his followers, and these points could not be brought to meet. Even
+if adjustment had been possible on the question of time-limit, neither
+would give up the debatable counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, in which the
+Nationalists had a clear though small majority of the population, but in
+which the Ulster Volunteer organization was very strong. On Friday, July
+24th, Mr. Asquith announced the failure of the attempt. "The possibility
+of defining an area for exclusion from the operation of the Government
+of Ireland Bill was considered, and the Conference being unable to agree
+either in principle or in detail on such an area, it concluded."
+
+An incident which did not lack significance was that on the second day
+of these meetings Redmond, returning with Mr. Dillon along Birdcage Walk
+to the House, was recognized by some Irish Guards in the barracks, who
+raised a cheer for the Nationalist leaders which ran all along the
+barrack square. The Army was not all disposed to take sides with Ulster
+and against the Nationalists.
+
+But parts of it were. The collision between forces of the Crown and
+Irish Volunteers trying to land arms, which Redmond had foretold and
+deprecated in his letter of June 30th, was fated to occur.
+
+On Saturday, July 25th, five thousand Ulster Volunteers, fully armed,
+with four machine guns--in short, an infantry brigade equipped for
+active service--marched through the streets of Belfast, no one
+interfering. On Sunday, the 26th, a private yacht sailed into Howth
+harbour with eleven hundred rifles on board and some boxes of
+ammunition. By preconcerted arrangement a body of some seven hundred
+Irish Volunteers had marched down to meet the yacht. These men took the
+rifles, and with them set out to march back in column of route to
+Dublin. Two thousand rounds of ammunition were with them in a
+truck-cart, but none was distributed.
+
+Meanwhile the telephones had been busy. The Assistant-Commissioner of
+Dublin Police, Mr. Harrel, an energetic officer, was informed, and he
+acted instantly. The Under-Secretary, permanent official head of Dublin
+Castle, was at his Lodge in the Phoenix Park some two miles distant: Mr.
+Harrel informed him of what was happening and was ordered to meet him at
+the Castle. But Mr. Harrel was not content to delay. He called out what
+police he could muster, some hundred and eighty men, and judging that
+they would be insufficient, decided on his own authority to requisition
+the military. At the Kildare Street Club he found the Brigadier-General
+in command of the troops in Dublin, and this officer immediately ordered
+out a company of the King's Own Scottish Borderers. With this force of
+soldiers and police Mr. Harrel proceeded to a point on the road from
+Howth to Dublin and blocked the way. When the body of Volunteers
+reached him, he demanded the surrender of their rifles. This was
+refused. He then ordered the police to disarm the men. A scuffle
+followed, in which nineteen rifles were seized. Some of the Volunteers
+without orders fired revolvers, and by this firing two soldiers were
+slightly wounded. One Volunteer received a slight bayonet wound.
+
+Then there was a stop and a parley, and the Volunteer leaders threatened
+to distribute ammunition. While the parley lasted the Volunteers in rear
+of the column dispersed, carrying their rifles, leaving only a couple of
+ranks drawn across the road in front, who blocked the view. When Mr.
+Harrel perceived what was happening, he ordered the soldiers to march
+back to Dublin and took the police with him.
+
+By this time wild rumours had spread through the city, and on the way
+back the troops were mobbed. They were pelted with every kind of missile
+and many were hurt, though none seriously; and it understates the truth
+to say that they were in no danger. They had their bayonets, and from
+time to time made thrusts at their assailants. At last, on the quays, at
+a place called Bachelor's Walk, the company was halted, and the officer
+in command intended, if necessary, to give an order for a few individual
+men to fire over the heads of the crowd. But the troops had lost their
+temper, and without order given a considerable number fired into the
+crowd. Three persons were killed and some thirty injured.
+
+The first that I knew of these events was on the Monday, when I got the
+paper at a station in Gloucestershire, on my way to the House. The
+railway-carriage was full of casual English people, and I have never
+heard so much indignant comment on any piece of news. "Why should they
+shoot the people in Dublin when they let the Ulstermen do what they
+like?" That was the burden of it. It is easy to guess what was felt and
+thought and said in Dublin and throughout Ireland.
+
+What Redmond said in the House of Commons is characteristic of his
+attitude. He demanded that full judicial and military inquiry into the
+action of the troops should be held, and that proper punishment should
+be inflicted on those found guilty.
+
+"But," he said, "really the responsibility rests upon those who
+requisitioned the troops under these circumstances. So far as the troops
+are concerned, I deplore more than I can say that this has
+occurred--this incident calculated to breed bad blood between the Irish
+people and the troops. I deplore that. I hope that our people will not
+be so unjust as to hold the troops generally responsible for what, no
+doubt, taking it at its worst, was the offence of a limited number of
+men."
+
+I do not think any soldier could have wished for a fairer or more
+friendly statement; and a chance assisted to realize his hope that the
+troops generally would not be held responsible. One of the killed was a
+woman whose son was a Dublin Fusilier. This man published a letter in
+the Press calling on all Dublin Fusiliers and all soldiers who
+sympathized with him to attend the funeral. It was well that the
+populace should feel on such a matter as this that all the troops were
+not against them; and well that they should be counselled by the leader
+of their nation to be reasonable in the direction of their resentment.
+
+This whole incident should never be forgotten by those who are disposed
+to judge the Irish harshly for what they did, and did not do, in the
+succeeding years. Above all, it should be remembered that the news of
+it, terribly provocative in itself to any people, but tenfold
+provocative by reason of the contrast which it revealed as compared with
+the treatment of Ulster, was published to the world less than ten days
+before Redmond had to face the question, What should Ireland do in the
+war?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 2: _Manchester Guardian_, February 4, 1919]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WAR IN EUROPE
+
+I
+
+
+The week which began on Monday, July 27th, was feverish and excited.
+Formal discussion on the occurrences at Clontarf and Bachelor's Walk was
+confined to the Monday; but each day had a stormy scene during
+question-time arising out of it. The Amending Bill from the Lords was to
+have been taken on Tuesday, but Mr. Asquith postponed it till Thursday,
+to get a calmer atmosphere. When Thursday came, it was postponed again
+and indefinitely. "We meet," said the Prime Minister, "under conditions
+of gravity which are almost unparalleled in the experience of any one of
+us." It was therefore necessary to "present a united front and be able
+to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation." To continue
+the Home Rule discussion must involve the House in acute controversy in
+regard to "domestic differences whose importance to ourselves no one in
+any quarter of the House is disposed to disparage or belittle."
+
+The Leader of the Opposition assented. Two sentences in his speech have
+importance. The first laid it down that this postponement should not "in
+any way prejudice the interests of any of the parties to the
+controversy." The second indicated that he spoke not only for the
+Unionist party but for Ulster.
+
+It is very difficult now, after all that has crowded in upon us, jading
+the sensitive recipient surface of memory, to reconstitute the frame of
+mind in which we passed those days. One thing I clearly remember,
+perhaps worth noting for its significance. In a division lobby,
+probably on the Wednesday night, I came in touch with a friend, then a
+subordinate member of the Government, who had been among the keenest
+advocates of our cause. I asked how he thought things were going. My
+question had reference to our affairs, which had been for so many months
+the dominant issue; but he answered with reference to the European
+situation, as if that alone existed. Looking back, it seems to me
+strange that one should have been so engrossed in any preoccupation as
+in reality to ignore the vast and imminent possibilities. Yet, after
+all, I believe my case was typical of many. For us Irish, this was the
+crucial point, the climax of a struggle which had been intense and
+continuous now for a period of four years--which in its wider sense had
+gone on, with ebb and flow, yet always in progress during the whole
+adult lifetime of our leader and his principal colleagues. For more than
+us, for scores of Labour men and Liberals, it had become almost a fixed
+belief that European war was only a nightmare of the imagination. War in
+the Balkans, war possibly in the East of Europe, we could think of; but
+war flinging the complex organization, so potent yet so delicate, of
+great and fully civilized States into the melting-pot--that we never
+really believed in. Prophets of finance, prophets of the labour world,
+had told us the thing was impossible. Even our most recent experience,
+the irruption of armed forces into the political arena, had contributed
+to fix in our minds the view that all armaments were merely _in
+terrorem_, part of a gigantic game of bluff.
+
+In a world organized as was Europe in 1914 on the basis of universal
+military service, it is dangerous, not only materially but morally and
+intellectually, to be as the people of these islands were, segregated
+from all military experience. We were almost like children in a magazine
+of explosives: we knew, of course, that there were dangerous substances
+about us; but we did not realize how suddenly and irretrievably the
+whole thing might go off.
+
+I do not know how Redmond gauged the situation. But he spent the end of
+the week in town, and must have been less unprepared than was one like
+myself, who during the Saturday, Sunday and the Monday Bank Holiday was
+away in a most peaceful country-side, remote from news. Even on the
+Tuesday, the instant bearing on our own questions and our own lives of
+what we read in the newspapers was not clear to me. There was to be a
+debate, of course; but only when I saw the attendants setting chairs on
+the floor of the House itself--a thing which had not been done since
+Gladstone introduced his second Home Rule Bill--did I grasp the fact
+that something wholly unusual was expected.
+
+My strong impression is that the House as a whole was in great measure
+unprepared for what it had to face. You could feel surprise in the air
+as Sir Edward Grey developed his wonderful speech. Men, shaken away from
+all traditional attitudes, responded from the depths of themselves to an
+appeal which none of us had ever heard before.
+
+Having failed to secure my place on the Irish benches, I was sitting on
+one of the chairs close by the Sergeant at Arms, just inside the bar of
+the House, so that I saw at once both sides of the assembly: there were
+no parties that day. The Foreign Secretary's speech, intensely English,
+with all the quality that is finest in English tradition, clearly did
+not in its opening stages carry the House as a whole. Passages struck
+home, here and there, to men not to parties, kindling individual
+sentiments. Appeal to a common feeling for France did not elicit a
+general response; but here and there in every quarter there were those
+who leapt to their feet and cheered, waving the papers that were in
+their hands; and the two figures that stand out most vividly in my
+recollection were Willie Redmond, our leader's brother, and Arthur
+Lynch. We were in a very different atmosphere already from the days of
+the Boer War.
+
+It was not until the speaker reached in his statement the outrage
+committed on Belgian neutrality that feeling manifested itself
+universally. Appeal was made to the sense of honour, of fair play, of
+respect for pledges, by a man as well fitted to make such an appeal as
+ever addressed any audience; and it was the case of Belgium that made
+the House of Commons unanimous.
+
+Later in the evening speeches from the Radical group made it clear that
+unanimity was not yet definitive. Labour was hesitant; Germany had still
+to complete Sir Edward Grey's work. With this disposition in England
+itself, what was likely to be the feeling in Ireland? Nobody, I think,
+expected that anything would be said from our benches. There had been no
+consultation in our party, such as was customary and almost obligatory
+on important occasions. I have said before that Redmond's position was
+by understanding and agreement that of chairman, not of leader. Mr.
+Dillon, by far the most important of his colleagues, was away in
+Ireland. Any action that Redmond took he must take not merely in an
+unusual but in a new capacity, as leader, at a great moment, acting in
+his own right.
+
+Neither had there been any consultation between him and the Government.
+He knew only what the general public knew. Parts of Sir Edward Grey's
+speech were to him, as to the other members of the House, a surprise at
+many points. At one point it certainly was. After summing up the
+situation, first in relation to France, then in relation to Belgium, the
+Foreign Secretary, speaking with the utmost gravity, foretold for Great
+Britain terrible suffering in this war, "whether we are in it or whether
+we stand aside." He made it clear that the island safety was not
+unchallengeable; there could be no pledge to send an expeditionary force
+outside the kingdom. Then, with a sudden lift of his voice, he added:
+"One thing I would say: the one bright spot in the very dreadful
+situation is Ireland. The position in Ireland--and this I should like to
+be clearly understood abroad--is not a consideration among the things we
+have to take into account now."
+
+The history of this passage is strange. All who heard assumed that the
+speaker relied on definite promises. Such a promise had been given, from
+one party. The Ulster leader had, with the sure instinct for Ulster's
+interest which guided him throughout, conveyed to the Government through
+Mr. Bonar Law an assurance that they could count on Ulster's imperial
+patriotism. Ulster, so far as pledges went, was the bright spot. Where
+Germany had counted on finding trouble for Great Britain, no trouble
+would be found. But Sir Edward Grey at that moment of his career was
+lifted perhaps beyond himself, certainly to the utmost range of his
+statesmanship. He was a chief member of the Ministry which had brought
+to the verge of complete statutory accomplishment the task which the
+Liberal party inherited from Gladstone. He knew--his words have been
+already quoted--what Ireland's gratitude to Gladstone had been even for
+the unfinished effort; and now, in this crucial hour, he counted upon
+Ireland. From Ulster, which had its bitter resentment, assurances were
+needed: but if Ulster were contented to fall into line, then all was
+well with Ireland. Speaking as one who had done his part by Ireland,
+with the confidence that counts upon full comradeship he assumed the
+generosity of Ireland's response. That did not fail him, sudden and
+unforeseen though the challenge came--for it was an appeal and a
+challenge to Ireland's generosity.
+
+When the notable words concerning Ireland were spoken, Redmond turned to
+the colleague who sat next him, one of his close personal friends, and
+one of his wisest, most moderate and most courageous counsellors. He
+said: "I'm thinking of saying something. Do you think I ought to?" Mr.
+Hayden answered, "That depends on what you are going to say." Redmond
+said: "I'm going to tell them they can take all their troops out of
+Ireland and we will defend the country ourselves." "In that case," said
+Mr. Hayden, "you should certainly speak." Redmond leant over to Mr. T.P.
+O'Connor, who sat immediately below him, and consulted him also. Mr.
+O'Connor was against it. Though the war had no more enthusiastic
+supporter, he thought the risk too great. It was just a week and a day
+since Redmond had moved an adjournment to consider the occasion when
+Government forces were turned out to disarm Irish Volunteers, and when
+troops fired without order on a Dublin crowd. Ireland was still given
+over to a fury of resentment, issuing not alone in speeches but in
+active warlike preparation. On Sunday, August 1st, memorial masses for
+the victims were held up and down the country. In Belfast there was a
+parade of four thousand Irish Volunteers; and finally, at a point on the
+Wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in
+defiance of Government and its troops. Now, forty-eight hours after
+these demonstrations, would the Irish leader ask his countrymen to blot
+from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a
+wound? Would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation's
+feeling? The boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated.
+Redmond did not.
+
+This is not to say that he spoke without full reflection. He always
+thought far ahead; and in these tense days of waiting upon rumour, he
+must have pondered deeply upon all the possibilities--must have had
+intuition of what this opportunity, England's difficulty, might mean for
+Ireland. Other minds were on the same trail. In the Dublin papers of
+that morning were two letters of moment--one of them from Sir Arthur
+Conan Doyle.
+
+"The chief point which has divided Protestant Ulster from the rest of
+Ireland," he wrote, "is that Nationalists were not loyal to the Empire."
+Then, recalling briefly the extent to which Irish Nationalists had
+helped in creating that Empire, he went on: "There is no possible reason
+why a man should not be a loyal Irishman and a loyal Imperialist
+also.... A whole-hearted declaration of loyalty to the common ideal
+would at the present moment do much to allay the natural fears of Ulster
+and to strengthen the position of Ireland. Such a chance is unlikely to
+recur. I pray that the Irish leaders may understand its significance and
+put themselves in a position to take advantage of it."
+
+The other letter, written from a different standpoint, was signed by Mr.
+M.J. Judge, a most active Irish Volunteer who had been wounded in the
+scuffle on the way back from Howth. "England," he said, "might inspire
+confidence by restoring it. She could bestow confidence by immediately
+arming and equipping the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers, properly
+armed and equipped, could preserve Ireland from invasion, and England
+would be free to utilize her 'army of occupation' for the defence of her
+own shores."
+
+Redmond could not have seen either of these letters, but those two
+trains of thought were blended in his speech--which was less a speech
+than a supreme action. It was the utterance of a man who has a vision
+and who, acting in the light of it, seeks to embody the vision in a
+living reality.
+
+Mr. Bonar Law followed Sir Edward Grey with a few brief sentences of
+whole-hearted support. Then Redmond rose, and a hush of expectation went
+over the house. I can see it now, the crowded benches and the erect,
+solid figure with the massive hawk-visaged head thrown back, standing
+squarely at the top of the gangway. While he spoke, as during Sir Edward
+Grey's speech, the cheering broke out first intermittently and scattered
+over the House, then grew gradually universal. Sitting about me were
+Tory members whom I did not know; I heard their ejaculations of
+bewilderment, approval and delight. But in the main body of the
+Unionists behind the front Opposition bench papers were being waved, and
+when Redmond sat down many of these men stood up to cheer him. In five
+minutes he had changed the whole atmosphere of domestic politics in
+regard to the main issue of controversy.--Here is the speech:
+
+"I hope the House will not think me impertinent to intervene in the
+debate, but I am moved to do so a great deal by that sentence in the
+speech of the Foreign Secretary in which he said that the one bright
+spot in the situation was the changed feeling in Ireland. Sir, in past
+time, when this Empire has been engaged in these terrible enterprises,
+it is true that it would be the utmost affectation and folly on my part
+to deny that the sympathies of Nationalist Ireland, for reasons deep
+down in the centuries of history, have been estranged from this country.
+But allow me to say that what has occurred in recent years has altered
+the situation completely. I must not touch upon any controversial topic,
+but this I may be allowed to say--that a wider knowledge of the real
+facts of Irish history has altered the view of the democracy of this
+country towards the Irish question, and I honestly believe that the
+democracy of Ireland will turn with the utmost anxiety and sympathy to
+this country in every trial and danger with which she is faced.
+
+"There is a possibility of history repeating itself. The House will
+remember that in 1778, at the end of the disastrous American War, when
+it might be said that the military force of this country was almost at
+its lowest ebb, the shores of Ireland were threatened with invasion.
+Then a hundred thousand Irish Volunteers sprang into existence for the
+purpose of defending those shores. At first, however--and how sad is the
+reading of the history of those days! no Catholic was allowed to be
+enrolled in that body of Volunteers; yet from the first day the
+Catholics of the South and West subscribed their money and sent it for
+the army of their Protestant fellow-countrymen. Ideas widened as time
+went on, and finally the Catholics of the South were armed and enrolled
+as brothers-in-arms with their fellow-countrymen. May history repeat
+itself! To-day there are in Ireland two large bodies of Volunteers, one
+of which has sprung into existence in the North and another in the
+South. I say to the Government that they may to-morrow withdraw every
+one of their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended by her armed
+sons from invasion, and for that purpose the armed Catholics in the
+South will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant
+Ulster men. Is it too much to hope that out of this situation a result
+may spring which will be good, not merely for the Empire, but for the
+future welfare and integrity of the Irish nation? Whilst Irishmen are in
+favour of peace and would desire to save the democracy of this country
+from all the horrors of war, whilst we will make any possible sacrifice
+for that purpose, still, if the necessity is forced upon this country,
+we offer this to the Government of the day: They may take their troops
+away, and if it is allowed to us, in comradeship with our brothers in
+the North, we will ourselves defend the shores of Ireland."
+
+It needed no gift of prophecy to be certain that such a speech would be
+popular in the House of Commons, and many Unionists that day were almost
+aggrieved that Sir Edward Carson had not risen at once to reply to the
+offer in the same spirit. They did not realize the difficulty of the
+Ulster leader's position. To admit and welcome the unity of Ireland was
+to give away Ulster's case. To accept the Nationalist leader's utterance
+as sincere, still more to assume that Ireland as a whole would endorse
+it, was to weaken, if not to give away, Ulster's best argument, and from
+that hour to the end of the war Sir Edward Carson was most loyal to
+Ulster's interests.
+
+Further, it is conceivable that by some who cheered it the speech may
+have been misunderstood. Yet it is not probable that many who heard
+Redmond believed that in order to serve England he was flinging away
+Ireland's national claim, to the successful furtherance of which his
+whole life had been devoted. The Unionist party as a whole certainly
+understood that to accept Redmond's offer in the spirit in which it was
+made meant accepting the principle of Home Rule: and on that afternoon
+in August they were not unready to accept it. They felt, for the speech
+made them feel, that a great thing had happened. Yet they might well be
+pardoned for some scepticism as to how the utterance might be taken in
+Ireland, and how it would issue in action. A famous Nationalist said
+some ten days later: "When I read the speech in the paper, I was filled
+with dismay. Now I recognize that it was a great stroke of statesmanship
+which I should never have had the courage to advise."
+
+Redmond's instinct had been right. He trusted in the appeal to national
+pride and to the sense of national unity. Ireland was perfectly willing,
+and he knew it, to give loyal friendship to England on the basis of
+freedom. But the test of freedom had now come to be the right to bear
+arms, and this was a proposal that Ireland should undertake her own
+defence. Ireland was sick of the talk of civil war, and this was a
+proposal that Ulstermen and the rest should make common cause. It was an
+appeal addressed by an instinct, which was no less subtle than it was
+noble, to what was most responsive in the best qualities of Irishmen.
+None the less it was a statesman's utterance addressed to a people
+politically quick-minded; Ireland saw as well as Redmond himself that
+what stood in the way of Ireland's national aspiration was the
+opposition of one section of Irishmen. To that extent, and to that
+extent only, was the speech political in its purpose. Whatever made for
+common action made for unity; and whatever made for unity made for Home
+Rule. That is the key to Redmond's attitude throughout the war--perhaps
+also to Sir Edward Carson's.
+
+
+II
+
+The response from Nationalist Ireland had not long to be waited
+for--although the inquest on the victims of the Bachelor's Walk tragedy
+was in progress on the very day when Redmond's speech appeared in the
+Press. Waterford Corporation instantly endorsed their member's
+utterance, and throughout the week similar resolutions were passed all
+over the country, Unionist members of these bodies joining in to second
+the proposals. In Cork, the City Council had before it a resolution
+condemning the Government for its attempt to disarm the Irish
+Volunteers, and calling for stringent penalties on the offenders in the
+Bachelor's Walk affair: the resolution was withdrawn and one of hearty
+support to Redmond's attitude adopted.
+
+Yet Irish opinion did not go so far as Mr. William O'Brien, who proposed
+the complete dropping of the Home Rule Bill till after the war, in order
+to bring about a genuine national unity. The action of the Offaly corps
+of Volunteers, for instance, was typical. They agreed to offer their
+services gladly on two conditions: first, that the Home Rule Bill should
+go on the Statute Book; secondly, that the Volunteers should be
+subsidized and equipped by Government.
+
+But it was assumed in Ireland that no question arose about the safety of
+the Bill, and people gave themselves to the new emotion. Troops were
+cheered everywhere at stations and on the quays: National Volunteers and
+local bands turned out to see them off. Even the battalion of King's Own
+Scottish Borderers, which had been confined to barracks since the
+events of July 26th, was cheered like the rest as it marched down to the
+transports ready for it.[3]
+
+This was the attitude of the general populace. Broadly speaking,
+Redmond's speech pleased the people. It was welcomed by generous-minded
+men in another class, who responded at once in the same spirit. Lord
+Monteagle wrote: "Mr. Redmond has risen nobly to the occasion"; Lord
+Bessborough, that he trusted all the Unionists in the South would at
+once join the Irish Volunteers. The Marquis of Headfort, the Earls of
+Fingall and of Desart, Lord Powerscourt, Lord Langford, all chimed in
+with offers of help. Mr. George Taaffe wrote: "I thank God from the
+bottom of my heart that to-day we stand united Ireland." In county
+Wexford sixty young Protestants came in a body to join up, led by a very
+Tory squire.
+
+It should be clearly noted that while Redmond's aim was to make this
+Ireland's war, in which Irishmen should serve together without
+distinction of North or South, all that he asked of the land in his
+speech of August 4th was that the Volunteers should undertake duties of
+home defence. This was precisely what Sir Edward Carson had asked of
+Ulster. On August 14th, in a letter to the Press, the commander of a
+Fermanagh battalion of Ulster Volunteers wrote: "No one will be asked to
+serve outside Ulster until Sir Edward Carson notifies that he is
+satisfied with the attitude of the Government with regard to the Home
+Rule Bill and Ulster."
+
+Redmond neither could nor did ask any man to serve outside Ireland till
+he was satisfied with the Government's attitude in regard to Home Rule.
+In the first days of the war, however, the critical question for him was
+to know how his offer of assistance from the Volunteers would be
+accepted by the Government, and at the outset all promised favourably.
+On August 8th a telegram was sent to the Lord-Lieutenant:
+
+"His Majesty's Government recognize with deep gratitude the loyal help
+which Ireland has offered in this grave hour. They hope to announce as
+soon as possible arrangements by which this offer can be made use of to
+the fullest possible extent."
+
+That unquestionably represented the mind of Mr. Asquith and his civilian
+colleagues. But a new power had transformed the Cabinet. Lord Kitchener,
+refusing to accept the post of Commander in Chief, had insisted on
+becoming Secretary of State for War.
+
+No one is likely to underestimate Lord Kitchener's value at that hour.
+But probably no one now will dispute that the political control which
+this soldier obtained was excessive and was dangerous. Years of fierce
+faction had shaken the public confidence in politicians, and a soldier
+was traditionally above and beyond politics. But in Lord Kitchener's
+case the soldier was certainly remote from and below the regions of
+statesmanship. Narrow, domineering, and obstinate, he was a difficult
+colleague for anyone; and for a Prime Minister with so easy a temper as
+Mr. Asquith he was not a colleague but a master. He claimed to be
+supreme in all matters relating to the Army, and in such a war this came
+near to covering the whole field of government. It most certainly
+covered the question of dealing with the Irish Volunteers and with the
+Ulster Volunteers, which meant in reality the whole question of
+Ireland.
+
+Immediately on Lord Kitchener's appointment Redmond had an interview
+with him. Redmond's report was that he had been most friendly--and most
+limited in his expectations. "Get me five thousand men, and I will say
+'Thank you,'" he had said. "Get me ten thousand, and I will take off my
+hat to you." Yet the very smallness of the estimate should have been a
+note of warning to us; it indicated a cynical view of Ireland's response
+to Redmond's public declaration.
+
+On the question of the Volunteers he made friendly promises. As the
+Sirdar in Egypt he had been used to giving fair words to native chiefs.
+There is not the least reason to suppose that Lord Kitchener would have
+felt bound to show Redmond his real mind.
+
+The truth was that Lord Kitchener held in respect to Ireland the
+traditional opinions of the British Army. Nobody could blame the
+professional soldier for dislike and distrust of Irish Nationalist
+politicians generally; but when at such a crisis a professional soldier,
+by no means conspicuous for breadth of mind, came to hold such a
+position as Lord Kitchener seized, the result was certain to be
+disastrous for Irish policy unless Liberal statesmanship exercised a
+strong control over him. Neither Mr. Asquith nor Mr. Birrell was likely
+to do this.
+
+Two views were taken of the proposal to encourage and utilize the Irish
+Volunteers. The first view was that Volunteers of any kind were a
+superfluous encumbrance at a moment when the supreme need was for men in
+the actual fighting-line; that encouragement of Volunteers gave an
+excuse for shirking war; and further, that Volunteers outside the
+State's control were a danger; that the danger was increased when there
+were two rival Volunteer forces which might fly at each other's throats;
+and that it was a matter for satisfaction that one of these forces
+should be very greatly inferior to the other in point of arms and
+equipment, so that considerations of prudence would lessen the chance of
+collision. This satisfaction was greatly heightened by the reflection
+that the armed force was thoroughly loyal to the Empire and could be
+trusted to assist troops in the case of any attack upon the Empire begun
+by the other--a contingency which should always be taken into account.
+
+This line of thought was certainly Lord Kitchener's. He had no distrust
+of Irish soldiers in ordinary regiments; no professional soldier ever
+had. But he had a deep distrust of a purely Irish military organization
+under Irish control. At the back of Lord Kitchener's mind was the
+determination "I will not arm enemies." This was the very negation and
+the antithesis of the second view, which was Redmond's.
+
+Redmond's aim was to win the war, no less than Lord Kitchener's. But if
+Lord Kitchener realized more clearly than other men in power how
+far-reaching would be the need for troops, Redmond realized also far
+more than the men in power how vital would be the need for America. He
+saw from the first, knowing the English-speaking world far more widely
+than perhaps any member of the Government, that the Irish trouble could
+not limit its influence to Ireland only. Greater forces could be
+conciliated for war purposes by reconciliation with Ireland--by bringing
+Ireland heart and soul into the war--than the equivalent of many
+regiments. Yet even from the narrower aspect of finding men, he regarded
+the same policy as essential. He assumed that recruiting in Ireland must
+always be voluntary--at any rate a matter for Ireland's own decision:
+the question was how to get most troops. Knowing Ireland, he recognized
+how complete was the estrangement of its population from the idea of
+ordinary enlistment. The bulk of the population were on the land, and in
+Ireland, as in Great Britain, "gone for a soldier" was a word of
+disgrace for a farmer's son. More than that, the political organization
+of which he was head had inculcated an attitude of aloofness from the
+Army because it was the Army which held Ireland by force. Enlistment
+had been discouraged, on the principle that from a military point of
+view Ireland was regarded as a conquered country. A test case had arisen
+over the Territorial Act, which was not extended to Ireland, any more
+than the Volunteer Acts had been. We had voted against Lord Haldane's
+Bill on the express ground that it put Ireland into this status of
+inferiority and withheld from Irishmen that right to arm and drill which
+was pressed upon Englishmen as a patriotic duty. We had explicitly
+declared then in 1907 that our influence should and must be used against
+enlistment.
+
+These facts of history had not merely produced in Ireland an attitude of
+mind hostile to the idea, so to say, of the British Army as an
+institution, though the individual soldier had always been at least as
+popular as anyone else. They had produced a population extraordinarily
+unfamiliar with the idea of armament. The old Volunteers and the
+Territorials had at least conveyed to all ranks of society in Great
+Britain the possibility of joining a military organization while
+remaining an ordinary citizen. In the imagination of Ireland, either you
+were a soldier or you were not; and if you were a soldier, you belonged
+to an exceptional class, remote from ordinary existence. To cross that
+line was a far greater step to contemplate with us than in England.
+Redmond reckoned, and reckoned rightly, that to bring Irishmen together
+in military formations, learning the art of war, was the best way to
+combat this disinclination to enter the Army--this feeling that
+enlistment meant doing something "out of the way," something contrary to
+usage and tradition. He reckoned that the attitude of Nationalist
+Ireland would alter towards a Government which put arms in their hands
+on their own terms; and that with a great war on foot a temper of
+adventure and emulation would very soon draw young men flocking to the
+ranks in which they could see the reality of war. That was Redmond's
+policy and it was the statesman's. Nationalist Ireland was perfectly
+ready to adopt the ideals which moved the British Empire at home and
+overseas in the war: but first the British Empire must show that it
+respected the ideals of Nationalist Ireland. The Empire's statesmen did
+so: the British democracy did so: but Lord Kitchener stood in the way.
+
+From Ulster, it was clear that immediate cordial co-operation could not
+be anticipated. Yet Redmond had implicit faith in the ultimate effect of
+comradeship in danger, and here we know he was right. He was to pay a
+heavy price in blood for the seal set upon that bond; but in the end the
+seal was set. For the moment, Ulster as a whole was sullen and
+distrustful. Feeling that to admit the good faith of Nationalists
+jeopardized their own political cause, they belittled what in the
+interests of the common weal it would have been wise even to over-value.
+At the outset "An Ulster Volunteer" wrote to the papers "Let us all
+unite as a solid nation"; but such an utterance was exceptional. Hardly
+less exceptional was the line taken by "An Officer of National
+Volunteers" who wrote, "If the necessity arose to-morrow and the word
+went out from Headquarters, the National Volunteers would be prepared to
+fight to the very death in defending the homes and liberties of France
+and England." "For Ireland Only" was a motto much inculcated in those
+days among the Irish Volunteers. Suspicion on the one side bred
+estrangement on the other; and every hour lost increased the mischief.
+
+Moreover, in spite of the generous action taken by outstanding
+individuals, the general mass of Unionist opinion was grudging and
+uncordial. A friend who was then closely in touch with it described to
+me the attitude of Dublin clubs: "They were almost sorry Redmond had
+done the right thing." Such men were part of Ireland, and all Ireland
+was remote from war. For them, now as always, Home Rule was the
+paramount consideration, and none could deny that the prospects for
+Home Rule were immensely improved by Redmond's action. In these days,
+when an end of the conflict was expected in three months, when every
+check to the Germans was magnified out of all reason, there was no sense
+of the relative value of issues. Everywhere in Unionist society and in
+the Irish Unionist Press there was ungenerous and unfriendly criticism
+which did much harm.
+
+Two things could have checked these forces for evil. The first would
+have been an immediate decision to make Home Rule law. This would have
+put an end to the pestilent growth of suspicion among Nationalists, and
+it would have enabled Redmond to launch at once his appeal for soldiers.
+The other would have been a decision to make good the pledge contained
+in the Government's message to Lord Aberdeen and to accept in some
+practical way the offered service of the Volunteers.
+
+The latter of these courses involved no controversy with Ulster, and to
+it Redmond first addressed himself. He made constant appeals in private
+to Ministers; he was angry and disappointed over the delay: and after a
+week he thought it necessary to raise the matter in the House. He asked
+the Prime Minister whether British Territorials were to be sent to
+Ireland to replace the troops which had been withdrawn--a step which
+would have been equivalent to a rejection of his offer. On this point he
+received satisfaction; Territorials would not be sent. He asked then if
+the Prime Minister could not say at once what steps would be taken to
+arm and equip the Volunteers. Mr. Asquith's reply emphasized the great
+difficulty which stood in the way. "I do not say," he added, "that it is
+insuperable." The first part was the voice of Lord Kitchener; the
+second, the voice of the Government which had sent the telegram of
+August 8th.
+
+In the War Office the desire to give the National Volunteers as far as
+possible what they wanted did not exist, and the Government, who had
+that desire, had not the determination to enforce it. Such a position
+can never be for long concealed. Let it be remembered, too, that all
+through these days there was proceeding in Dublin a public inquiry into
+the events of the Howth gun-running and the affray at Bachelor's Walk,
+and some measure of Redmond's difficulties may be obtained.
+
+Nevertheless, his policy was winning: and when Parliament rose for an
+adjournment, he spent his first Sunday in Ireland motoring to
+Maryborough, where he inspected a great muster of Volunteers, and was
+able to speak to them with gladness of the response to his appeal.
+
+"From every part of Ireland I have had assurances from the Irish
+Volunteers that they are ready to fulfil this duty: and from every
+part--perhaps better and happier still--evidences of a desire on the
+part of men who in the past have been divided from us to come in at this
+hour of danger."
+
+He told his audience how a battalion of that famous regiment, the
+Inniskilling Fusiliers, had been escorted through the town of
+Enniskillen, in which Orange and Green have always been equally and
+sharply divided, by combined bodies of the Irish and Ulster Volunteer
+Forces. Then turning to the question of equipment, and reminding them
+that the proclamation against importing arms had been withdrawn, he
+announced that he had secured several thousand rifles to distribute.[4]
+He went on then to pledge himself--it must be said with characteristic
+overconfidence--as to the intentions of the Government: "The
+Government--which has withdrawn its troops from Ireland and which has
+refused to send English Territorials to take their place--is about to
+arm, equip and drill a large number of Irish Volunteers." Very soon, he
+told them, every man in the force would have a rifle--and this involved
+a grave responsibility, and the need for discipline in the work which
+was laid upon them.
+
+"I wish them God-speed with their work. It is the holiest work that men
+can undertake, to maintain the freedom and the rights and to uphold the
+peace, the order and safety of their own nation. You ought to be
+proud--you, the sons and the grandsons of men who were shot down for
+daring to arm themselves--you ought to be proud that you have lived to
+see the day when with the good will of the democracy of England you are
+arming yourselves in the light of heaven."
+
+The note of exultation in this passage rings again and again through his
+utterances. He saw, or thought he saw, the symbol of achieved liberty in
+the muster of young men, ready to take up the sword, and no longer
+branded with the name of felons for so doing. Nor was he alone in his
+rejoicing. The host at that meeting was a great Irish landlord, Colonel
+Sir Hutcheson Poe. He, upon reading Redmond's speech of August 4th had
+written to the Press saying that since he was too old to serve he was
+taking steps to arm and equip a hundred National Volunteers. Now, in
+Redmond's presence, addressing a body of the Volunteers, he told them
+what he thought of Redmond's action.
+
+"That five minutes' speech did more to compose our differences, to unite
+all Irishmen in a bond of friendship and good will, than could have been
+accomplished by years of agitation or by a conference, however
+well-intentioned it might be."
+
+That was a notable tribute from one of the eight men who formed the
+historic Land Conference of 1902; and Sir Hutcheson Poe was not the man
+to rest on complimentary expressions. He set to work at once to promote
+a memorial praying for joint action between Ulster and the Irish
+Volunteers and for settlement of the political question which alone
+prevented such action.
+
+Unhappily, this was not easy of accomplishment. When the House
+reassembled after its adjournment of a fortnight, negotiations were
+resumed, with the result that on August 31st the Prime Minister asked
+for a fresh adjournment for ten days, at the end of which time the
+Government hoped to be able to produce satisfactory proposals as to the
+Irish and Welsh Bills. Redmond felt himself obliged to enter a protest.
+It had been agreed that the circumstances of the war should not be
+allowed to inflict political injury on any party in the House; and he
+would give the friendliest consideration to any proposal for giving to
+the Opposition what they might have gained by a discussion on the
+Amending Bill.
+
+"But we must emphatically say that any proposal which would have the
+effect of depriving us of the enactment of the Irish measure--and I
+presume I may say the same with reference to the Welsh measure--an
+enactment to which we were entitled practically automatically when the
+circumstances of the war arose, would do infinite mischief, and would be
+warmly resented by us.
+
+"Just let me say one word more. There has arisen in Ireland the greatest
+opportunity that has ever arisen in the history of the connection
+between the two countries for a thorough reconciliation between the
+people of Ireland and the people of this country. There is to-day, I
+venture to say, a feeling of friendliness to this country, and a desire
+to join hands in supporting the interests of this country such as were
+never to be found in the past; and I do say with all respect, that it
+would be not only a folly, but a crime, if that opportunity were in any
+degree marred or wasted by any action which this country might take. I
+ask this House--and I ask all sections of the House--to take such a
+course as will enable me to go back to Ireland to translate into
+vigorous action the spirit of the words I used here a few days ago."
+
+An angry scene followed. Mr. Balfour asked whether "it was possible
+decently to introduce subjects of acute discussion in present
+circumstances"--in other words, whether all mention of Home Rule must
+not be postponed till after the war. This provoked hot debate, checked
+only by a strong appeal from the Prime Minister. But the general effect
+was not reassuring to Ireland. The contrast with the Tsar's prompt grant
+of autonomy to Poland was sharply drawn. Nobody rated high the chances
+of an amicable agreement. On September 4th Sir Edward Carson outlined
+his views in Belfast. Home Rule "will never be law in our country." But
+"in the interests of the State and of the Empire we will postpone active
+measures." This indicated sufficiently that in his judgment the Bill
+might become law, and that they would not be encouraged to set up
+immediate resistance. The Prime Minister, as chief Minister of the
+nation, must be supported in the war at all costs.
+
+Next day, renewing at Coleraine his appeal for recruits, he said:
+
+"We are not going to abate one jot or tittle of our opposition to Home
+Rule, and when you come back from serving your country you will be just
+as determined as you will find us at home."
+
+This was the answer to Redmond's proposal of fraternization. Clearly Sir
+Edward Carson had made up his mind that he could not prevent the passage
+of the Bill, and he decided upon the strongest course, which was to
+advocate unlimited support to the war. Any other course would have been
+ruinous to his cause, which depended always upon a profession of the
+extremest loyalty. Yet only a strong man, confident in his leadership,
+could have taken this line at a moment when Ulstermen were about to feel
+that all their preparations were wasted and that the game had been won
+against them by a paralysing chance.
+
+Before the House reassembled there was a meeting at the Carlton Club; a
+report communicated to the Press attributed these words to Sir Edward
+Carson--they are typical of the tone of the time:
+
+"We asked for no terms and we got none. We did not object to go under
+the War Office. We did not make speeches calculated to humbug or
+deceive while we meant to do nothing."
+
+On September 15th Government announced its intentions. Both Bills were
+to be placed on the Statute Book, but their operation deferred till the
+end of twelve months, or, if the war were not then over, till the end of
+the war. During the suspensory period Government would introduce an
+Amending Bill. Mr. Asquith made a flattering reference to Sir Edward
+Carson's action in appealing to his organization for recruits, and
+admitted that "it might be said that the Ulstermen had been put at a
+disadvantage by the loyal and patriotic action which they had
+undertaken."--This meant that their preparations for resistance to Mr.
+Asquith's Government were disorganized.--He proceeded to promise that
+they should never have need of such preparations; they should get all
+the preparations aimed at without having to use them.
+
+"I say, speaking again on behalf of the Government, that in our view,
+under the conditions which now exist--we must all recognize the
+atmosphere which this great patriotic spirit has created in the
+country--the employment of force, any kind of force, for what you call
+the coercion of Ulster, is an absolutely unthinkable thing. So far as I
+am concerned, and so far as my colleagues are concerned--I speak for
+them, for I know their unanimous feeling--that is a thing we would never
+countenance or consent to."
+
+This utterance has dominated the situation from that day to this. Ulster
+had organized to rebel, sooner than come under an Irish Parliament; and
+had refrained from rebellion because the Great War was in progress. For
+this reason Ulster should never be coerced, no matter what might happen.
+Sir Edward Carson's line of action had secured an enormous concession:
+he might have gone back to his people and said, "We have won." But he
+was strong enough to represent it as a new outrage, which they for the
+sake of loyalty must in the hour of common danger submit to endure. By
+this course, risky for himself, he vastly improved their position in all
+future negotiation.--After a violent speech from Mr. Bonar Law the Tory
+party walked out of the House in a body.
+
+Redmond rose at once. He denounced the view that Ireland had gained an
+advantage, or desired to gain one. The Prime Minister had at every stage
+assured him that the Bill would be put on the Statute Book in that
+session, and therefore it was unjust to say that his loyalty was only
+conditional; he had asked for nothing that was not won in advance. Now,
+instead of an Act to become immediately operative, Ireland received one
+with at least a year's delay. Yet this moratorium did not seem to him
+unreasonable.
+
+"When everybody is preoccupied by the war and when everyone is
+endeavouring--and the endeavour will be made as enthusiastically in
+Ireland as anywhere else in the United Kingdom--to bring about the
+creation of an Army, the idea is absurd that under these circumstances a
+new Government and a new Parliament could be erected in Ireland."
+
+Further, it gave time for healing work. The two things that he cared for
+most "in this world of politics" were: first, that "not a single sod of
+Irish soil and not a single citizen of the Irish nation" should be
+excluded from the operation of Irish self-government; secondly, that no
+coercion should be applied to any single county in Ireland to force
+their submission.
+
+The latter of these ideals was cast up to him by many in Ireland, first
+in private grumblings, afterwards with public iteration. He saw and
+admitted, what these critics urged, that the one aspiration made the
+other impossible of fulfilment, for the moment. Would it be so, he
+asked, after an interval in which Ulstermen and other Irishmen,
+Nationalist and Unionist, would be found fighting and dying side by side
+on the battlefield on the Continent, and at home, as he hoped and
+believed, drilling shoulder to shoulder for the defence of the shores of
+their own country?
+
+On that hint he renewed his appeal to the Ulster Volunteers for
+co-operation and regretted that he had got no response from them. More
+than that, he urged that his appeal to Government had got no response.
+"If they had done something to arm, equip and drill a certain number at
+any rate of the National Volunteers the recruiting probably would have
+been faster than it had been." Alluding to the taunts at Ireland's
+shirking which had been bandied about in interruptions during the
+debate, he recalled the stories which already had come back from France
+of Irish valour; of the Munster Fusiliers who stood by their guns all
+day and in the end dragged them back to their lines themselves; the
+story told by wounded French soldiers who had seen the Irish Guards
+charge three German regiments with the bayonet, singing a strange song
+that the Frenchmen had never heard before--"something about God saving
+Ireland."
+
+"I saw these men," said Redmond, "marching through London on their way
+to the station; they marched here past this building singing 'God save
+Ireland!'"
+
+But he could not rest his claim, and had no intention of resting it,
+merely on the prowess of the Irish regulars already in the army.
+
+"Speaking personally for myself, I do not think it is an exaggeration to
+say that on hundreds of platforms in this country during the last few
+years I have publicly promised, not only for myself, but in the name of
+my country, that when the rights of Ireland were admitted by the
+democracy of England, Ireland would become the strongest arm in the
+defence of the Empire. The test has come sooner than I, or anyone,
+expected. I tell the Prime Minister that this test will be honourably
+met. I say for myself that I would feel myself personally dishonoured
+if I did not say to my fellow-countrymen as I say to them here to-day,
+and as I will say from the public platform when I go back to Ireland,
+that it is their duty, and should be their honour, to take their place
+in the fighting-line in this contest."
+
+That was a clear pledge. The Home Rule Bill received the Royal Assent on
+September 18th. But before the seal was affixed Redmond's manifesto to
+the Irish people was in all the newspapers. It was his call to arms.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 3: This fact was verified for me oddly enough. When the 16th
+Division went to France, it was put through the usual period of
+apprenticeship with trained troops, and our brigade was attached for
+training to the Scottish Fifteenth Division. Two companies of our
+battalion of the 6th Connaught Rangers were attached to the 8th and 9th
+K.O.S.B. I met two officers who had been in Dublin on July 26th, and it
+was one of these who told me of the cheering. Perhaps I may add that the
+relations between our Connaught Rangers and the Scots were most
+friendly, and that we found probably a hundred Irish Catholics in that
+battalion--Irishmen living in the North of England who had at once
+rushed to enlist in the nearest corps available.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Bought in Belgium by John O'Connor M.P., and T.M. Kettle,
+after the Germans had entered Brussels.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE RAISING OF THE IRISH BRIGADES
+
+I
+
+
+At the ending of the long session of Parliament in 1914 there was a
+curious scene in the House of Commons, where members were crowded to
+assist at the formal passing of the Irish and Welsh Bills. On the
+adjournment, Mr. Will Crooks, from his seat on the front bench below the
+gangway, called out, "Mr. Speaker, would it be in order to sing 'God
+save the King'?" and without more ado uplifted his voice and the House
+chimed in. There must have been strange thoughts in the minds of
+Redmond, of Mr. Dillon, and others of the Irish, standing in the places
+where they had fought so long and bitter a battle, where they had been
+so often the object of fierce reproaches, whence they had hurled back so
+many taunts, now to find themselves the centre of congratulation, and
+joined with English members in singing on the floor of the House that
+national anthem which in Ireland had been for decades a symbol of
+ascendancy, rigidly tabooed by every Nationalist.
+
+When the singing ended, Mr. Crooks's genial voice rose again. "God save
+Ireland!" he shouted.
+
+"And God save England too!" Redmond answered.
+
+That exchange of words outside the period of debate is, contrary to
+usage but very properly, recorded in Hansard.
+
+From this time forth Redmond was on his trial. He had given pledges; he
+must make good to Ireland and make good to Great Britain. For the first,
+since Home Rule could not be brought into operation, he must secure
+recognition of the National Volunteers, must establish and regularize
+their status; for the second, he must obtain recruits as Ireland's
+contribution to the war. The two proposals were in his view--and indeed
+were in reality--inseparably connected. For both, in order to succeed,
+he needed to have the cordial support of his fellow-countrymen; for
+both, he needed whole-hearted co-operation from the British Government.
+It would be too much to say that Ireland backed him cordially; but for
+the limitation of Ireland's response the fault lay chiefly and primarily
+with the Government, which failed him completely. The War Office could
+not actually and directly oppose his effort to raise troops; what they
+could do was to hamper him by the adoption of wrong methods and the
+refusal of right ones. Yet in that part of his task which involved
+making good to England, laying England and the Empire under a debt of
+living gratitude, his appeal was made to Ireland, and he succeeded so
+far that only Ireland herself could have destroyed his work. But on the
+other point, which involved gaining satisfaction for Ireland, the appeal
+was made to Government and the refusal was complete. It was worse than
+absolute, for it was tainted with bad faith. Mr. Asquith as Prime
+Minister accepted the mutual covenant which Redmond had proposed, and
+allowed Lord Kitchener to disallow fulfilment of it.
+
+Redmond's view was not limited to Ireland's interest. No man living in
+these islands felt more keenly for the great underlying principles at
+issue in the war. His mission, as he conceived it, was to lead Ireland
+to serve those principles. But it was futile to suppose that he could
+secure for England all that England expected of Ireland if he could
+obtain from England nothing of what Ireland asked. Redmond wanted
+recognition for the Volunteers chiefly as a basis upon which Ireland
+could feel that she was building an Irish army worthy of her record in
+arms; and this army would be no mean assistance to the nations allied
+against Germany's aggression. Considering all the facts which have to be
+set out, the true cause for wonder is not the limitation but the extent
+of his success.
+
+There was neither delay nor uncertainty in his exposition of Ireland's
+duty. Quite literally, he seized the first chance that came to his hand.
+He left London on the evening when the Act was signed, motored to
+Holyhead, as he liked to do, in the big car which his friends had
+presented to him--it was the only material testimonial which he ever
+received--and crossed by the night boat, driving on in the morning to
+Aughavanagh. When he reached the Vale of Ovoca he found a muster of the
+East Wicklow Volunteers. These were the nearest thing to him in all the
+force--his own friends and neighbours from the Wicklow hills. Aughrim,
+his post-town at the foot of his own particular valley, had its company,
+commanded by a friend of his, the local schoolmaster--typical of what
+was best in the Volunteers, a keen Gaelic Leaguer, tireless in, work for
+the old language and old history. This man, well on in the forties, but
+mountain-bred and hardy, had thrown himself into the new
+movement--little guessing that a few months would see him a private in
+the British Army, or that he would come with honour to command a company
+of a famous Irish regiment on the battlefields of a European war.
+
+If it had been only for the sake of Captain MacSweeny (he was then, of
+course, only a captain of Volunteers), I think Redmond would have
+stopped. But it was a gathering of many friends, who pressed him to
+speak at a moment when his heart was full. Grave results followed from
+what he said that day; but a week sooner or later he was bound to say
+these things, and the results were bound to follow. Here is the pith of
+his utterance:
+
+     "I know that you will make efficient soldiers. Efficient for what?
+     Wicklow Volunteers, in spite of the peaceful happiness and beauty
+     of the scene in which we stand, remember this country at this
+     moment is in a state of war, and the duty of the manhood of Ireland
+     is twofold. Its duty is at all cost to defend the shores of Ireland
+     from foreign invasion. It has a duty more than that, of taking care
+     that Irish valour proves itself on the field of war as it has
+     always proved itself in the past. The interests of Ireland, of the
+     whole of Ireland, are at stake in this war. This war is undertaken
+     in defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and
+     right, and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country, a
+     reproach to her manhood, and a denial of the lessons of her
+     history, if young Ireland confined their efforts to remaining at
+     home to defend the shores of Ireland from an unlikely invasion, or
+     should shrink from the duty of proving on the field of battle that
+     gallantry and courage which have distinguished their race all
+     through all its history. I say to you, therefore, your duty is
+     twofold. I am glad to see such magnificent material for soldiers
+     around me, and I say to you: go on drilling and make yourselves
+     efficient for the work, and then account for yourselves as men, not
+     only in Ireland itself, but wherever the firing-line extends, in
+     defence of right and freedom and religion in this war."
+
+On the following Thursday Mr. Asquith, as Redmond had publicly urged him
+to do, came to Dublin and spoke at the Mansion House with the Lord Mayor
+in the chair. Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin, as well as Redmond, were on the
+same platform and spoke also. The papers of September 25th, which
+reported the speeches of this notable gathering, contained also a
+manifesto from twenty members of the original Committee of the
+Volunteers, definitely breaking with Redmond's policy and taking his
+speech to the Wicklow Volunteers as their cause of action. Having
+recited a version of the facts which led up to the inclusion of
+Redmond's nominees on the Committee, it continued:
+
+     "Mr. Redmond, addressing a body of Irish Volunteers on last Sunday,
+     has now announced for the Irish Volunteers a policy and programme
+     fundamentally at variance with their own published and accepted
+     aims and objects, but with which his nominees are, of course,
+     identified. He has declared it to be the duty of the Irish
+     Volunteers to take foreign service under a Government which is not
+     Irish. He has made this announcement without consulting the
+     Provisional Committee, the Volunteers themselves, or the people of
+     Ireland, to whose service alone they are devoted."
+
+The next paragraph announced the expulsion of Redmond's nominees and the
+reconstitution of the Committee as it existed before their admission.
+Six resolutions followed. It is noteworthy that the attitude taken up
+with regard to autonomy was simply "to oppose any diminution of the
+measure of Irish self-government which now exists as a Statute on
+paper," and to repudiate any "consent to the legislative dismemberment
+of Ireland." There was no word of an Irish Republic and no explicit
+claim beyond immediate operation for the Home Rule Act.
+
+Ireland's attitude towards the war was defined by a resolution:
+
+     "To declare that Ireland cannot, with honour or safety, take part
+     in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a
+     National Government of her own; and to repudiate the claim of any
+     man to offer up the blood and lives of the sons of Irishmen and
+     Irishwomen to the service of the British Empire while no National
+     Government which could speak and act for the people of Ireland is
+     allowed to exist."
+
+Mr. Asquith, when he spoke on Thursday night, must have been informed
+that this split was imminent, and he spoke with a view to that
+situation. He said:
+
+     "Speaking here in Dublin, I address myself for a moment
+     particularly to the National Volunteers, and I am going to ask them
+     all over Ireland--not only them, but I make the appeal to them
+     particularly--to contribute with promptitude and enthusiasm a large
+     and worthy contingent of recruits to the second new army of half a
+     million which is now growing up, as it were, out of the ground. I
+     should like to see, and we all want to see, an Irish Brigade--or,
+     better still, an Irish Army Corps. Don't let them be afraid that by
+     joining the colours they will lose their identity and become
+     absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or what is perhaps equally
+     repugnant, be artificially redistributed into units which have no
+     national cohesion or character.
+
+     "We shall, to the utmost limit that military expediency will allow,
+     see that men who have been already associated in this or that
+     district in training and in common exercises shall be kept together
+     and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them.
+     One thing further. We are in urgent need of competent officers, and
+     when the officers now engaged in training these men prove equal to
+     the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly
+     and gratefully retained. But, I repeat, gentlemen, the Empire needs
+     recruits and needs them at once. They may be fully trained and
+     equipped in time to take their part in what may prove to be the
+     decisive field in the greatest struggle of the history of the
+     world. That is our immediate necessity, and no Irishman in
+     responding to it need be afraid he is jeopardizing the future of
+     the Volunteers.
+
+     "I do not say, and I cannot say, under what precise form of
+     organization it will be, but I trust and I believe--indeed, I am
+     sure--that the Volunteers will become a permanent, an integral and
+     characteristic part of the defensive forces of the Crown.
+
+     "I have only one more word to say. Though our need is great, your
+     opportunity is also great. The call which I am making is backed by
+     the sympathy of your fellow-Irishmen in all parts of the Empire and
+     of the world.... There is no question of compulsion or bribery.
+     What we want, what we ask, what we believe you are ready and eager
+     to give, is the freewill offering of a free people."
+
+     This was a double pledge as to Redmond's two objects. It promised,
+     first, that every inducement should be given to join a corps
+     distinctively Irish and having national cohesion and character;
+     secondly, that the Volunteers should obtain recognition as part of
+     the defensive forces of the Crown. Over and above this was an
+     assurance of enormous importance. There was to be no question of
+     compulsion. Nothing was asked, nothing would be asked, but "the
+     freewill offering of a free people."
+
+Lord Meath followed, a representative figure of Unionist Ireland and a
+most zealous promoter of recruiting. Then Redmond spoke, and as usual
+dwelt on Ireland's contribution to the forces of the Regular Army so far
+actually engaged, which was fully adequate in numbers. "As to quality,
+let Sir John French answer for that, and let my friend and
+fellow-countryman Admiral Beatty from Wexford speak from
+Heligoland."--Nothing gave him more pleasure at all times than to dwell
+on the personal achievement of Irishmen; his voice kindled when he named
+such names.--He went on to give confident assurance, having in it the
+note of defiant answer to the revolt which had been raised:
+
+"I tell the Prime Minister he will get here plenty of recruits and of
+the best material. We will maintain here in Ireland intact and inviolate
+our Irish National Volunteers, and in my judgment that body of
+Volunteers will prove to be an inexhaustible source of strength to the
+new army corps and the new army that is being created."
+
+Then, with disdainful reference to the "little handful of pro-Germans"
+who had "raised their voices in Ireland," he declared that it would be
+no less absurd to consider them representative than to take General
+Beyers and not General Botha as expressing the sentiments of South
+Africa.
+
+Yet, as we know, the danger in South Africa was serious, and South
+Africa possessed freedom, not the promise of freedom. General Botha had
+what Redmond was denied--power to act and act promptly. In Ireland the
+menace was far less grave at this moment, but it was destined to become
+overpowering because Redmond lacked the power to deal with the situation
+in his own way. Already much had been lost. Between the declaration of
+war and the passage of the Home Rule Bill more than six weeks had been
+allowed to elapse in which nothing was done in response to Redmond's
+proposal, except the purely negative decision that Territorials should
+not be sent to garrison Ireland. This inevitably strengthened the hand
+of those who never liked the offer he had made. From the first an accent
+of dissent from the new policy was plainly distinguishable in what came
+from the Committee of the Volunteers. Mr. Bulmer Hobson says of the
+famous speech of August 4th:
+
+     "This statement amounted to an unconditional offer of the services
+     of the Irish Volunteers to the English Government, and was made
+     without any consultation with the Volunteers themselves. The first
+     that members of the Provisional Committee heard of their being
+     offered to the Government was when they read it in the newspapers,
+     and Mr. Redmond's nominees on the Committee were as much surprised
+     as the older members. At the next meeting of the Standing
+     Committee, held a couple of days later, the nominated members
+     strove hard to induce us to endorse Redmond's offer. The utmost
+     they could get, however, notwithstanding their clear party
+     majority, was a statement of 'the complete readiness of the Irish
+     Volunteers to take joint action with the Ulster Volunteer Force for
+     the defence of Ireland.' Further than that the older members of the
+     Committee declined to go. This statement in reality committed, and
+     was meant to commit, the Volunteers to nothing, though it was
+     interpreted by the Press as a complete endorsement of Mr. Redmond's
+     policy."
+
+At the beginning of the war, there were two strong currents of desire in
+the Volunteer body and its backers. One sought that the Volunteers
+should retain complete freedom of action and in no way be brought under
+the War Office. The other craved to see them trained and armed with the
+least possible delay. Colonel Moore,[5] who was the chief of their
+military staff at this time, says Mr. Hobson, saw no way of
+accomplishing the latter object without the assistance of the military
+authorities. Other men, who had come in since Redmond's speech,
+impressed on the public that without legal recognition from the Crown no
+Volunteer could act against the Germans in case of a landing without
+exposing himself and others to the penalties which Germany was
+inflicting in Belgium wherever the civilian population fired a shot. As
+a result, negotiations were opened in August 1914 with the Irish
+Command, and Colonel Moore, in concert with General Paget's staff, drew
+up a scheme for training the Irish and Ulster Volunteers and for using
+them when trained for a short term of garrison duty in Ireland. The
+scheme was submitted to the Provisional Committee, who added conditions
+designed to lead to rejection by the War Office; and in the upshot
+Colonel Moore's proposals were refused by Lord Kitchener on one side and
+by the Standing Committee of Volunteers on the other.
+
+Redmond was of course aware of the failure of this scheme, and took up
+the matter personally. He wrote to the Chief Secretary:
+
+     HOUSE OF COMMONS,
+
+     _September 9, 1914. Private_.
+
+     MY DEAR MR. BIRRELL,
+
+     I am very anxious to put shortly before you on paper my views with
+     reference to the Volunteer question, which we discussed with the
+     Prime Minister to-day. I take so strong a view on the subject that
+     I think I must ask you to show him this letter and to urge upon him
+     the importance of getting the War Office to move. I know the
+     influences that are at work in the War Office throwing cold water
+     on the Volunteers and causing intense dissatisfaction in Ireland by
+     unnecessary delays.
+
+     What I suggest should be done is this: There are two separate
+     questions: (1) Recruits; and (2) Volunteers for Home Defence.
+
+     The first absolutely depends upon the way in which the second is
+     treated. If the existing Volunteer organization is ignored and
+     sneered at and made little of, recruiting in the country will not
+     go ahead.
+
+     On the other hand, if the Volunteers are properly treated, I
+     believe that recruiting will go ahead.
+
+     Now, my suggestion is this: that an announcement should be made
+     immediately that the War Office are taking steps to assist in the
+     equipment and arming and instructing of a certain number of the
+     Irish Volunteers for Home Defence, and that this will be done
+     without interfering in any way with the character or organization
+     of the existing Volunteer Force.
+
+     Carrying out this programme will really not stand in the way of the
+     preparing of the new Army. All that is required is a few thousand
+     rifles, and there are plenty of them in the military stores in
+     Ireland at this moment which are not being used and will not be
+     used, because they are too old, in the training of the recruits,
+     but which would be quite suitable for making a beginning at any
+     rate in the drilling of the Volunteers. It might be stated that
+     they would be replaced by better weapons gradually, as soon as the
+     rush was over.
+
+     A few instructors should be placed at the disposal of the
+     Volunteers.[6]
+
+     If this is done, intense satisfaction will be given all through the
+     country, and the pride and sentiment of the Volunteers will be
+     touched, and the appeal for recruits generally through the country,
+     and even in the ranks of the Volunteers themselves, will, I am
+     confident, be responded to.
+
+     But, as I have said, if this course is not taken, inevitably
+     recruiting will flag.
+
+     I would earnestly beg of you to take this matter vigorously in
+     hand, so that some satisfactory announcement may be made before I
+     return to Ireland next week.
+
+     Very truly yours,
+
+     RIGHT HON. A. BIRRELL, M.P. J.E. REDMOND.
+
+
+Mr. Asquith's speech on September 24th was at least an indication that
+the Prime Minister desired to act in the spirit of Redmond's
+suggestions. The Chief Secretary was of the same disposition. But
+neither of them was able to control the imperious colleague who now had
+taken charge of the Army, and who in the most critical moment thwarted
+effectually the designs of Liberal statesmanship in Ireland.
+
+After Redmond's death an "Appreciation" published in _The Times_ (with
+the signature "A.B.,") by Mr. Birrell, contained this passage:
+
+     "He felt to the very end, bitterly and intensely, the stupidity of
+     the War Office. Had he been allowed to deflect the routine
+     indifference and suspicion of the War Office from its old ruts into
+     the deep-cut channels of Irish feelings and sentiments, he might
+     have carried his countrymen with him, but he jumped first and tried
+     to make his bargain afterwards and failed accordingly. English
+     people, as their wont is, gushed over him as an Irish patriot and
+     flouted him as an Irish statesman. Had he and his brother been put
+     in charge of the Irish Nationalist contingents, and an Ulster man,
+     or men, been put in a corresponding position over the Irish
+     Protestant contingents, all might have gone well. Lord Kitchener,
+     who was under the delusion that he was an Irishman no less than
+     Redmond, was the main, though not the only obstacle in the path of
+     good sense and good feeling."
+
+Yet it is, to say the least, not clear why Lord Kitchener should have
+been allowed to be an obstacle. Redmond was not fortunate in his allies.
+He had set an example of generous courage; it was not followed by
+British statesmen.
+
+From the very outset of his campaign in Ireland he had two hostilities
+to meet. The first was that of the section which had always been opposed
+to him--the Unionist party. Into this block he had already driven a
+wedge. The _Irish Times_, its principal organ in the South and West, was
+now backing him heartily, and, as has been seen, not a few leading
+Unionists were doing their utmost to assist. But the real opposition,
+that of Ulster, was in no way conciliated. On September 28th, "Covenant
+Day," a great meeting was held at which the Ulstermen denounced what
+they called the Government's treachery, and declared their implacable
+determination never to submit to Home Rule. Mr. Bonar Law for the
+British Unionists proclaimed that whereas heretofore his party were
+willing to be bound by the verdict of a general election, they now
+withdrew that condition, and without any reservation would support
+Ulster in whatever course it chose to adopt.
+
+In a purely partisan sense these speeches, and this attitude, did
+Redmond no harm in his campaign with Nationalists. When a certain
+section of Home Rulers were clamouring that he had been tricked and
+betrayed by the Government, had given all and got nothing, it was a good
+rejoinder to point to the fact that in Ulster's opinion the opportunity
+had been used to gain an unfair victory for Home Rule. But Redmond from
+the outbreak of the war had no concern with party or partisan arguments.
+He wanted a real truce, an end of bitterness, in Ireland.
+
+There was, moreover, a feature of the Ulster propaganda in these days
+which disturbed him. General Richardson, a retired Indian officer, who
+had chief command of the Ulster Volunteer Force, in appealing for
+recruits, urged the Volunteers "to recollect the events of March last
+and what the Navy and Army did for Ulster. They came to the help of
+Ulster in the day of trouble, and would come again." He added his
+assurance to the Volunteers that "when the war was over, and their ranks
+were reinforced by some 12,000 men, thoroughly well trained and with
+vast field experience, they would return to the attack and relegate Home
+Rule to the devil."
+
+It did not assist Redmond in gaining recruits for the Army that a
+general officer should represent the services as trusty and proven
+allies of gentlemen whose leading idea in life was to relegate Home Rule
+to such a destination The average Nationalist civilian did not easily
+discriminate between what was said by a retired officer out of
+commission and what was said by officers in uniform. There was a
+tendency to regard General Richardson as speaking of right for the
+Army--for which Nationalist recruits were desired.
+
+The Liberal Government could not help Redmond to allay Ulster or
+Unionist hostility. One thing they could do; they could ensure that
+whatever concession or privilege was extended to those who followed Sir
+Edward Carson should be equally accorded to those who followed Redmond.
+This one thing which they could have done they did not do. They allowed
+the War Office to increase the arrogance of the Ulstermen and to weaken
+Redmond's hand, giving Ulster special privileges, which inevitably
+created jealousy and suspicion in Nationalist Ireland--as shall be shown
+in detail.
+
+But first it is necessary to indicate the other element of
+hostility--far more serious than that of Ulster, because it challenged
+Redmond's leadership. It was that of the extremist group, which rapidly
+began to welcome German successes, not for any love to Germany but
+because it could not conceive of any hope for Ireland except in the
+weakening or Destruction of British power. These men, as been already
+seen, had acquired an influence in the Volunteer Force out of all
+proportion to their numbers, owing to the fact that the Irish party had
+stood aloof from the movement in its early stages. Professor MacNeill
+said later that but for the Gaelic League and the Gaelic Athletic
+Association there would have been no Irish Volunteers. The bulk of both
+these bodies was always antagonistic to the parliamentary movement. When
+their opposition openly declared itself, in consequence of the East
+Wicklow speech, Redmond was not sorry to have a clear issue raised,
+involving a formal breach. In a public letter to Colonel Moore he wrote
+that he read "this extraordinary manifesto with feelings of great
+relief," because communications from all parts of the country had forced
+him to the conclusion that so long as the signatories to this document
+remained members of the governing body, "no practical work could be done
+to put the Volunteer organization on a real business basis."
+
+By a real "business basis" he meant that the Volunteers should be made a
+defensive force to act in concert with the troops engaged in the war.
+That was the clear issue. You must be for the troops or against them. In
+these days the official attitude of those who signed the dissenting
+manifesto was that Ireland should be neutral. But at such a crisis, as
+Mr. Dillon said in a telling phrase, a man who calls himself a neutral
+"is either an enemy or a coward."
+
+It became only too clear later that we had to do with a body of men who
+were enemies and were certainly not cowards. Their number at this moment
+was difficult to determine. What immediately revealed itself was that
+the vast majority of the Volunteers, when choice was forced on them,
+adhered to Redmond.
+
+The case of my own constituency, Galway City, may be given as typical,
+though rather of the towns than of the country. The country-side was
+apathetic; the towns were both for and against Redmond's policy. In
+Galway, Sinn Fein had a strong hold on the college of the National
+University, but, on the other hand, the depot of the Connaught Rangers
+was just outside the city at Renmore, and that famous corps had many
+partisans; while in the fishing village of the Claddagh nearly every man
+was a naval reservist.
+
+I came to Galway on the day the Home Rule Bill was signed and attended a
+couple of Volunteer drills, where I noted the activity of some young men
+going round with a password: "For whom will you serve?" "For Ireland
+only." After the publication of the dissenting manifesto a Committee was
+called, and I obtained leave to be present. There was a sharp
+discussion, and at the finish the vote was a tie, whether to support
+Redmond or the dissentients. This did not at all please me or my
+friends, so we determined to have a big general meeting to see on which
+side public support really lay. Everybody was invited, and a great many
+people could not get into the hall; this mattered the less because the
+Sinn Feiners cut the electric wires leading to the building and plunged
+us in darkness; luckily, it was a fine night, and we took the meeting
+outside with great success. A couple of interruptions were drastically
+dealt with, and complete peace then prevailed. Two of the four county
+members were among the many speakers, and the last man to address the
+meeting was a wounded Connaught Ranger back from the line. We cheered
+for the Rangers, and then we cheered for the King; the local band was
+present, but unable, though quite willing, to assist at this point.
+"Isn't it a pity," the chief bandsman said to me, "there was three of us
+knew the tune well, but they've all gone to the front, and not a one of
+us ever heard it."
+
+But as a net result the original Volunteer organization was killed. The
+pick of the young and keen who were with us went off to the war; the
+young and keen who stayed kept up an organization with very different
+purposes. There was plenty of material in Galway and everywhere else to
+build up a volunteer corps such as Redmond desired to see; but the
+organizing spirits were in the opposite camp, and our friends did not
+interest themselves in what seemed to be a kind of play-acting when such
+serious business was afoot in the world. Had they been set to duties of
+coast patrol, under officers who were available on the spot, and given
+clear recognition as part of the defensive forces, their body would have
+been alive and active; as it was, it atrophied and grew inert. Broadly
+speaking, the same was true all over the country. Redmond was willing to
+make bricks for the War Office to build with; they insisted that he
+should make them without straw.
+
+Facts directly connected with recruiting ultimately convinced the
+British public that the War Office had spoilt a great opportunity in
+Ireland. But the fundamental blunder, the deep-seated cause which
+undermined the force of Redmond's appeal, was the refusal of recognition
+to the National Volunteers and the failure to fulfil the promise held
+out in Mr. Asquith's Dublin speech.
+
+
+II
+
+The other respects in which the War Office crippled the Nationalist
+efforts after recruiting were matters of detail, not of principle. The
+first and best help which Redmond might expect would have come from his
+colleagues in the party; and all the recruiting authorities in Ireland
+should have been directed to secure that help locally. No such step was
+taken. No attempt was made to enlist Nationalists of position as patrons
+of the recruiting campaign. In Catholic Nationalist districts it was the
+rule rather than the exception to select gentlemen of the Protestant
+Church, and of strong Unionist opinions, as recruiting officers. If
+Catholic Nationalists had been selected as the official agents to assist
+in raising the Ulster Division, there would have been an outcry, and
+very rightly; it would have been contrary to common sense. But the War
+Office, always even obsequiously ready to consider the Ulstermen's point
+of view, completely lacked sympathy for that of the majority in Ireland.
+In some cases the choice of a man locally unpopular on public grounds
+afforded--to speak plainly--an excuse for those leading Nationalists
+who were loath to depart from all the tradition of their lifetime. Some
+of Redmond's colleagues held that they had been "extreme men" all their
+lives, and they thought it too hard that they should be expected to ask
+Irishmen to join the English Army. Yet these same men would have worked
+enthusiastically for the Volunteers, and by sympathy for their comrades
+who went out could have been led into a very different attitude.
+
+Many of them, too, felt an honourable scruple about asking others to do
+what they could not do themselves. As a parliamentary group we were
+under a singular disability. In its early days the Irish party had been,
+what Sinn Fein is now, a party of the young. But so strong was the tie
+of gratitude that service in its ranks became an inheritance, and in
+most cases a man once elected stayed on till he died or resigned. By
+1914, of all parties in the House we had by far the largest proportion
+of men over military age. I question whether three out of the seventy
+could have passed the standard then exacted--for two or three of the
+younger men were medically unfit. In these circumstances the War Office
+would have been well advised to waive a regulation or two to facilitate
+matters; but the rigour of the rules was maintained. One of my
+colleagues, a man in the early forties, offered to join as a private; he
+was refused. In my own case a similar refusal was based on Lord
+Kitchener's personal opinion against that of the Under-secretary for
+War, to whom, as a personal friend, I had written; it took nearly six
+months to get the decision altered; and by that time the value of
+example was much depreciated. The beginning was the chance to give a
+lead.
+
+Far graver was the intolerable delay in forming a corps which should
+appeal definitely to Irish national and Nationalist sentiment. The First
+Army included one Irish Division--the Tenth, destined to a splendid
+history, under a popular commander, Sir Bryan Mahon; but it had no
+specially Nationalist colour, so to say, and no connection with the
+Irish Volunteers. Redmond wanted the counterpart of what had been
+readily granted to Sir Edward Carson; and this was what Mr. Asquith had
+outlined in his speech at Dublin. The Sixteenth Division already
+existed; its commander was appointed on September 17th. But the first
+step to give it the desired character was not taken without long delay,
+and much heart-burning and confusion resulted.
+
+Part of the confusion is attributable to the fact that Redmond, in his
+desire to touch the historic memories connected with the famous corps
+which attained its crowning glory at Fontenoy, always spoke of "a new
+Irish Brigade." But at the Mansion House meeting Mr. Asquith spoke of
+something more than a brigade--an army corps; and Redmond, following
+him, instantly accepted the idea. "I used the word 'brigade' in my
+ignorance--I meant an Irish army corps." There was always present to his
+mind the hope that in some larger formation the Ulster Division might
+find itself shoulder to shoulder with other Irish troops.
+
+Yet intending recruits were puzzled, and Lord Meath, writing to Redmond
+on October 10th that he had formed a Recruiting Committee in Dublin "for
+the purpose of endeavouring to raise the Irish Army Corps for which you
+spoke," reported that men came in asking to know where was the Irish
+Brigade, and refused to join anything else. Lord Meath suggested that
+Redmond should obtain from Lord Kitchener "an official declaration
+sanctioning the enlistment of Irishmen in an Irish Brigade, or Irish
+Army Corps, consisting exclusively of Irish officers and men." He wrote
+again on the 14th, asking that the Prime Minister himself should be
+approached, and on the 17th, in reply to some communication from
+Redmond: "I hope you will insist on some official and unmistakable
+statement that your request has been granted."
+
+The tone of these letters, coming from no fire-eating Nationalist but
+the staunchest of Unionist peers, is sufficient proof that Lord
+Kitchener's action or inaction was resented by those who knew Ireland
+and had the best interests of Ireland at heart. The _Irish Times_ wrote
+in the same sense; and on October 19th a formal attack was launched in
+the _Daily Chronicle_, which drew a sharp contrast with the treatment
+accorded to Ulster. "Up to this hour," the writer said, "the Irish
+Division asked for by Mr. Redmond has been refused sanction by the War
+Office." This was an overstatement, but it was true that up to this time
+such a belief naturally prevailed, because the War Office could not be
+induced to make the desired announcement that sanction had been given.
+Moreover, although the concession had been made, it was made in a very
+different way from that used in dealing with Sir Edward Carson. Redmond
+had no voice whatever in the organization. The choice of a divisional
+commander was of infinite importance; and it fell upon
+Lieutenant-General Sir Lawrence Parsons, K.C.B., an artillery officer of
+great distinction, a man of wide general knowledge and culture and of
+strongly marked individuality. Yet his individuality did not make him
+easy for Redmond to work with. He was not simply a typical professional
+soldier of the old Army; he was an idealist in his profession; and part
+of the professional soldier's idealism is to resent and despise
+political considerations. He recognized that Redmond had spoken and
+acted with a statesman's vision; he failed to recognize that in many
+matters political tactics are necessary to carry out a statesman's plan.
+Also, it was very difficult for him or for any other professional
+soldier to realize that recruiting, under such conditions as then
+prevailed, was a politician's task, not a soldier's, even in Great
+Britain; and that this was tenfold more true of Ireland.
+
+The point requires to be emphasized, because it applies to a greater
+personage--Lord Kitchener himself. I believe that Lord Kitchener
+honestly desired the success of Redmond's mission. To my personal
+knowledge he sent for one officer long known to him and took him from a
+command in which he was comfortably placed and sent him, against his
+will, to raise one of our battalions in a difficult area. The choice was
+absolutely sound, and success was achieved by methods which did not
+always follow strictly the letter of King's Regulations. But these
+departures from rule were quite in accordance with the spirit of the old
+Army, and Lord Kitchener was ready to stand over any of them. He would
+do the best he could for our division on the old lines. He would, I am
+certain, have said that he had done the best thing possible for it in
+appointing to the command an Irishman who was a first-rate soldier and a
+first-rate man to supervise the training of troops. So far as my
+judgment is able to go, the credit for making the Sixteenth Division
+what it was when we went to France belongs chiefly to the divisional
+general under whom we trained.
+
+General Parsons had the gift, which appears to be rare in soldiers, of
+imparting ideas not merely about discipline but about the art of war;
+and he had an enthusiasm which communicated itself. But these were the
+qualities of the soldier in his own sphere, with which Redmond had no
+contact. What Redmond knew was the writer of letters which now lie
+before me. Running through them all is the tone of a soldier in
+authority who accepts assistance from a friendly, influential,
+well-meaning but imperfectly instructed civilian. There is no
+recognition of the fact that Redmond was the accepted leader of a
+Volunteer Force numbering over a hundred thousand men; no glimpse of any
+perception that morally, and almost officially, Redmond was the
+accredited head of the nation in whose name the division was being
+raised--a nation to which the statutory right of self-government had
+just been accorded.
+
+The whole position was extraordinary. Legally and theoretically, Redmond
+was a simple member of Parliament. Practically and morally, he was the
+head of Ireland, exactly as Botha was of South Africa; and he was trying
+to do without legal powers what Botha was doing by means of them. He was
+far more than the Leader of the Opposition in Great Britain; for in
+Ireland there really was no Government. Moral authority, which must
+proceed from consent of the governed, the Irish Government had not
+possessed for many a long day; but its legal status had been
+unimpeachable. Now even that was gone; it was merely a stop-gap
+contrivance, carrying on till the Act of Parliament should receive
+fulfilment; and, as a bare matter of fact, it was powerless. No
+operative decision of any moment was taken or could be taken at this
+moment in Ireland. Everything was referred to the Cabinet, and that body
+had no power to carry out a popular policy in Ireland.
+
+Redmond had put forward a policy which they had accepted in principle.
+It could only be carried out through him, and for success he must be
+consulted in detail. Neither Lord Kitchener nor General Parsons in fact
+recognized the status which this implied. They were prepared to listen
+to suggestions from him; they were not prepared to accept guidance, as
+they must have done had he been Prime Minister of the country.
+
+It was impossible that Redmond's attitude in dealing with General
+Parsons should not imply some sense of the position which he held;
+equally impossible, from the temper and mentality of the man, that there
+should not be in General Parsons's letters an underlying assertion that
+in military matters the military must decide.
+
+The correspondence between the two men opened by a letter from Sir
+Lawrence Parsons, who had just established his headquarters at Mallow;
+and its chief purpose was to direct Redmond's attention to the fact that
+an Irish Division was a much finer and nobler unit than an Irish
+Brigade. Two points in it, however, are of interest. "I have been
+appointed by Lord Kitchener," said General Parsons, "because I am an
+Irishman and understand my countrymen." Also, "I have had a considerable
+share in selecting the officers of the Division, almost all Irishmen of
+every political and religious creed."
+
+What lay behind the first of these sentences was a profound conviction
+that the writer thoroughly understood the necessities of the situation.
+That was a disastrous mistake. To understand Ireland at such a moment
+was difficult for anyone, impossible for a man who had not been in close
+touch with the mental condition produced by all these extraordinary
+happenings. The effect of the preparations for rebellion in Ulster, of
+the Curragh incident, and of the collision between troops and people in
+Dublin--the effect of the existence of a permitted Nationalist Volunteer
+Force--the effect of Redmond's appeal: these were three completely novel
+and conflicting currents in the stream of Irish life. Nobody could hope
+to estimate these developments from a general view, however intelligent,
+of Irish history and character, nor even from the most intimate and
+sympathetic acquaintance with Irish troops of the old Army.
+
+A proof of the unhappy lack of comprehension is furnished by the second
+sentence I have quoted. General Parsons had been most rightly allowed by
+the War Office to assist in selecting officers for the Division. But it
+had never occurred to either party to consult Redmond on this critical
+matter. Does anyone suppose that Sir Edward Carson had no voice in the
+staffing of the Ulster Division? He had at all events received from the
+first a clear promise that all professional soldiers who had been
+officers in the Ulster Volunteers would be officers in the Division, and
+that any who had been mobilized should be restored to their associates
+in the Division.
+
+General Parsons brought to this whole matter the fine principle that no
+man's religious or political beliefs should stand in his way. He omitted
+to consider the effect produced on the situation by the fact that the
+Ulster Division had been actually allowed to exclude all Catholics, as
+such, and to accept no officer who was not politically in sympathy with
+Unionist Ulster. Redmond had not the least wish to exclude either
+Protestants or Unionists; he wanted all Irishmen on an equality. But he
+was bound by common sense and by a perception of realities to desire
+that Protestants and Unionists should not appear to monopolize the
+command.
+
+Not one of the three brigadiers appointed was generally known in
+Ireland, personally or by his connections. One was an Englishman. Of the
+officers originally appointed not one in five was a Catholic. No
+Catholic commanded a battalion, scarcely half a dozen were field
+officers. The only Catholic field officer appointed to the Division who
+had been prominently connected with the Volunteers was Lord Fingall, and
+he had severed his connection with that body.
+
+All this was a terrible blunder. Whether it was wise or unwise to allow
+the formation of a division having the peculiar character of the Ulster
+Division may be argued--but certainly Redmond never took exception to
+it, and no man who ever saw these Ulstermen in the field can regret its
+inception. But once it was formed, its existence created a situation
+which had to be recognized. An equivalent ought to have been given; but
+no genuine attempt to do this was made.
+
+In replying to Sir Lawrence Parsons, Redmond raised no controversy as to
+what had been done; he was, indeed, not cognizant of the facts. But he
+addressed himself from the first to making friendly suggestions.
+
+Amongst other things he referred to an appeal which Sir Lawrence Parsons
+had addressed to the women of Ireland, that they should provide
+regimental colours for the battalions of the Division. This appeal was
+promptly met, to Redmond's great delight--delight which was soon
+changed into vexation, for the War Office stepped in, declared the
+proceeding irregular, and prohibited the holding of colours by any
+temporary battalion. General Parsons was obliged to publish an
+explanation which must have been galling to himself, and which went far
+to confirm the impression that the War Office, with all its
+preoccupations, had time to keep an unfriendly eye on the Nationalist
+recruiting effort.
+
+Another trivial matter led to prolonged and irritating controversy.
+Towards the end of October the Belfast and Dublin papers announced that
+the Army Council had approved of "an Ulster badge similar to that worn
+by Ulster Volunteers" as a cap badge for all troops in the Ulster
+Division. It was pointed out that this would have the effect of
+preserving the identity of the Ulster Division. Immediately, and not
+unnaturally, the demand for a similar concession was put forward on
+behalf of the Sixteenth Division. General Parsons was opposed, as any
+old soldier would be, to a variation in the distinguishing marks of old
+and famous regiments. He did not allow for the fact that we needed to
+attract new soldiers in masses--men who as yet knew nothing of
+regimental tradition. Still, he co-operated in forwarding Redmond's
+desire, which was to meet a widely spread sentimental demand. Now that
+the war is over, many soldiers argue that there is no reason in the
+nature of things why Irish regiments should not have a clearly
+distinguishing uniform, as the Scots or the Colonials do. In the last
+months, when recruiting was a matter of urgency, Colonel Lynch induced
+the War Office to consent to equipping an Irish Brigade with a
+completely distinctive dress; unhappily the pattern was (after several
+months) still under discussion when the war ended. I have little doubt
+that from the point of view of recruiting even the badge, to say nothing
+of a distinctive uniform, would have been an asset; I have no doubt at
+all that the refusal of it was a set-back, because it was a refusal
+given after a discussion and correspondence which lasted from November
+till February. The most interesting point, however, is that Lord
+Kitchener found time to occupy himself repeatedly with this question in
+the period between the first and second battles of Ypres. If his
+intervention had been judicious, it would have been as impressive as the
+spectacle of a battery elephant stopping in action to pick up a pin with
+his trunk.
+
+On one point Redmond's representations, heartily backed by General
+Parsons, were successful. Catholic chaplains, of whom no adequate number
+were at first provided for Irish troops, were secured. It is pleasant to
+note that Lord Roberts, who before the war had been vehement on the
+Ulster side, used his personal influence to support this application. A
+month or two later, when death came to the veteran, dramatically, among
+the troops in France, Redmond told the House of Commons how on that
+question Lord Roberts had met him in the friendliest way and endeavoured
+to arrange for attending the great meeting at the Dublin Mansion House.
+
+On another matter Redmond was able to assist the equipment of the
+Division. He suggested, and General Parsons fully admitted the value of,
+regimental bands; but the War Office made no grants for them. Redmond
+drew upon a large sum which had been placed at his disposal by a private
+individual to further his campaign, and all our battalions were indebted
+to him for their fife and drum equipment. There was, in short, no detail
+in which he was not willing and anxious to assist the Division and its
+commander. But the friction between the two men was unmistakable.
+
+The most serious cause of it was the line taken by General Parsons about
+the appointment of officers. He laid down a rule, which I think would
+have had excellent results if enforced throughout the whole of the new
+armies, that no man should be recommended for a commission without
+previous military experience, and that candidates lacking that
+experience must put in a period of service in the ranks. He set apart a
+special company in one battalion, the 7th Leinsters, to which such men
+should be sent, so that while drilling and exercising with the rest of
+the battalion, and enjoying no special privilege, they ate and slept and
+lived together in their own barrack rooms.
+
+Yet the obstacle thus set up deterred a good many of the less zealous,
+who could not understand why that should be made a condition in the
+Irish Division which was not so in the Ulster Division--nor, indeed, so
+far as I know, anywhere else at that time. Men who had been officers of
+Ulster Volunteers got their commissions as a matter of course; the
+officer of National Volunteers had to prove his competence in the cadet
+company. General Parsons fully admitted this difference of treatment,
+and justified it by saying to Redmond that in consequence of it he would
+be very sorry to change officers with the Ulster Division. One cannot
+refuse to admire such a spirit; but he ought to have asked himself
+whether it was fair to impose a handicap on Redmond's efforts.
+Everything turned on getting representative young men from the
+Volunteers, and from the correspondence it appears that few were coming
+from the South and West. From the North they poured in. In our 47th
+Brigade, the 6th Royal Irish Regiment was mainly composed of Derry
+Nationalists; the 7th Leinsters and the 6th Connaught Rangers were
+almost to a man followers of Mr. Devlin from Belfast.
+
+Next after Redmond, Mr. Devlin was the man to whom our Division owed
+most. But the first and the main impetus came from Redmond himself. He
+spoke on October 4th at Wexford, the capital of his native county; on
+the 11th at Waterford, his own constituency; on the 18th at Kilkenny,
+the constituency of his close friend Pat O'Brien. A week later he was at
+Belfast and in the glens of Antrim, among the Nationalists of Ulster.
+Then Parliament kept him for a few weeks; in December he was back, and
+spoke at Tuam and in Limerick. Everywhere the Volunteers turned out in
+great numbers to receive him; and to them his appeal was primarily
+addressed.
+
+At Wexford he laid stress on Mr. Asquith's pledge that the Volunteers
+should remain as a recognized permanent force for the defence of the
+country, and this led him to raise frankly the question of control. Who
+should have authority over Volunteers in a State? Surely the elected and
+responsible government. But pending Home Rule, "the policy and control
+of the Volunteers must rest with the elected representatives of the
+country."
+
+More generally, he reminded them that he had always spoken of the
+possibility of some great political convulsion that might destroy their
+plans. "Nothing but an earthquake can now prevent Home Rule," he had
+said. "The outbreak of this overwhelming war might easily have
+overwhelmed Home Rule. But we have survived it."
+
+And he went on to argue that the delay might be a blessing in disguise.
+Civil war between Irishmen had always seemed to him an impossibility.
+That impossibility was now universally admitted. In a passage of unusual
+heat he denounced the "so-called statesmen" who came over unasked to our
+country to inflame feelings--as Mr. Bonar Law had done; and he appealed
+to all sections "to enable us to utilize the interval before a Home Rule
+Parliament assembles to unite all Irishmen under a Home Rule
+Government."
+
+At Waterford he was largely occupied with repelling the charge that he
+and his colleagues had made a bargain with the Government to ship Irish
+Volunteers overseas to fight whether they would or no. This was the line
+on which opposition was developing, and it was assisted by articles in
+the English Press, which laid it down that unless the Irish furnished a
+sufficiency of recruits, Home Rule should be repealed.
+
+An extension of this argument, that Redmond was buying Home Rule with
+the blood of young Irishmen, raised the question whether Home Rule was
+worth the price. While the Bill was not yet law, it was a flag, a
+symbol. Once it became an Act, men's attitude changed; they turned to
+criticizing what they had got; and one powerful newspaper, bitterly
+hostile to the Parliamentary party, expended much ingenuity in
+exaggerating the limitations of what had been gained. While one set of
+critics endeavoured to show how miserable was the price obtained,
+another dwelt on the unrighteousness of making such a bargain without
+Ireland's consent. In Redmond's speech at Kilkenny there was a note of
+resentment. He refused at any great crisis to consider "what might
+please the gallery or the crowd, or might spare him the insults of a
+handful of cornerboys."
+
+But the kernel of all his thought was put into one sentence by him at
+Belfast. "The proper place to guard Ireland is on the battlefields of
+France." It was from Belfast after this meeting that the first striking
+demonstration of response came--organized and inspired by Mr. Devlin. On
+November 20th nearly a full battalion of recruits, many National
+Volunteers, entrained for Fermoy; a week later they were followed by
+another great detachment. The example spread; and when Redmond spoke at
+Limerick on December 20th, the _Irish Times_ in a friendly leading
+article admitted that "the National Volunteers were now coming forward
+in large numbers and the Irish Brigade was going to be a credit to the
+country." This was a very different note from that which had come from
+Unionist quarters at earlier stages.
+
+
+III
+
+So far as recruiting went, Redmond had won. He was sure of making good
+to England. But in what concerned making good to Ireland, he had no
+progress to report. He stated that already nearly 16,500 men from the
+Volunteers had joined the Army, and he could not understand why
+Government was so chary of giving assistance to train and equip this
+force. There was no doubt as to the mass of men available. Figures
+supplied by the police to the Chief Secretary estimated that between
+September 24th, when the split took place, and October 31st, out of
+170,000 Volunteers, only a trifle over 12,000 adhered to Professor
+MacNeill.
+
+But in Dublin the opponents were nearly 2,000 out of 6,700; and two
+strong battalions went almost solid against Redmond. These battalions,
+along with the Citizens' Army, were destined to alter the course of
+Irish history. It was specially true of them, but true generally of all
+the minority who left Redmond, that they were kept together by a
+resolute and determined group who had a clear purpose.
+
+The "Irish Volunteers," as the dissentients called themselves, were made
+to feel that they were a minority, and an unpopular minority in more
+than one instance. In Galway, when they turned out to parade the
+streets, they were driven off with casualties--retaliation for their
+interference with our meeting in September. In Dundalk there was a
+somewhat similar occurrence. But they got more than their own back one
+day in November by a bold _coup_--forerunner of many. Ninety rifles
+belonging to the National Volunteers were being moved in a cart from one
+place to another. Half a dozen men armed with revolvers held up the cart
+and its driver and carried off the rifles. At their Convention, held in
+the end of October, Professor MacNeill said: "They would go on with the
+work of organizing, training and equipping a Volunteer force for the
+service of Ireland in Ireland, and such a force might yet be the means
+of saving Home Rule from disaster, and of compelling the Home Rule
+Government to keep faith with Ireland without the exaction of a price in
+blood."
+
+That forecast has not as yet realized itself; and many of us think that
+the chief achievement of this section has been to turn to waste a heavy
+price that was paid in blood by other men for the sake of Ireland. But
+unquestionably they were, though the minority, far more of a living
+reality than the mass of the original force--and for a simple reason.
+Their purpose, whether good or bad, was within their own control. The
+purpose of the majority was to carry out Redmond's policy--which was to
+make the Volunteers part of an Irish army of which the striking force
+was designed to defend Ireland on the battlefields of Flanders. But to
+carry out that policy the National Volunteers must be accepted as a
+purely local Irish military organization for home defence--controlled,
+in the absence of a popularly elected Irish Government, by the elected
+Irish representatives. The War Office thwarted that policy. Lord
+Kitchener would not accept it. He continued to be of the opinion that by
+equipping Redmond's followers he would be arming enemies.
+
+It is worth noting that one of the ablest and most detached students of
+Irish affairs was wholly on Redmond's side. Lord Dunraven, appealing on
+behalf of "the new Irish Brigade," pointed out that both sides of
+Redmond's policy must be accepted. "No scheme which fails to take some
+account of the National Volunteer Force can do justice to what Ireland
+can give," he wrote. But was there everywhere a desire to do justice to
+what Ireland could give--and was willing to give? Redmond was warned in
+those days by an influential correspondent in England that a deliberate
+policy was being pursued by the opponents of Home Rule, who undoubtedly
+had strong backing in the War Office. The National Volunteers were to
+become the objects of derision and contempt, which would extend to
+himself. By keeping the Volunteers out of active participation in war
+service, it could be proved that Redmond did not speak for Ireland or
+represent Ireland; that the Irish were raising unreal objections so as
+to keep an excuse for avoiding danger. It was urged on him that he
+should press for the extension of the Territorial Act to Ireland and
+endeavour to bring his men in on this footing.
+
+There were two difficulties in the way of this scheme which nevertheless
+attracted him strongly. The first was that enlistment in the
+Territorials for home service had been stopped--so that the proposal had
+little advantage, if any, over enlistment in the Irish brigades. The
+second was due to the Volunteers themselves, many of whom, though
+willing to serve in the war, were unwilling to take the oath of
+allegiance.
+
+There were limits to the length to which Redmond felt himself able to
+go, and he never dealt with this objection by argument. The example
+which he set was plain to all. He joined in singing "God save the King,"
+in drinking the King's health, and at Aughavanagh now he flew the Union
+Jack beside the Green flag. He was willing to take part in any
+demonstration which implied that Nationalist Ireland under its new legal
+status accepted its lot in the British Empire fully and without reserve.
+It was superfluous for him to argue that Nationalists might consistently
+take the oath of allegiance when Nationalists were pledging their lives
+in the King's service beside every other kind of citizen in the British
+Empire. Over and above his own example was the example of his brother
+and his son. On November 23rd Willie Redmond addressed a great meeting
+in Cork and told them, "I won't say to you go, but come with me." He was
+then fifty-three--and for most men it would have been "too late a
+week." But no man was ever more instinctively a soldier, and to
+soldiering he had gone by instinct as a boy. He was an officer in the
+Wexford Militia for a year or two, till politics drove him out of that
+service and drew him into another. Now he went to the war gravely but
+joyfully. I think those days did not bring into relief any more
+picturesque or sympathetic figure.
+
+One thing ought to be said. Mr. Devlin wished to join also, but Redmond
+held that he could not be spared from Ireland, where his influence was
+enormous; and he was placed in a somewhat unfair position, even though
+everyone who knew him knew that his chief attribute was personal
+courage. But he was indispensable for the work which had to be done, of
+helping at this strange crisis to keep Ireland peaceful and united at a
+time when Government was at its lowest ebb of authority.
+
+Trouble threatened. On October 11th, the anniversary of Parnell's death,
+three bodies of Volunteers turned out in Dublin--the National
+Volunteers, the Irish Volunteers, and the Citizen Army. A collision
+occurred which might easily have become serious. This passed off, but
+early in December the Government suppressed three or four of the openly
+anti-British papers, which were, of course, still more virulent against
+Redmond. They reappeared under other names. But a meeting of protest
+against the suppression was held outside Liberty Hall. Mr. Larkin had,
+by this time, gone to America. His chief colleague, Mr. James Connolly,
+who was the brain of the Irish Labour Movement, presided, and at the
+close declared that the meeting had been held under the protection of an
+armed company of the Citizen Army posted in the windows and on the roof
+of Liberty Hall. Had the police or military attempted to disperse the
+meeting, he said, "those rifles would not have been silent."
+
+Ulster was not the only place where armed men thought themselves
+entitled to resist coercion.
+
+Dublin was the more dangerous because the war, which created so much
+employment in Great Britain, brought no new trade to Ireland, outside of
+Belfast. Agriculture prospered, but the towns knew only a rise of
+prices. Redmond began with high hopes, which Mr. Lloyd George fostered,
+of rapidly-developing munition works, which would at the close of
+hostilities leave the foundation for industrial communities. Here again,
+however, Redmond's representations were in vain. When the heavy extra
+tax on beer and spirits was levied by the first supplementary Budget, he
+opposed it angrily:
+
+     "You are doing some shipbuilding at Belfast, you are making a few
+     explosives at Arklow, you are buying some woollen goods from some
+     of the smaller manufacturers, but apart from that, the bulk of the
+     hundreds of millions of borrowed money which you are spending on
+     the war is being spent in England and in increasing the income of
+     your country."
+
+This tax on alcohol would curtail the most important urban industry of
+the South and West of Ireland, and he feared that it was the old story
+of crushing Ireland's trade under the wheel of British interests.
+
+Here again Redmond could only plead with the Irish Government that they,
+in their turn, should plead with the Imperial authorities. He should
+have been able to act in his own right as the head of an Irish Ministry,
+knowing the importance of providing employment at such a time. He saw
+the need and how to meet it; but he had none of the resources of power.
+As compared with the other men who occupied, in the public eye, a rank
+equivalent to his--with General Botha, for instance--he was like a
+commander of those Russian armies which had to take the field against
+Germans with sticks and pikes.
+
+Yet power he had--power over the heart and mind of Ireland--the power
+which was given him by the response to his appeal. From January onwards
+the Sixteenth Division grew steadily and strongly. Recruiting began to
+get on a better basis. The appointment of Sir Hedley Le Bas in charge of
+this propaganda brought about a healthy change in methods. Appeals were
+used devised for Ireland, and not, as heretofore, simple replicas of the
+English article. Heart-breaking instances of stupidity were still of
+daily occurrence, but imagination and insight began to have some play;
+and there was no longer the complete separation which had existed
+between the effort of Redmond and his colleagues and the effort of men
+like Lord Meath. In January Willie Redmond was posted to his battalion,
+the 6th Royal Irish, at Fermoy, where the 47th Brigade had its
+headquarters. In his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable
+and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the Division was worth
+an immense deal. There was delay also about his younger namesake, John
+Redmond's son--who was for a long time refused a commission in the
+Division in whose formation his father had played so great a part.
+
+Naturally, trained speakers who had joined the Division were utilized
+for recruiting purposes. Willie Redmond did comparatively little of this
+work. It is no light job to take over command of a company, if you mean
+really to command it; and with him, from the moment he joined everything
+came second to his military duty. But private soldiers have a less
+exacting time, and there was scarcely one week of my three months in the
+7th Leinsters in which I did not spend the Saturday and Sunday on this
+business--generally in company with the most brilliant speaker, taking
+all in all, that I have ever heard. Kettle, then a lieutenant in the
+battalion, was wit, essayist, poet and orator: whether he was most a wit
+or most an orator might be argued for a night without conclusion; but as
+talker or as speaker he had few equals. He was the son of a veteran
+Nationalist, who had taken a lead in Parnell's day; but the farmer's son
+had become the most characteristic product of Ireland's capital, which,
+rich or poor, squalid or splendid, is a metropolis--a centre of many
+interests, a forcing-house of many ideas. Nothing in Ireland is less
+English than Dublin, and its tone differs from that of England in having
+active sympathy with the continental mind.
+
+Kettle was always to some extent in revolt against the theories of the
+Gaelic League, which he thought tended to make Ireland insular morally
+as well as materially. He was a good European because he was a good
+Irishman; and because he was both, he was, though largely educated in
+Germany, a fierce partisan of France.
+
+More than all this, he had seen with his own eyes the actual martyrdom
+of Belgium. Sent out by Redmond to purchase rifles, he was in the
+country when Antwerp was occupied, and he wrote with passion of what he
+heard, of what he saw. Louvain to him was more than a mere name. All the
+Catholic in him, and all the Irish Catholic, for Ireland's association
+with Louvain was long and intimate, rose up in fury; he went through
+Ireland carrying the fiery cross.
+
+Everywhere we went we had friendly and even enthusiastic audiences; the
+only place where I met any suggestion of hostility was at Killarney, and
+there it took the form of avoiding our meeting. We were cheered and
+encouraged--but we did not get many recruits, so to say, on the nail.
+Yet they came, generally dribbling in afterwards. From one small meeting
+in county Waterford we came away badly disappointed, having thought an
+effect was made, yet we did not take a single man. I heard later that
+within the next fortnight thirty men from that parish had come in by
+ones and twos to sign on--but at a town several miles away. Local
+pressure, personal not political, was against us, especially that of the
+mothers; and there was a shyness about taking this plunge into the
+unknown.
+
+One exception stands out, in my mind, unlike the general run of these
+gatherings. It was the first field day of our brigade, when, dressed in
+the khaki that had at last been served out, we mustered on the
+race-course at Fermoy, five thousand strong; and I went from the review
+to the train for Waterford. There was no mistaking the temper of
+Redmond's constituency; we got men there in hundreds, including a score
+or so of cadets--young men of education--for our special company of the
+Leinsters, which was filling up fast.
+
+At that meeting we had one force with us which was not often active on
+our side. The Bishop of Waterford was strong for the war; the leading
+parish priest of the town took the chair and spoke straight and plain,
+while one of the Regulars, a Carmelite friar, made a speech which was
+among the most eloquent that I have ever listened to.
+
+At the beginning of April I was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the 6th
+Connaught Rangers, and began to know the Division from another aspect.
+Broadly speaking, the men with whom I had been sharing a hut were
+Nationalist by opinion and by tradition--though by no means all
+Catholics. There were Unionists, but they were few. In the society which
+I now joined--a joint mess of the Royal Irish and the Rangers--matters
+were different.
+
+The personnel of the 6th Royal Irish was strongly characteristic of the
+old Army. The commanding officer, Curzon, was of Irish descent, but of
+little Irish association; his second in command was an Irish Protestant
+gentleman of a pleasant ordinary type. The senior company commander was
+an Englishman. As an offset, Willie Redmond had one company, and another
+was commanded by an ex-guardsman, who had been a chief personage in the
+Derry Volunteers, and brought so many of them with him that General
+Parsons gave him a captaincy straight off.
+
+In my own battalion, no Catholic had then the rank of captain. The
+colonel and the adjutant belonged to well-known families in the North
+of Ireland, deeply involved in Covenanting politics. My own company
+commander was a very gallant little Dublin barrister, who, before the
+war, had exerted on English platforms against Home Rule the gift of racy
+eloquence which he now devoted to recruiting. Not half a dozen of the
+subalterns would have described themselves as Nationalists.
+
+It is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was
+represented, to the outside public of Ireland. From the inside, one
+thing was clear. In our battalion every man desired the success of the
+Division, and more particularly of the Connaught Rangers, absolutely
+with a whole heart. Anything said or done that could have offended the
+men--practically all Catholic and Nationalist--would have drawn the most
+condign chastisement from our commanding officer. I never heard of any
+man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its
+colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it. There was very little
+political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question
+how far Redmond might be held to speak for Ireland. So far as Redmond
+himself was concerned, I think there were few, if any, who did not count
+it an honour to meet him--and some who had never been won to him before
+were won to him for his brother's sake.
+
+Looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself
+in that society. I do not know one survivor of those men who does not
+desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom
+they led. In not a few cases one might put the change higher; some
+opinions as to what was good for Ireland were profoundly affected.
+
+Yet this also is true. The atmosphere of the mess was one in which
+Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger. He had lived all his
+life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief. Knowing the other side
+in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men
+he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were
+political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in
+agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the
+atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which
+every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never
+really was himself. He was only himself with the men.
+
+In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a
+counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that
+the other was Ulster. No attempt was made to make it so, and General
+Parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal--though less
+fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man
+for his opinions or his creed. Yet many persons without design, and some
+with a purpose, spread broadcast the belief that Catholics and
+Nationalists as such were relegated to a position of inferiority in the
+command of this Catholic and Nationalist Division.
+
+The worst of our difficulties lay in the long inherited suspicions of
+the Irish mind. At a recruiting meeting one would argue in appealing to
+Nationalists that the Home Rule Act was a covenant on which we were in
+honour bound to act, and that every man who risked his life on the faith
+of that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded.
+The listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would
+come up privately and say: "Are you sure now they aren't fooling us
+again?" The Sinn Fein propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not
+fail to emphasize the pronouncement of the Tory Press that there should
+be no Home Rule because Ireland had failed to come forward; or to point
+the moral of Mr. Bonar Law's excursion to Belfast, with its violent
+asseveration that Ulster should be backed without limit in opposition to
+control by an Irish Parliament. Ireland, always suspect, has learnt to
+be profoundly suspicious; and suspicion is the form of prophecy which
+has most tendency to fulfil itself.
+
+In one part of the Irish race, however, this cold paralysis of distrust
+had no operation. The Irish in Great Britain, always outdoing all others
+in the keenness of their Nationalism, were nearer the main current of
+the war, and were more in touch with the truth about English feeling.
+They had a double impulse, as Redmond had; they saw how to serve their
+own cause in serving Europe's freedom; and their response was
+magnificent. Mr. T.P. O'Connor probably raised more recruits by his
+personal appeal than any other man in England.
+
+A great part of Redmond's correspondence in these months came from
+Irishmen in England who were joining as Irishmen, and who had great
+difficulty in making their way to our Division. Many thousands had
+already enlisted elsewhere; hundreds, at least, tried to join the
+Sixteenth Division, and failed to get there. But there was one instance
+to which attention should be directed. In Newcastle-on-Tyne a movement
+was set on foot to raise Tyneside battalions, including one of Irish.
+Mr. O'Connor went down, and the upshot was that four Irish battalions
+were raised. They were in existence by January 1, 1915, when General
+Parsons was already writing that unless Irishmen could be found to fill
+up the Division, we must submit to the disgrace of having it made up by
+English recruits. The obvious answer was to annex the Tyneside Irish
+Brigade. Redmond, moreover, held that to bring over this brigade to
+train in Ireland, and to incorporate it bodily in the Sixteenth
+Division, would please the Tyneside men--for a tremendous welcome would
+have greeted them in their own country--and would have an excellent
+effect on Irish opinion generally. But the proposal was rigorously
+opposed by the War Office. It was argued that these men had enlisted
+technically as Northumberland Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers
+they must remain. In reality, as far as one can judge, the War Office
+were penny wise and pound foolish. "We have got these men," they said,
+"and we have a promise from Redmond to fill a Division. Why relieve him
+of one-third of his task?"
+
+Redmond knew, and we all knew, that the essential was to get our
+Division complete and into the field at the earliest possible moment. He
+had confidence that once they got to work they would make a name for
+themselves, which would be the best attraction for recruits. Let it be
+remembered that at this moment popular expectation put the end of the
+war about July. When I joined the Rangers in April 1915, our mess was
+full of young officers threatening to throw up their commissions and
+enlist in some battalion which would give them the chance of seeing a
+fight. We could not expect to move to France before August, and by that
+time all that we could hope would be to form part of the army of
+occupation. Rumour was rife, too, that the Division would be broken up
+and utilized for draft-finding, that it would never see France as a
+unit. All this talk came back to Redmond and increased his anxiety to
+make the work complete.
+
+He held, and I think rightly, that the whole machinery of recruiting
+worked against us; that every officer had instructions to send no man to
+the Sixteenth Division who could be got into a draft-finding reserve
+battalion. Knowing what we know, I cannot blame them; but the game was
+not fairly played. A man would come in and say he wanted to join the
+Irish Brigade. "Which regiment?" Often he might not realize that a
+brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for
+instance, "The Dublins," he was more likely than not to be shipped off
+to the Curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept,
+instead of to Buttevant, where our Dublins were in training.
+
+Still, with all our troubles, things were marching ahead in that April
+of 1915; recruits were coming in to the tune of 1,500 a week. Then came
+a political crisis and the formation of a Coalition Government. Redmond
+was asked to take a post in it. The letter in which the invitation was
+conveyed made it clear that the post could not be an Irish office.
+
+Redmond refused. He said to me afterwards that under no conditions did
+he think he could have accepted. But he added, "If I had been Asquith
+and had wished to make it as difficult as possible to refuse, I should
+have offered a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio and without
+salary."
+
+He was well aware how many and how unscrupulous were his enemies in
+Ireland; he was not prepared to give them the opportunity of saying that
+he had got his price for the blood of young Irishmen and the betrayal of
+his principles. Even apart from the question of salary, the tradition
+against acceptance of office under Government till Ireland's claim was
+satisfied would have been very hard to break. Yet Redmond saw fully how
+disastrous would be the effect on Irish opinion if he were not in the
+Government and Sir Edward Carson was.
+
+Knowing Ireland as he did, he knew that the acceptance of Sir Edward
+Carson as a colleague would be taken in Ireland to imply that the
+Government had abandoned its support of Home Rule. Ireland would assume
+that the Ulster leader would not come in except on his own terms.
+Redmond made the strongest representations that he could to the Prime
+Minister to exclude both Irish parties to the unresolved dispute. But
+Sir Edward Carson in those days was making himself very disagreeable in
+the House of Commons and Mr. Asquith, as usual, followed the line of
+least resistance.
+
+The effect of the Coalition as formed was seen when recruiting in
+Ireland dropped from 6,000 in April-May to 3,000 in May-June. It stayed
+at the lower figure for several months, till it was raised again by
+efforts for which Redmond was chiefly responsible. I do not know
+whether Sir Edward Carson's presence in the Attorney-General's office,
+or his absence from the Opposition benches in debates, was worth ten
+thousand men; but that is a small measure of what was lost in Ireland by
+his inclusion.
+
+
+IV
+
+The formation of the Coalition Government marks the first stage in the
+history of Redmond's defeat and the victory of Sir Edward Carson and
+Sinn Fein.
+
+Of what he felt upon this matter, Redmond at the time said not a word in
+public. Six months later, on November 2, 1915, when a debate on the
+naval and military situation was opened, he broke silence--and his first
+words were an explanation of his silence. He had not intervened, he
+said, in any debate on the war since its inception. "We thought a loyal
+and as far as possible silent support to the Government of the day was
+the best service we could render." This silence had been maintained
+"even after the formation of the Coalition"--when the Irish view had
+been roughly set aside, and when the personal tie to the Liberal
+Government with which he had been so long allied had been profoundly
+modified. He claimed the credit of this loyalty not merely for himself
+but for the whole of his country. "Since the war commenced the voice of
+party controversy has disappeared in Ireland."
+
+This was pushing generosity almost to a stretch of imagination, for the
+voice of party controversy had not been absent from the Belfast Press,
+nor had it spared him. But he was speaking then, and he desired that the
+House should feel that he spoke, as Ireland's spokesman; he claimed
+credit for North and South alike in the absence of all labour troubles
+in war supply. "The spectacle of industrial unrest in Great Britain, the
+determined and unceasing attacks in certain sections of the Press upon
+individual members of the Government and in a special way upon the Prime
+Minister, have aroused the greatest concern and the deepest indignation
+in Ireland," he said. "Mr. Asquith stands to-day, as before the war,
+high in the confidence of the Irish people." The "persistent pessimism"
+had effected nothing except to help in some measure "that little fringe
+which exists in Ireland as in England, of men who would if they could
+interfere with the success of recruiting."
+
+No doubt there was an element of policy, of a fencer's skill, in all
+this. Sir Edward Carson had not maintained silence and certainly had not
+spared the Prime Minister. But in essence Redmond was relying on the
+plain truth. He had pledged support and he gave it to the utmost of his
+power, even at his peril. Mr. Birrell in the posthumous "Appreciation"
+which has been already quoted has this passage:
+
+"Although it was not always easy to do business with him, being very
+justly suspicious of English politicians, he could be trusted more
+implicitly than almost every other politician I have ever come in
+contact with. He was slow to pass his word, but when he had done so, you
+knew he would keep it to the very letter, and what was almost as
+important, his silence and discretion could be relied upon with
+certainty. He was constitutionally incapable of giving anybody away who
+had trusted him."
+
+Nothing but considerations of loyalty had kept him publicly silent in
+the months of this year when so much was done, and so much left undone,
+against his desire and his judgment. In June, the Sixteenth Division was
+within 1,000 of completion. The shortage existed in one brigade--the
+49th--which had been formed of battalions having their recruiting areas
+in Ulster--two of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, one of the Inniskillings
+and one of the Royal Irish Rifles. The conception had undoubtedly been
+to provide for the Nationalists of Ulster. But, as it proved, these men
+vastly preferred to enlist in units which were not associated with the
+avowedly Unionist Division, all of whose battalions belonged to one or
+other of these three regiments; and the 49th Brigade was not nearly up
+to strength. The Tenth Division was now on the point of readiness for
+the field; but when the final weeding out of unfit or half trained men
+was completed its ranks were 1,200 short. The War Office decided to
+draw, not on both the other Irish Divisions, but on the Sixteenth only,
+and only upon the deficient brigade. When the offer of immediate service
+was made, every man in its four battalions volunteered, and the Tenth
+Division was completed; but the Sixteenth was thrown back, and the
+discouraging rumour that it was to be only used as a reserve gained a
+great impetus. Redmond was very angry. He wrote to Mr. Tennant demanding
+that at least the Division's deficiency should at once be made up, by
+giving to us the full product of one or two weeks' recruiting in
+Ireland. Nothing of the kind was done to meet his request.
+
+It was, however, some compensation to think that at least one of our
+purely Irish formations was going to take the field; and we hoped that
+its fortunes might remedy a complaint which began to be loudly
+made--that credit was withheld from the achievements of Irish troops.
+
+The main source of this grievance was the publication of Admiral de
+Robeck's despatch concerning the first landing at Gallipoli. In the
+original document, a schedule was given showing the detail of troops
+told off to each of the separate landings; and the narrative, in which a
+sailor spoke with frank enthusiasm of the desperate valour shown by
+soldiers, was written with constant reference to the detail given. As
+some evil chance willed, the narrative mentioned by name several of the
+regiments engaged; but when it came to describe the forlorn hope at "V"
+Beach, it dealt fully with the special difficulties, and said in brief
+but emphatic phrase, "Here the troops wrought miracles." The War Office,
+in editing the despatch for publication, suppressed the schedule, as
+likely to give information to the enemy, so that in this case it did not
+appear to whom the praise applied.
+
+Certain things are unbelievable. No officer and no man that ever lived
+could from a partisan feeling against Ireland have sought to rob
+regiments who had done and suffered such things as the Dublins and
+Munsters did and suffered at "V" Beach of whatever credit could be given
+to them. Yet in such times as we were living in, the unbelievable is
+readily believed, and men saw malice in the suppression of what could
+not long be secret: Ireland had too many dead that day. What made the
+suggestion more incredible only gave a poignancy to resentment, for
+Admiral de Robeck was an Irishman, with his home some few miles from the
+regimental depot of the Dublins.
+
+Two things, however, should be said. If only in fairness to Admiral de
+Robeck, the explanation should instantly have been given: it was never
+given in full until he came before the Dardanelles Commission, many
+months later, and it has not been officially published to this hour. And
+further, whoever edited the despatch was presumably a soldier, and knew
+how jealous soldiers are, and how jealous their friends are for them, of
+every word that goes to the recognition of such service. The effect of
+omitting the schedule ought to have been foreseen.
+
+Even before the middle of August, when angry letters over this despatch
+were appearing in the Irish Press, other news began to come to Ireland,
+ill calculated to help recruiting. The Tenth Division had come into
+action, but under the unluckiest conditions. When the great attempt was
+made to cut across the peninsula by a renewed push from Anzac and by a
+new landing at Suvla Bay, the Irish were among the reinforcements told
+off for that surprise. But from lack of room on the island bases it was
+considered impossible to keep them together as a division, and one
+brigade, the 29th, lay so far off that it could not be brought into the
+concerted movement on Suvla. It was therefore sent separately to Anzac,
+and joined in with the Australians. Broken up by regiments and not
+operating as a unit, it furnished useful support; but no credit for what
+the men did could go to Ireland. The other two brigades, the 30th and
+31st, were left under the command of their divisional general and were
+to attack on the left of the bay. But owing to some defect in
+exploration of the coast-line, the movement was not so carried out; six
+battalions out of the eight were landed on the south of the bay and were
+attached to the right-hand force. Thus, in the actual operations Sir
+Bryan Mahon had under his command only two battalions of his own men.
+The remaining six operated under the command of the divisional general
+of the Eleventh Division, who delegated the conduct of the actual attack
+to one of his brigadiers. It is sufficient to say that immediately after
+the action both these officers were relieved of their commands. The same
+fate befell the corps commander under whose directions this wing of the
+concerted movement was placed.
+
+In face of these facts it would be absurd to deny that the troops were
+badly handled. They suffered terribly from thirst, and the suffering was
+in large measure preventible. The attack was a failure. All the success
+achieved was the capture of Chocolate Hill, and the Irish claim that
+success. It is disputed by other regiments. This much is certain: the
+Irish were part of the troops who carried the hill, and at nightfall,
+when the rest were withdrawn to the beach, the Irish were left holding
+it.
+
+But they had paid dearly, and in the days which followed many more were
+sacrificed in the hopeless effort to retrieve what had been lost when
+the surprise attack failed. The loss fell specially on a picked
+battalion, the 7th Dublins, which had grown up about a footballers'
+company, the very flower of young Irish manhood. Grief and indignation
+were universal when tales of what had happened began to come through.
+
+But of all this Redmond said no word in public. He threatened disclosure
+in debate at one period; yet on a strong representation from Mr.
+Tennant--in whose friendliness, as in the Prime Minister's, he had
+confidence--he refrained. To this abstention he added the most practical
+proof of good will. Lord Wimborne, now Lord-Lieutenant, seriously
+concerned at the continued drop in recruiting, which had not shown any
+sign of recovery since the Coalition Government was formed, came to him
+with the proposal for a conference on the subject. In pursuance of this
+suggestion Redmond went to London, where an interview took place between
+him and Lord Kitchener, Mr. Birrell and Mr. Tennant assisting. Redmond
+put in a memorandum stating his complaints, and thrashed out the subject
+to satisfactory conclusions on all points that directly affected
+recruiting. The conference ultimately met at the Viceregal Lodge on
+October 15th. It included the Primate of All Ireland, Lord Londonderry,
+Lord Meath, Lord Powerscourt, Sir Nugent Everard, the O'Conor Don and
+Colonel Sharman Crawford, the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork,
+and Redmond. The military were represented by Major-General Friend,
+commanding the troops in Ireland, with whom Redmond always had the most
+cordial relations.
+
+Only those who understand something of Irish tradition will realize how
+great a departure from established usage it was for Parnell's lieutenant
+and successor to take part formally in a meeting at the Viceregal
+Lodge--or indeed to cross its threshold for any purpose. But Redmond
+always had the logic of his convictions. As part of a compact, he was
+helping to the best of his power the Government which must carry on
+till Home Rule could come into operation; and here as elsewhere he was
+ready to mark his conviction that the enactment of Home Rule had made
+possible a complete change in his attitude.
+
+Among his papers is a very full note of what passed on this occasion. It
+is confidential, but one may note the extreme friendliness of attitude
+as between Redmond and the Ulster representatives, and also the fact
+that the operative suggestions agreed on were proposed first by Redmond
+himself. They were the result of his interview with Lord Kitchener.
+Recruiting in Ireland should no longer be left to voluntary effort, but
+a Department should be formed corresponding to that over which Lord
+Derby had been appointed to preside in Great Britain; and the
+Lord-Lieutenant himself should accept the position of its official head,
+and should appoint or nominate some man of known business capacity to
+preside over the detail of organization. Redmond pressed also that the
+country should be told definitely what Lord Wimborne had told the
+conference, that the need was for a total of about 1,100 recruits per
+week.
+
+He insisted also very strongly on the publication of a letter which Lord
+Kitchener at his instance had written to the conference. Its last
+paragraph read:
+
+"The Irish are entitled to their full share of the compliments paid to
+the rest of the United Kingdom for their hitherto magnificent response
+to the appeal for men: but if that response is to reap its due and only
+reward in victory, the supply must be continued."
+
+Over 81,000 recruits had been raised in Ireland since the war started--a
+period of eighty-two weeks. Viewed in comparison with Lord Kitchener's
+original anticipations, the result might well be called "magnificent."
+But it was necessary to maintain the same weekly average, and for four
+months the figure had been much below this. The result of the new
+campaign was to raise nearly 7,500 men in seven weeks.
+
+In the campaign thus launched, as Redmond so keenly desired, under the
+joint auspices of Ulstermen, Southern Unionists and Nationalists, one
+circumstance attracted attention. It was proposed to hold a great
+meeting at Newry, the frontier town where Ulster marches with the
+South--a centre in which recruiting had been singularly keen and
+successful. The scheme was to unite on one platform the Lord-Lieutenant,
+Redmond and Sir Edward Carson. Sir Edward Carson, however, "did not
+think the proposal would serve any useful purpose," and the meeting was
+held without him, in December 1915.
+
+By this time the Sixteenth Division was under orders for France. We had
+been since September in training at Blackdown, near Aldershot; and here
+Redmond was one of several distinguished visitors who came to see us and
+address the troops. He came down also unofficially more than once, for
+his brother had a pleasant house among the pine-trees--where he guarded,
+or was guarded by, the brigade's mascot, the largest of three enormous
+wolfhounds which, through John Redmond, were presented to the Irish
+Division.
+
+Towards the end of the year new rumours were afloat. The 49th Brigade
+had never been made up to strength, and there were stories that a
+non-Irish brigade was to be linked up with us. Letters from two
+commanding officers of the 49th Brigade illustrate the extent to which
+Redmond had come by all ranks to be regarded as our tutelary genius; to
+him they appealed for redress, fearing that they would be turned into a
+reserve brigade. The matter was settled at last to his content and
+theirs by a decision that the two brigades which were ready should go
+out in advance, to be followed by the 49th; and we entrained accordingly
+on December 17th.
+
+Sir Lawrence Parsons wrote to Mr. Birrell: "As the last train-load moved
+out of Farnborough station the senior Railway Staff Officer came up to
+me and said, 'Well, General, that is the soberest, quietest, most
+amenable and best disciplined Division that has left Aldershot, and I
+have seen them all go.'" The compliment was well paid to General
+Parsons, and it may have been some consolation for a sore heart: that
+keen spirit had to be content to be left behind. Major-General W.B.
+Hickie, C.B., who had greatly distinguished himself in France, now took
+over command. It would be disingenuous to say that John Redmond was not
+content with this change; but his brother was deeply impressed by the
+hardship inflicted on a gallant soldier.
+
+The Ulster Division had preceded us by three months. All three Irish
+Divisions were now in the field, and reserve brigades were established
+to feed them. Redmond could feel that in great measure his work was
+done, and that he could await the issue in confidence.
+
+He wrote at this time, in a preface contributed to Mr. MacDonagh's book
+_The Irish at the Front_, a passage of unusual emotion which tells what
+he thought and felt upon this matter.
+
+     "It is these soldiers of ours, with their astonishing courage and
+     their beautiful faith, with their natural military genius, carrying
+     with them their green flags and their Irish war-pipes, advancing to
+     the charge, their fearless officers at their head, and followed by
+     their beloved chaplains as great-hearted as themselves--bringing
+     with them a quality all their own to the sordid modern
+     battlefield--it is these soldiers of ours to whose keeping the
+     Cause of Ireland has passed. It was never in holier, worthier
+     keeping than with these boys offering up their supreme sacrifice of
+     life with a smile on their lips because it was given for Ireland."
+
+He wrote this when fresh from a sight of troops in the field. This visit
+took place in November 1915, and he was full of the experience when he
+came down to say good-bye before we went out. Nothing in all his life
+had approached it in interest, he said to me. The diary of his tour is
+prefixed to Mr. S.P. Ker's book, _What the Irish Regiments Have
+Done_--but it conveys little, except this dominant impression: "From the
+Irish Commander-in-Chief himself right down through the Army one meets
+Irishmen wherever one goes." On that journey he got the same welcome
+from Ulstermen as from his own nearest countrymen in the Royal Irish
+Regiment.
+
+
+V
+
+One thing at least Redmond gained, I think, from his visit to the
+front--the sense that with the British Army in the field he was in a
+friendly country. He never had that sense with regard to the War Office.
+Running all through this critical year 1915 is the history of one long
+failure--his attempt to secure the creation of a Home Defence force in
+Ireland. Given that, he would be confident of possessing the foundation
+for the structure of an Irish Army--an army which would be regarded as
+Ireland's own. Without it, the whole fabric of his efforts must be
+insecure. He desired to build, as in England they built, upon the
+voluntary effort of a people in whom entire confidence was placed. In
+the War Office undoubtedly men's minds were set upon finding a regular
+supply of Irish troops by quite other methods--by the application of
+compulsion.
+
+Redmond saw to the full the danger of attempting compulsion with an
+unwilling people; it was a peril which he sought to keep off, and while
+he lived did keep off, by securing a steady flow of recruits, by gaining
+a reasonable definition of Ireland's quota, and by exerting that
+personal authority which the recognition of his efforts conferred upon
+him. I do not think he was without hope of a moment when Ireland might
+come, as Great Britain had come by the end of this year, to recognize
+that the voluntary system levied an unfair toll on the willing, and that
+the community itself should accept the general necessity of binding its
+own members. But before this could be even dreamed of as practicable,
+the whole force of Volunteers, North and South, must feel that they were
+trusted and recognized, a part in the general work.
+
+The practical organization of the great body at his disposal was under
+discussion between him and Colonel Moore from February 1915 onwards; and
+the idea was mooted that by introducing the territorial system Ulster
+Volunteers and National Volunteers might be drawn into the same corps.
+This, however, was for the future; the immediate need was to extend the
+arming and training under their own organization. Redmond learnt at once
+that Lord Kitchener was against this; that he pointed to the existence
+of another armed force in the North of Ireland and argued that to create
+a second must mean civil war; that he believed revolutionary forces to
+exist in Ireland which Redmond could not control and perhaps did not
+even suspect. Those who then thought with Lord Kitchener can say now
+that events have justified his view. They omit to consider how far those
+events proceeded from Lord Kitchener's refusal to accept Redmond's
+judgment.
+
+Of the danger Redmond was fully aware. "I understand your position to
+be," Mr. T.P. O'Connor wrote to him in January 1915, "that unless your
+plan as to the Irish Volunteers is adopted we are face to face with a
+most critical and dangerous situation in Ireland." Just as fully was he
+convinced of the way to meet it. In February, replying indignantly to
+Sir Reginald Brade, who had complained that Irish recruiting was
+"distinctly languid," he enumerated the points at which the War Office
+had failed to act on his own advice, and urged once more, in the first
+instance, his original policy of employing both Ulster and Nationalist
+Volunteers for Home Defence. "If the two bodies of volunteers were
+trusted with the defence of the country under proper military drill and
+discipline, the result would unquestionably be that a large number of
+them would volunteer for the front. Recruiting can best be promoted by
+creating an atmosphere in which the patriotism of the younger men of the
+country can be evoked, and we have done a good deal already in this
+direction."
+
+On April 4th a display was made of the force available. A review was
+held in the Phoenix Park of 25,000 men--splendid material, but half of
+them with neither arms nor uniform. The Unionist Press was friendly in
+its comments upon the statement which Redmond supplied after the parade,
+claiming that these men should be utilized for Home Defence. That day
+was Easter Sunday of 1915. No one guessed then what the next Easter was
+going to bring about.
+
+On April 19th I find him writing officially to Mr. Birrell, seeking the
+Chief Secretary's influence with the War Office, and claiming, what was
+the truth, that the Irish Command shared his view. But at the moment
+recruiting was increasing weekly and the War Office were in no mood to
+make further concessions than those by which the improvement had been
+brought about. Then came the Coalition, and the consequent reduction of
+recruiting from close on 7,000 to 3,000 a month; and in July the
+Adjutant-General, Sir Henry Sclater, of his own motion approached
+Redmond. He suggested a meeting between Redmond and the War Office, with
+Sir Matthew Nathan and General Parsons in attendance. Redmond agreed to
+the proposal, but formulated his views in a lengthy memorandum. The
+first three points dealt with matters directly concerning the Sixteenth
+Division, but in the fourth, weighty emphasis was laid on the suggestion
+of recruiting Volunteers for Home Defence. Sir Henry Sclater's reply
+omitted completely all reference to this last--an omission on which
+Redmond commented sharply. He elicited the official answer that by
+urging men to join on a special enlistment for home service the numbers
+who would join for general service would be reduced. This was
+diametrically opposite to Redmond's view, and he said so, and urged
+again that the Irish Command was of his opinion.
+
+The proposed conference resolved itself--to Redmond's indignation--into
+a discussion of Redmond's memorandum between the Adjutant-General and
+Sir Lawrence Parsons. Only in September, when at Lord Wimborne's
+instance he interviewed Lord Kitchener, did he have the opportunity of
+raising the matter by direct speech. Lord Kitchener then declared
+himself willing to admit that on the question whether enlistment for
+Home Defence would promote or retard recruiting, Redmond's judgment was
+probably more valuable than his own, and he promised to review the
+question of Home Defence again in the light of it. But of this promise
+nothing came.
+
+Meantime Redmond was being warned that the Volunteer organization as it
+stood had exhausted its usefulness; its enthusiasm was gone--a natural
+result of having no purpose. A new opening seemed to be created by the
+Bill which Lord Lincolnshire introduced to recognize a Volunteer Force
+in Great Britain which should perform military duties under the War
+Office control. Redmond hoped to see this carried with an extension of
+it to Ireland, and this was the practical proposal with which he
+concluded his speech when, on November 2nd, for the first time in that
+year, he raised in debate the questions to which so much of his time and
+thought had been given.
+
+How was the Irish recruiting problem to be dealt with? He declared
+himself absolutely against compulsion, to impose which would be "a folly
+and a crime" unless the country was "practically unanimous in favour of
+it." The voluntary system had never had fair play--at all events in
+Ireland.
+
+     "It is a fact, which has its origin in history, and which I need
+     not refer to more closely--it is a fact that in the past recruiting
+     for the British Army was not popular with the mass of the Irish
+     people. But when the war broke out, my colleagues and I, quite
+     regardless, let me say, of the political risks which stared us in
+     the face, instantly made an appeal to those whom we represented in
+     Ireland, and told them that this was Ireland's war as well as
+     England's war, that it was a just war, and that the recent attitude
+     of Great Britain to Ireland had thrown upon us a great, grave duty
+     of honour to the British Empire. We then went back from this
+     country, and we went all through Ireland. I myself, within the
+     space of about a month after that, made speeches at great public
+     meetings in every one of the four provinces of Ireland. We set
+     ourselves to the task of creating in Ireland--creating, mind
+     you--an atmosphere favourable to recruiting, and of creating a
+     sentiment in Ireland favourable to recruiting. I say most solemnly,
+     that in that task we were absolutely entitled to the sympathy and
+     the assistance of the Government and the War Office. I am sorry to
+     say we got neither."
+
+He disclaimed all imputation upon the Prime Minister or the
+Under-Secretary, Mr. Tennant--exceptions which pointed the reference to
+Lord Kitchener.
+
+     "The fact remains that when we were faced with that difficult and
+     formidable task, practically every suggestion that we made, based
+     on the strength of our own knowledge of what was suitable for
+     Ireland and the conditions there, was put upon one side. The
+     gentlemen who were responsible for that evidently believed that
+     they knew what was suited to the necessities of Ireland far better
+     than we did. A score of times, at least, I put upon paper and sent
+     to the Government and the War Office my suggestions and my
+     remonstrances, but all in vain. Often, almost in despair, I was
+     tempted to rise in this House and publicly tell the House of
+     Commons the way in which we were hampered and thwarted in our work
+     in Ireland. I refrained from doing so from fear of doing mischief
+     and from fear of doing harm. To-day I am very glad that I so
+     refrained, because in spite of these discouragements, in spite of
+     this thwarting and embarrassing, and in spite of the utterly faulty
+     and ridiculous system of recruiting that was set on foot, we have
+     succeeded, and have raised in Ireland a body of men whose numbers
+     Lord Kitchener, in his letter to the Irish conference, declared
+     were magnificent."
+
+He quoted the Unionist _Birmingham Post_ for the saying that what had
+happened in Ireland was "a miracle." From the National Volunteers 27,054
+men had joined the colours; from the Ulster Volunteers 27,412. In both
+forces there must be many left who could not leave Ireland, yet might be
+utilized in Ireland.
+
+     "It may be remembered that the very day the war broke out I rose in
+     my place in this House and offered the Volunteers to the Government
+     for Home Defence. I only spoke, of course, of the National
+     Volunteers. I was not entitled to speak for the Ulster Volunteers,
+     but I suggested that they and we might work shoulder to shoulder.
+     From that day to this the War Office have persistently refused to
+     have anything to say to these Volunteers. The Prime Minister, a few
+     days after I spoke, in answer to a question told me that the
+     Government were considering at that moment how best to utilize
+     these Volunteers. They have never been utilized since. A few days
+     after I made my speech I went myself to the War Office, and as a
+     result of my interviews there I submitted to the Government a
+     scheme which would have provided them at once with 25,000 men. If
+     that offer had been accepted, not 25,000, not 50,000, but 100,000
+     men would have been enlisted for Home Defence within the month. But
+     no, it was obstinately refused. I hear that an hon. member below me
+     is now apparently inclined to take the point that the War Office
+     took. The War Office said that would interfere with recruiting in
+     Ireland. Of course, we know Ireland better than the hon. member. We
+     know our difficulties in Ireland. We do not believe that it would.
+     On the contrary, we believe that it would have promoted recruiting.
+     We believe that the enlistment of these men, their association in
+     barracks and in camp, with the inevitable creation and fostering of
+     a military spirit, would have led to a large number of volunteers
+     for foreign service. Our views counted for nought. In this instance
+     they were not only our views. These views had the approval of the
+     Irish Command, and from the purely military point of view the Irish
+     Command was in favour of some such scheme as I had outlined, and
+     the reason was plain. They have to provide, and are providing to
+     this day, 20,000 to 25,000 men from the Regular Army for the
+     defence of the coasts of Ireland--guarding the coast, guarding
+     piers, railways, bridges, and so forth. If these men of ours had
+     been taken up, within two or three months of training and in camp
+     they would have been able to do this work, and would have done it
+     ever since, and would thereby have released from 20,000 to 25,000
+     men. That is the chief reason, I fancy, why the Military Command in
+     Ireland were in favour of this idea. But to this moment the refusal
+     continues. I see that an unofficial Bill was introduced by the
+     Marquess of Lincolnshire into the House of Lords doing, to a great
+     measure, for England and Wales what we have been asking should be
+     done for Ireland. I claim that that Bill shall be extended to
+     Ireland."
+
+The Volunteer Bill came to the House of Commons in a form making it
+applicable to Ireland. There it was opposed by Sir Edward Carson, who
+demanded that no man of military age should be accepted as a volunteer
+unless he consented to enlist for general service if called. This killed
+the Bill.
+
+Sir Edward Carson was of opinion that the necessities of the case
+demanded universal compulsory service; and conscription was already in
+sight. With that prospect Redmond's anxiety became very grave.
+
+On November 15th he wrote his mind to the Prime Minister:
+
+     HOUSE OF COMMONS,
+
+     _November_ 15, 1915.
+
+     _Private_.
+
+     MY DEAR MR. ASQUITH,
+
+     I have been in a state of great anxiety for some time on the
+     question of a possible Conscription Bill, and I have discussed the
+     matter fully with Mr. Birrell, who knows my views, and who, no
+     doubt, has communicated them to you.
+
+     I think it well, however, to shortly put, in writing, our position.
+
+     In your Dublin speech you asked the Irish people for "a free
+     offering from a free people," and the response has been, taking
+     everything into account, in the words of Lord Kitchener,
+     "magnificent."
+
+     Recruiting is now going on at a greater rate than ever in Ireland,
+     and it would be a terrible misfortune if we were driven into a
+     position on the question of conscription which would alienate that
+     public opinion which we have now got upon our side in Ireland.
+
+     The position would, indeed, be a cruel one, if conscription were
+     enacted for England, and Ireland excluded.
+
+     On the other hand, I must tell you that the enforcement of
+     conscription in Ireland is an impossibility.
+
+     Faced with this dilemma, if a Conscription Bill be introduced, the
+     Irish party will be forced to oppose it as vigorously as possible
+     at every stage.
+
+     I regret having to write you in this way, but it is only right that
+     I should be quite frank in the matter.
+
+     Very truly yours,
+
+     J.E. REDMOND.
+
+     RT. HON. H.H. Asquith, M.P., _Prime Minister_,
+
+Assurances reached him that the first tentative Bill for compelling
+unmarried men to enlist would only be introduced to fulfil a pledge
+given by Mr. Asquith in connection with the Derby Scheme, and that as
+the Derby Scheme had not applied to Ireland, the pledge also had no
+bearing there. By December 21st the matter was raised in the House of
+Commons. Redmond, after the Prime Minister had spoken, defined what he
+was careful to call "my personal view" on the question of compulsory
+service.
+
+"I am content to take the phrase used by the Prime Minister. I am
+prepared to say that I will stick at nothing--nothing which is
+necessary, nothing which is calculated to effect the purpose--in order
+to end this war." He added: "That is the view, I am certain, of the
+people of Ireland."
+
+The whole question was presented by him as "one of expediency and
+necessity, not of principle." From that standpoint he declared himself
+unconvinced that the adoption of compulsion in any shape was either
+expedient or necessary. It was inexpedient because it would "break up
+the unity of the country"--unnecessary because they had already many
+more men than they could either train or equip. In Ireland, a limited
+task had been defined, to keep up the necessary reserves for fifty-three
+battalions of infantry, and he pointed to the fact that so far the new
+organization of recruiting was producing the stipulated flow.
+
+On these grounds, he said, the Irish party would oppose the measure, and
+on January 5th that opposition was offered, though Ireland was excluded
+from the Bill. But the first division showed a majority of more than ten
+to one for the proposal; and in face of that, when the House returned to
+the discussion, Redmond declared that Irish opposition must
+cease--especially in view of the support given by the responsible
+leaders of Labour. Sir Edward Carson, following, pressed him to go one
+step farther and accept the inclusion of Ireland in the Bill. Nothing,
+he said, could do so much to conciliate Ulster. This was the first time
+that any suggestion of this possibility had come from that quarter, and
+it came in backing a suggestion which Redmond could not accept. I was
+not present at the debate, and it is hard to judge of such matters from
+the printed record, but the impression on my mind is that the suggestion
+was made without any desire to embarrass. A few days later, in the
+Committee stage, an Ulster member moved an amendment which would have
+included Ireland. Mr. Bonar Law, speaking for the Government, advised
+against it--on the ground of expediency; it would not be an easy thing
+to put this measure into operation in Ireland. Sir Edward Carson spoke
+later and counselled the dropping of the amendment. With matters in this
+stage Redmond spoke very fully to the House, recognizing the absence of
+all partisan tone in the speeches of Ulster members. He had long felt,
+he said, that "if conscription came, Ireland's whole attitude towards
+the war was likely to suffer cruel and unjust misrepresentation,"
+because it must emphasize a difference between the two countries.
+Conscription in Ireland would be "impracticable, unworkable and
+impossible." Instead of leading to the increase in the supply of men it
+would have the opposite effect.
+
+"It would most undoubtedly paralyse the efforts of myself and others who
+have worked unsparingly--and not unsuccessfully--since the commencement
+of the war, and would play right into the hands of those who are a
+contemptible minority among the Nationalists of Ireland, and who are
+trying--unsuccessfully trying--to prevent recruiting and to undermine
+thus the position and power of the Irish party because of the attitude
+we have taken up."
+
+He complained once more of the Government's failure to utilize the
+Volunteers and of the damping effect which had resulted from the
+non-fulfilment of Mr. Asquith's words. Yet Ireland was doing all that
+was asked of it--maintaining the reserves of Irishmen for Irish
+regiments at the front.--This was true at the moment; but the Sixteenth
+Division had scarcely yet begun to come into the line and the Ulster
+Division, during its first few months, suffered slight casualties. In
+point of fact, however, the bare rumour of conscription had checked
+recruiting, and Redmond was guarded in his terms. It was, he said, "on
+the whole very satisfactory, and in the towns amazing"; but he admitted
+that the country districts had not given an adequate response.
+
+But he made now an appeal to the House as a whole to lift the
+consideration of this whole matter on to broad lines, to view it on the
+plane of statesmanship. If five years earlier anyone had foretold that
+in a great war Ireland would send 95,000 volunteer new recruits to fight
+by the side of England, would he not have been regarded as a lunatic?
+"The change in Ireland has been so rapid that men are apt to forget its
+history." That was a true saying; his own success had created
+difficulties for him. Once more he quoted the example of the other
+statesman in the Empire whose position had most analogy with his own. "I
+honestly believe," he said, "that General Botha's difficulties were
+small compared with those we had to confront in Ireland.... It is true
+to say at this moment that the overwhelming sentiment of the Irish
+people is with the Empire for the first time."
+
+That was his claim, and in that month of January 1916 he was fully
+entitled to make it; and the House, I think, recognized his
+justification. His speech has in it the ring of confidence, of assurance
+that he would be taken at his word.
+
+"Rest satisfied," he said; "do not try to drive Ireland." Wise words,
+and they were not unwisely listened to. There was no room for doubting
+this man's earnestness when he went on to tell how he himself had
+recently met Irish troops in the field, and had then pledged himself to
+them to spare no effort in raising the necessary reserves for their
+ranks among their own countrymen. "Trust us," he said to the House,
+indicating himself and his colleagues, "trust us to know, after all, the
+best methods. Do not carp at Irish effort, and do not belittle Irish
+effort." Then they might count on loyal and enduring support till the
+great struggle was ended.
+
+That speech, as I read it, marks the highwater-line of Redmond's
+achievement. His statesmanship in the counsels of the Empire had
+prevailed for his own country. The Home Rule Act was on the Statute
+Book, and though not in legal operation it was present in all minds; and
+now on a supreme issue--the blood-tax--Ireland's right to be treated as
+self-governing was recognized in fact. The argument which underlay
+implicitly Redmond's whole contention was never set out; it was
+contentious, politically, and he wisely avoided it. He spoke for a
+nation to which autonomy had been accorded by statute; he preferred men
+to feel for themselves rather than be asked to admit that no
+self-governing nation will submit voluntarily to the imposition of the
+blood-tax without its own most formal consent. All that he said was, in
+effect: You have Ireland with you for the first time, by our assistance;
+do not destroy our power to continue that assistance, do not alienate
+Ireland. In the counsels of the Empire his argument prevailed; and
+during the early months of 1916 the relations between Great Britain and
+Ireland were better and happier than at any time of which history holds
+record. An utterance from one Irishman, and the general response to it,
+showed this in extraordinary degree.
+
+Our Division, or rather two brigades of it, had detrained in France on
+the 19th of December; the first impression as we shook ourselves
+together for the march to strange billets was the sound of guns.
+Scattered about in different villages lying round Bethune, our
+battalions passed the next two months in the usual training before we
+should take up our own sector of the line, and we saw little or nothing
+of each other. March found us engaged, though still only attached by
+companies to more seasoned troops, in some rough crater-fighting on the
+ugly mine-riddled stretch between Loos and Hulluch. It was when we were
+marching out from broken houses about the minehead at Annequin that we
+first met again our old stable companions, the Royal Irish--and that I
+first saw Willie Redmond in France at the head of his company.
+
+He was on foot as always, for he never could be persuaded to ride while
+the men were marching, and I never saw more geniality of greeting on any
+countenance than was on his when he came up with outstretched hand to
+where I was sitting by the roadside--for we had halted to see them go
+by. Here was a man utterly in his element, radiant literally in the
+enthusiasm of his devotion. He refused to listen to our talk of the bad
+time we had been through in the place where they were to succeed us (and
+in two winters of that war I never saw worse); all his talk was of the
+good time which we should have in the billets we were going to, which
+they had just left. Back there, in and about Allouagne, they rejoined
+us; and I remember dining with him in his company mess and hearing his
+eulogies of the splendid fellows that his company officers were. Then,
+about the time we moved up into trenches, our first leaves began and he
+got home in March. Naturally, he looked in at the House of Commons, and
+realized for the first time how uneasy well-informed persons in the
+lobbies were about the chances of the war. Everybody who ever came home
+from the front must have experienced the effect of that strange
+transition from unquestioning confidence to worried anxiety; but Willie
+Redmond was the only man who ever adequately gave expression to it.
+
+It was on the eve of St. Patrick's Day, and the Army Estimates were
+under discussion in a very thin House--a wrangling, fault-finding
+debate. In the middle of it Willie Redmond got up, and said that as he
+was not likely to be there again, he had one or two things to say which
+he thought the House would be glad to know. Speaking as one of the
+oldest members, who had all but completed his thirty-third year in
+Parliament, he told them that every soul in the House should be proud of
+the troops--not of the Irish troops, but of the troops
+generally--because more than anything else of the splendid spirit in
+which they were going through the privations and dangers,--which he
+described with passion. If he were to deliver a message from the troops,
+he knew well what it would be:
+
+     "Send us out the reinforcements which are necessary, and which are
+     naturally necessary. Send us out, as we admit you have been doing
+     up to this, the necessary supplies, and when you do that, have
+     trust in the men who are in the gap to conduct the war to the
+     victory which everyone at the front is confident is bound to come.
+     'And when victory does come,' the message would run on, 'you in the
+     House of Commons, in the country, and in every newspaper in the
+     country, can spend the rest of your lives in discussing as to
+     whether the victory has been won on proper lines or whether it has
+     not.' Nothing in the world can depress the spirits of the men that
+     I have seen at the front. I do not believe that there was ever
+     enough Germans born into this world to depress them. If it were
+     possible to depress them at all, it can only be done by pursuing a
+     course of embittered controversy in this country--as to which was
+     the right way or the wrong way of conducting affairs at the front.
+     When a man feels that his feet are freezing, when he is standing in
+     heavy rain for a whole night with no shelter, and when next morning
+     he tries to cook a piece of scanty food over the scanty flame of a
+     brazier in the mud, he perhaps sits down for a few minutes in the
+     day's dawn and takes up an old newspaper, and finds speeches and
+     leading articles from time to time which tell him that apparently
+     everything is going wrong, that the Ministers who are at the head
+     of affairs in this country, upon whom he is depending, are not
+     really men with their hearts in the work, but are really more or
+     less callous and calculating mercenaries, who are not directing
+     affairs in the best way, but are simply anxious to maintain their
+     own salaries. I say that when speeches and articles of that kind
+     are found in the newspapers they are calculated, if anything is or
+     can be so calculated, to depress the men who are at the front."
+
+Then came a few words in praise of the Irish troops and in deprecation
+of the failure to recognize some of their services; a confident
+assurance that, "whether they are remembered or not," the Sixteenth
+Division would do their duty, with an equal assurance that the Ulster
+men would do as well as they--and he reached to his conclusion:
+
+     "Since I went out there I found that the common salutation in all
+     circumstances is one of cheer. If things go pretty well and the men
+     are fairly comfortable, they say 'Cheer O!' If things go badly, and
+     the snow falls and the rain comes through the roof of a billet in
+     an impossible sort of cow-house, they say 'Cheer O!' still more.
+     All we want out there is that you shall adopt the same tone and say
+     'Cheer O!' to us."
+
+It is not too much to say that this speech was received with a cry of
+gratitude all over the country and throughout the Army. It said what
+badly needed to be said, and said it with a freshness and a dash that
+came superbly from a company commander in his fifty-fourth year. It was
+the best service that had yet been rendered to John Redmond's policy.
+Everybody quite naturally and simply accepted the Nationalist Irishman
+as the spokesman for all the troops who were actually in the line. Mr.
+Walter Long, always a generous and candid human being, was quick to give
+voice to this feeling:
+
+     "The honourable and gallant member for East Clare has been in
+     conflict, not only with one particular political party, but during
+     the greater part of his career with every party in turn, and has
+     engaged in bitter controversy with them. Does anybody doubt the
+     fact that when war was declared one great factor in the mind of the
+     Emperor responsible for this war was that dissension would paralyse
+     the hands of Great Britain? Ireland, whatever may have been our
+     differences in the past, and whatever may be our differences in
+     happier days again when we are at peace, everybody must feel by the
+     action of her representatives, who have fought so bitterly in this
+     House and in the country, has created a new claim for herself upon
+     the affection, the gratitude, the respect of the people of the
+     Empire by the great and proud part that she has played in this
+     great struggle."
+
+That was the position to which Redmond's policy, backed by the Irishmen
+who supported it with their lives, of whom his brother was the
+outstanding representative, had brought this great issue. The next
+thing which brought the name of Ireland prominently before the world was
+the story of action taken by other Irishmen, also at the risk of their
+lives, to reverse the strong current which was then carrying us forward
+with so hopeful augury.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 5: Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Moore, C.B., an officer who had
+served with distinction in South Africa, and whose father, George Henry
+Moore, had been a famous advocate in Parliament of Tenant Right and
+Repeal.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Rifles were really not available, nor competent
+instructors. But the essential was recognition. A grant towards
+equipment should have been given, and possibly other assistance. We
+secured several thousand rifles in Belgium about this time. For
+instructors, any old crippled veterans paid by Government would have
+conveyed the sense of recognition.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE REBELLION AND ITS SEQUEL
+
+I
+
+
+The facts of the Irish rebellion are too generally familiar to need more
+than the briefest restatement--and perhaps too little known for an
+attempt at detailed analysis. Broadly, a general parade of the Irish
+Volunteers all over the country was ordered for Easter Sunday. On the
+night before Good Friday a German ship with a cargo of rifles was off
+the Irish coast. This ship, the _Aud_, was a few hours later captured
+and taken in convoy by a British sloop, so that the arms were never
+landed. Emissaries from the Volunteers who had gone to Kerry by
+motor-car to receive and arrange for distributing the arms were killed
+in a motor accident while hurrying back to get in touch with their
+headquarters. On Saturday the general parade was cancelled by order of
+Professor MacNeill, chief of the Volunteer organization. On Monday,
+against his wish, a portion of the Volunteer force in Dublin, including
+the battalion specially under command of Pearse and MacDonagh, with the
+Citizen Army under James Connolly, paraded, scattered through the city
+and seized certain previously selected points, of which the most
+important was the Post Office. From it as headquarters they proclaimed
+an Irish Republic. Slight attempts at rising took place in county
+Wexford, where the town of Enniscorthy was seized, in county Galway, and
+in county Louth. At Galway, at Wexford and at Drogheda the National
+Volunteers turned out to assist in suppressing the rising. Except for a
+serious encounter with a police force in county Dublin, the fighting
+was confined to the capital. It terminated by the unconditional
+surrender of the rebels on the Saturday. The struggle was prolonged by
+the total lack of artillery in the early stages. Riflemen established in
+houses could not be dislodged by direct assault of infantry without very
+heavy casualties to the attacking force.
+
+The purpose of this book is to show Redmond's connection with this event
+and the succeeding developments from it. He failed to foresee the event;
+he failed to direct its developments into the course he desired. How far
+he is to be held responsible, or blameworthy, for these failures,
+readers may be assisted to decide.
+
+From the beginning of 1916 onwards the Irish Government was warned of
+danger. One of its members--the Attorney-General, Sir James
+Campbell--advocated the seizure of arms from men parading with what were
+evidently stolen service rifles or bayonets. But the Chief Secretary
+refused to take any action which could be described as an attempt to
+suppress or disarm the Irish Volunteers until there was definite
+evidence of actual association with the enemy.
+
+Proof of sympathy was not difficult to obtain, and the propaganda
+against recruiting had now reached the point of attempts to break up
+recruiting meetings. Still, Mr. Birrell was in a difficulty. He had a
+logical mind, and he knew what had been permitted to Ulster. The fact
+that the Attorney-General himself had been a main adviser of the
+Provisional Government did not make it easier to follow his advice to
+disarm men who professed disaffection to the existing authority. Mr.
+Birrell knew that if he took such action he could be attacked in the
+official Nationalist Press for having one law in Ulster and another in
+the South. Further, Redmond would certainly not have disavowed, and
+might even have endorsed, such a line of criticism. The reason was that
+Redmond, as he had never believed in the reality of the Ulster danger,
+so now did not believe in this one.
+
+Later, when Mr. Birrell resigned his post after the insurrection was
+suppressed, Redmond chivalrously took on himself a part of the
+responsibility. "I feel," he said, "that I have incurred some share of
+the blame which he has laid at his own door, because I entirely agreed
+with his view that the danger of an outbreak of the kind was not a real
+one, and in my conversations with him I have expressed that view, and
+for all I know that may have influenced him in his conduct and his
+management of Irish affairs." A later debate--on July 31st--showed that
+his strong personal feeling for Mr. Birrell had moved him rather to
+overstate than to belittle his advisory responsibility. Dublin Castle
+had never consulted him as to policy. Conferences had taken place with
+the Under-Secretary, Sir Matthew Nathan, but these were concerned with
+considering and framing the machinery to be created for bringing the
+Home Rule Act into operation, whenever the time came.
+
+"There was no conference at all about the state of the country or about
+Sinn Fein. When once or twice in casual consultation the matter came
+up--I hope the House will listen to this--I did not hesitate to say what
+in my opinion ought to be done in certain cases by the Government. For
+example, I expressed a strong view to them as to how they should deal
+with seditious newspapers and with prosecutions. What I did suggest,
+they never did; what I said they ought not to do, they always did. And I
+want to say something further. They never gave me any information, bad
+or good, about the state of the country. From first to last I never saw
+one single confidential Government report from the police or from any
+other source. I know nothing whatever about their secret confidential
+information."
+
+It is fair to add that the Under-Secretary was in communication from
+time to time with other members of the party, who were of course in
+touch with Redmond. But the substantial accuracy of Redmond's statement
+is sufficiently evidenced by one fact. Everybody knew that Sir Roger
+Casement was in Berlin and had tried--most unsuccessfully--to recruit an
+Irish Brigade from among the Irish prisoners. But neither Redmond nor
+any Irish member knew that from April 17th Dublin Castle had warning
+that a ship was on its way from Germany with rifles. The Navy was on the
+alert, and when the _Aud_ came off Fenit, in Kerry, on Good Friday
+morning, she was promptly challenged.[7] But in the dark hours of that
+morning she had landed Sir Roger Casement and his two confederates, one
+of whom was arrested with him the same day. On Saturday morning
+Government decided to take action against what was now clearly a rebel
+organization. But as the Chief Secretary and the General Commanding in
+Chief were both in London, and as the available force of men in Dublin
+was small, a postponement was decided on. No special precautions appear
+to have been taken against the contingency of an immediate rising. On
+Monday a very large proportion of the officers from the Curragh and the
+Dublin garrison were at the Fairyhouse races. In the Castle itself there
+was only the ordinary guard.
+
+Redmond at this date was also in London. His lack of apprehension is
+sufficiently indicated by the fact that his son and daughter were both
+at the races, and drove up unknowingly to an armed barricade. Had he
+been in authority and known, as the Government knew on Saturday, that
+the Irish Volunteers expected and had arranged for the landing of a
+heavy cargo of arms on Good Friday, and that a general parade of their
+men had been ordered for Easter, I hope that he would have either had
+troops in the utmost readiness to move, or have put strong guards in
+places of importance. But this is a futile speculation, for had he been
+in power the situation would never have arisen.
+
+The decisive thing which drove most of the relatively small number among
+the Volunteers who broke away from Redmond into their original hostility
+was Government's failure to recognize them. Their force stood in their
+own eyes for the assertion of Ireland's nationality; and many of those
+who took active part in the rebellion were at the outset fully prepared
+to assert that nationality in jeopardy of their lives in the Allied
+cause. Redmond's policy, had effect been given to it by the Government,
+still more had he himself been invested with the right to embody it in
+action, would have prevented the estrangement of all but a very few.
+Once the estrangement took place, however, I think that he undervalued
+what was opposed to him, both in respect of its power and of its
+quality. He lacked appreciation and respect for the idealists whose
+ideals were not his own. He underrated their sincerity, and the danger
+of their sincerity. The beauty of sacrifice in the young men who went
+out to the war, carrying Ireland's cause in their keeping, moved him
+profoundly; and he saw the practical bearing of their acts on the great
+practical problem of statesmanship to which his life had been given. He
+did not guess at the sway which might be exercised over men's minds by
+an almost mystical belief which disdained to count with practicalities,
+Redmond for fifteen years had been the leader, and for thirty-five years
+had been a member, of a party which presented itself--with great
+justification--as the winner for Ireland of many positive material
+advantages on the way to an ultimate goal. Pearse, at a time when all
+the world was plunged in a prodigal welter of destruction, came forward,
+demanding from Irishmen nothing but a sacrifice--promising nothing but
+the chance for young men to shed their blood sacramentally in the cause
+of Ireland's freedom. Redmond also was calling for the extreme risk, but
+on a sane and sound calculation, to ensure the full development of
+something already gained. Pearse preached, mystically, the efficacious
+power simply of blood shed in the name of Ireland. Those whom he brought
+with him into the pass of danger were few, but they were touched with
+his own spirit; and even the very recklessness of their act touched the
+popular imagination. Irish regiments, after all, could do only what
+other regiments were doing; their deeds were obscured in a chaos of war
+from which individual prowess could not emerge. Pearse and his
+associates offered to Irishmen a stage for themselves on which they
+could and did secure full personal recognition--the complete attention
+of Ireland's mind.
+
+All this would have seemed vanity to Redmond's solid, positive
+intelligence--vanity in all senses of the word. It would have moved him
+to nothing but angry contempt--anger against the spirit which was
+prepared to divide Ireland's effort, contempt for the futility of the
+reasoning. But one aspect of the rising dominated all the others in his
+mind. He had neither tolerance nor pity for Roger Casement, who was in
+his eyes simply one who tried to seduce Irish troops by threats and
+bribes into treason to their salt, one who made himself among the worst
+instruments of Germany. At the re-assembly of Parliament on April 27th
+he expressed the "feeling of detestation and horror" with which he and
+his colleagues had regarded the events in Dublin; a feeling which he
+believed to be shared "by the overwhelming mass of the people of
+Ireland." On May 3rd, in a statement to the Press, he denounced fiercely
+"this wicked move" of men who "have tried to make Ireland the cat's-paw
+of Germany." "Germany plotted it, Germany organized it, Germany paid for
+it." The men who were Germany's agents "remained in the safe remoteness
+of American cities," while "misguided and insane young men in Ireland
+had risked, and some of them had lost, their lives in an insane
+anti-patriotic movement." It was anti-patriotic, he urged, because
+Ireland held to the choice she had made, to the opinion which thousands
+of Irish soldiers had sealed with their blood. It was "not half so much
+treason to the cause of the Allies as treason to the cause of Home
+Rule."
+
+On the day when that statement appeared the sequel had begun to unroll
+itself. In the House of Commons Mr. Asquith announced the trial,
+sentence and shooting of three signatories to the Republican
+proclamation--Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh. With the exception of James
+Connolly, these were the men most directly answerable for launching an
+attempt which had cost five hundred lives and destroyed over two
+millions' worth of property, Redmond accepted their doom as just.
+
+"This outbreak happily seems to be over. It has been dealt with with
+firmness, which was not only right, but it was the duty of the
+Government so to deal with it."
+
+But now that example had been made, he held that other thoughts should
+guide those in authority.
+
+"As the rebellion, or the outbreak, call it what you like, has been put
+down with firmness, I do beg the Government, and I speak from the very
+bottom of my heart and with all my earnestness, not to show undue
+hardship or severity to the great masses of those who are implicated, on
+whose shoulders there lies a guilt far different from that which lies
+upon the instigators and promoters of the outbreak. Let them, in the
+name of God, not add this to the wretched, miserable memories of the
+Irish people, to be stored up perhaps for generations, but let them deal
+with it in such a spirit of leniency as was recently exhibited in South
+Africa by General Botha, and in that way pave the way to the possibility
+... that out of the ashes of this miserable tragedy there may spring up
+something which will redound to the future happiness of Ireland and the
+future complete and absolute unity of this Empire. I beg of the
+Government, having put down this outbreak with firmness, to take only
+such action as will leave the least rankling bitterness in the minds of
+the Irish people, both in Ireland and elsewhere throughout the world."
+
+It is well to recall what he had in his mind. After the suppression of
+the South African rebellion in 1914, one man only was put to death--an
+officer who changed sides during an action. No attempt was made to try
+accused persons before a jury; a special tribunal of judges was set up
+by the South African Parliament. But their power of inflicting
+punishment was limited by the Parliament to a sentence of three years.
+General de Wet, the chief figure in the rebellion, was dismissed without
+punishment to his farm. That was the manner in which a strong native
+Government, realizing the possibilities of future trouble, dealt with an
+insurrection infinitely more serious in a military sense than that which
+broke out in Dublin. But in Ireland there was no native government; and
+the announcement of Mr. Birrell's resignation meant in reality that Mr.
+Asquith's Ministry had abdicated so far as Ireland was concerned. Quite
+properly, they had called in a competent soldier to deal with the
+military exigency. Quite shamefully, they left him in sole authority to
+handle what was essentially the task of statesmanship.
+
+Everybody saw that in such a case the need was to prevent a rebellious
+spirit from spreading. Sir John Maxwell took the simple view that the
+way to secure this was by plenty of executions. Knowledge of Irish
+history cannot be expected in an English Minister, still less in an
+English soldier; but it could have taught him how often and how
+ineffectually that recipe had been applied. Still less could it be hoped
+that a soldier, in no sense bound to the study of contemporary politics,
+should allow for the effect of two factors which must certainly
+influence Irish judgment and Irish feeling. The first of these was the
+precedent within the Empire created by General Botha's Government. This,
+I think, English opinion generally, and particularly English
+Imperialist opinion, wholly disregarded; but it was the point to which
+Redmond had instantly directed attention. For him, the idea of an
+Imperial Commonwealth of States was a reality, and within one
+Commonwealth there cannot be two standards of justice. The second factor
+was the licence accorded by a Liberal Government, and the sanction given
+by a Tory Opposition, to preparations for rebellion, and acts of
+rebellion, in Ulster. This was generally recognized by public opinion,
+though I think deliberately set aside by Sir John Maxwell--who perhaps
+is not to be blamed. But the Prime Minister, who had been chiefly and
+ultimately responsible for the decision to let Ulstermen do as they
+liked, was specially bound to consider and provide for the consequences
+of that line of policy in the past as it affected the present
+development. He was also, as the Minister responsible alike for carrying
+a Home Rule Act and for denying to it operation, specially bound in such
+a pass as this to be guided largely by the judgment of the man who but
+for that postponement would have been head of an Irish Government. But,
+under the various pressures of the moment, Mr. Asquith moved in a wholly
+different direction. Redmond's appeal and advice went totally
+disregarded. Yet Redmond knew Ireland as no Englishman could know it;
+and his hands were clean of guilt for what had happened. Mr. Asquith by
+his past inaction, his Tory colleagues by their action before the war,
+were deeply involved in responsibility. It is difficult, if not
+impossible, to find in Mr. Asquith's conduct any recognition of this
+cardinal fact. He judged rebels as if preparations for rebellion had
+never been palliated or approved.
+
+All that Redmond could achieve was by incessant personal intervention to
+limit the list of executions, to put some stay on what he called later
+"the gross and panicky violence" with which measures of suppression
+were conceived and carried out. He could not prevent the amazing
+procedure of sending flying columns throughout the country into places
+where there had been no hint of disturbance, and making arrests by the
+hundred without reason given or evidence produced. In many cases, men
+who had been thoroughly disgusted by the outbreak found themselves in
+jail; and disaffection was manufactured hourly.
+
+On May 3rd, when Redmond made his public appeal to Mr. Asquith, it was
+still not too late to prevent the mischief from spreading. By general
+consent, Redmond was right when he said that the rising was thoroughly
+unpopular in Ireland, and most of all in Dublin. The troops on whom the
+insurgents fired were in the first instance Irish troops. Later in that
+year I was attached to one of these battalions (the 10th Dublins), and
+asked them how they did their scouting work during the conflict. "We
+needed no scouts," was the answer; "the old women told us everything."
+The first volley which met a company of this battalion killed an
+officer; he was so strongly Nationalist in his sympathy as to be almost
+a Sinn Feiner. Others had been active leaders in the Howth gun-running.
+It was not merely a case of Irishmen firing on their fellow-countrymen:
+it was one section of the original Volunteers firing on another.
+
+Yet from the moment when English troops came on the scene, another
+strain of feeling began to make itself felt. A lady ordered tea to be
+made for one of the incoming regiments, halted outside her house on the
+line of march. The refreshment was long in coming, and she went down to
+see why. She found her cook up in arms: "Is it me boil the kettle for
+Englishmen coming in to shoot down Irishmen?" Yet that was still the
+voice of a minority. When I came home from France a few weeks later, a
+shrewd and prosperous Nationalist man of business said to me with fury:
+"The fools! It was the first rebellion that ever had the country
+against it, and they turned the people round in a week."
+
+Nothing could have prevented the halo of martyrdom from attaching itself
+to those who died by the law for the sake of Irish freedom: the
+tradition was too deeply ingrained in Ireland's history. Yet Redmond did
+not go beyond the measure of average Irish opinion when he accepted the
+first three executions as just. People at least knew who these men were,
+and their signatures to the proclamation of an Irish Republic proved
+their leadership. They were given the death of rebels in arms, to which
+no dishonour attaches. But a fatal mistake was made in suppressing all
+report of the proceedings of the court-martial on them, and this mistake
+was to be repeated indefinitely. Ireland was made to feel that this
+whole affair was taken completely out of the hands of Irishmen--that no
+attempt even was made to enlist Irish opinion on the side of law by a
+statement of the evidence on which law acted. Day by day there was a new
+bald announcement that such and such men had been shot; and these were
+men whose names Ireland at large had never heard of.
+
+Then on top of all came the appalling admission that an officer
+suffering from insanity had taken out three prisoners and caused them to
+be shot without trial on his own responsibility, none of these men
+having any complicity with the rebellion. This incident would have
+inflamed public opinion in any community; in Ireland its effect was
+beyond words poisonous. It revived the atmosphere of the Bachelor's Walk
+incident; and there was only too much justification for holding that the
+military authorities were indisposed to take the proper disciplinary
+action. Its effect detracted from the excellent opinion which the troops
+generally had earned by their conduct: it instilled venom into the
+resentment of those few cases (and it was beyond hope that they should
+not occur) in which soldiers had either lost their heads or yielded to
+the temptation of revenge in its ugliest shapes.
+
+The result can be best expressed by recording the experience of one Sinn
+Feiner who was captured in the fighting. While the military escort was
+taking him through the streets to his place of confinement, a crowd
+gathered round and ran along, consisting of angry men and women who had
+seen bloodshed and known hunger during these days. They shouted to the
+soldiers to knock his brains out there and then. Three weeks later he
+was again marched through the streets on his way to an English prison,
+and again a crowd mustered. But this time, to his amazement, they were
+shouting: "God save you! God have pity on you! Keep your heart up!
+Ireland's not dead yet!"
+
+These were the effects produced in Ireland on the mind of common people
+by the action of Government in enforcing the ultimate sanction of law
+which the members of that same Government by their action and by their
+inaction had brought into contempt. In England, in the meanwhile, a new
+Military Service Bill was going through the House, and naturally
+attempts to include Ireland in its operation were renewed. Sir Edward
+Carson, criticizing the Government of Ireland, said that (as Redmond put
+it in replying) Nationalists had held the power but not the
+responsibility. There was a note of angry protest in the Irish Leader's
+rejoinder. "I wish to say for myself that certainly since the Coalition
+Government came into operation, and before it, but certainly since then,
+I have had no power in the Government of Ireland. All my opinions have
+been overborne. My suggestions have been rejected, and my profound
+conviction is that if we had had the power and the responsibility for
+the Government of our country during the past two years, recent
+occurrences in Ireland would never have taken place."
+
+I think that view was at that moment very generally shared in England.
+The British Press had shown by their attitude towards the events in
+Dublin how deeply Redmond had made his mark. Almost without exception
+Unionist papers refrained from any attempt to identify Nationalist
+Ireland generally with the rising: they did full justice to the valour
+and the sufferings of Irish troops--who, indeed, at that very moment
+were passing through a cruel ordeal. In that Easter week the Sixteenth
+Division was subjected to two attacks with poison gas of a concentration
+and violence till then unknown, and under weather conditions which
+prolonged the ordeal beyond endurance. The 48th and 49th Brigades had
+very terrible losses. We of the 47th relieved them in the line.
+
+That was a long tour of trenches, some eighteen days beginning on the
+29th of April, and throughout it papers came in with the Irish news. I
+shall never forget the men's indignation. They felt they had been
+stabbed in the back. For myself, I thought that a situation had arisen
+in which Irish members who were serving had a more imperative duty at
+home, and I went to discuss the matter with Willie Redmond, whose
+battalion was then holding the front line to the left of Loos.
+
+I found him in the deep company commander's dug-out in the bay of line
+opposite Puits 14 bis, which will be known to many Irish soldiers. We
+came up to the light to talk, and he agreed with me in my view. We
+arranged that each of us should discuss with his commanding officer the
+question of asking for special leave. Mine advised me to go, and I have
+no earthly doubt that his would have said, or did say, the same; but
+Willie Redmond never brought himself to leave his men. Next month,
+however, he was invalided back, very seriously ill.
+
+But in our talk that day, when we discussed the possibility of our
+having some special influence, he said this: "Don't imagine that what
+you and I have done is going to make us popular with our people. On the
+contrary, we shall both be sent to the right about at the first General
+Election." I think he was wrong, at least to this extent, that any man
+who served would not have lessened his chance by doing so. When the tide
+flowed strongest against us, in three provinces one Nationalist only
+kept his seat--John Redmond's son, Major William Archer Redmond.
+
+
+II
+
+Already the tide had begun to turn in Ireland. On May 11th Mr.
+Dillon--who had been in Dublin during the rebellion--moved the
+adjournment of the House to demand that Government should state whether
+they intended to have more executions upon the finding of secret
+tribunals, and to continue the searches and wholesale arrests which were
+going on through the country. The list of executions had now reached
+fourteen, and no word of evidence had been published. Also the Prime
+Minister stated that he heard for the first time of the shooting of Mr.
+Sheehy-Skeffington and others by Captain Bowen Colthurst.
+Unquestionably, discussion was urgently needed, and Mr. Dillon was fully
+justified in emphasizing the mischief done in Ireland by alienating
+men's minds. But Mr. Dillon spoke as one who felt to the uttermost the
+passion of resentment which he depicted, and in his indignation against
+charges which had been brought against the insurgents, he was led to
+praise their conduct almost to the disparagement of soldiers in the
+field. Even in print the speech seethes with growing passion; and its
+delivery, I am told, accentuated its bitterness and its anti-English
+tone.
+
+It would be futile to deny that this utterance had a great effect in
+Ireland and in England, or to conceal Redmond's view that the effect was
+most lamentable. But it had one notable result. Mr. Asquith, in
+replying, announced his intention to visit Ireland and look into the
+situation for himself. Within a fortnight--on May 25th--he reported to
+the House his impressions.
+
+"The first was the breakdown of the existing machinery of the Irish
+Government; and the next was the strength and depth, and I might almost
+say, I think without exaggeration, the universality of the feeling in
+Ireland that we have now a unique opportunity for a new departure for
+the settlement of outstanding problems, and for a joint and combined
+effort to obtain agreement as to the way in which the Government of
+Ireland is for the future to be carried on."
+
+He indicated that an attempt would be made to renew negotiations for a
+settlement which would enable the Home Rule Act to be brought into
+operation at once; and that Mr. Lloyd George had consented to undertake
+the task of reconciling parties. But he begged that there should be no
+debate upon this proposal or upon Irish affairs at all. Redmond, in
+accepting, said that the request for acceptance without discussion was
+putting the goodwill of Nationalists to a very severe test.--A
+discussion would at once have produced this criticism: that Ireland
+would say to-morrow, "The Parliamentary party brought to Ireland a
+post-dated order for Home Rule, liable to an indefinite series of
+postponements: Sinn Fein by a week's rebellion secures that Home Rule
+shall be brought into force at once."
+
+In truth, the rapid growth of Sinn Fein from May 1916 onwards is due
+largely to this reasoning; but also to resentment against the
+Government's dealing with the rebellion, and against the Irish party's
+silence in Parliament in spite of the numerous actions of the military
+power which called for vigorous criticism.
+
+Irish Nationalist members realized the unpopularity of their silence and
+submitted to it, for the negotiations appeared to offer a real chance.
+We held that Mr. Lloyd George could not afford to fail, and had power
+enough to carry through a settlement. We did not know, and could not,
+that the Minister of Munitions had been called off from his regular work
+within five weeks before the beginning of the offensive on the Somme,
+for which an unprecedented outlay of material had been undertaken.
+
+The negotiations proceeded, and were conducted on the principle of
+discussion through a go-between. The parties never met: Mr. Lloyd George
+submitted proposals to each side separately. Redmond and his colleagues
+insisted on protecting themselves by securing a written document, so
+that, as it was hoped, there could be no understanding and the terms
+come to would be final.
+
+Those of us who hoped for a completely new approach to the problem were
+doomed to disappointment. The affair was taken up where the Buckingham
+Palace Conference left it. The terms to be arranged were terms of
+exclusion for Ulster; and the two questions of defining the area and the
+period met the negotiators on the threshold.
+
+It has been shown above that Redmond regarded as vital the distinction
+between temporary and permanent exclusion. His purpose was to stamp the
+whole of this proposed agreement with a provisional and transient
+character. It was to be simply a war measure, subject to re-arrangement
+at the close of hostilities; and it was to be adapted to a community
+still agitated by rebellion.
+
+An Irish Parliament with an Executive responsible to it was to be set up
+at once. But no elections were to be held. The existing members for the
+existing constituencies were to be the provisional Parliament till the
+war ended.
+
+The same considerations precluded the possibility of a referendum in
+Ulster. Nationalists accepted an area defined by agreement. It left out
+of "Ulster" the three counties, Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, in whose
+eight constituencies no Unionist had been returned since 1885. But it
+left to the excluded area the counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh, each
+with a Nationalist majority, and the boroughs of Newry and Londonderry,
+both represented by Home Rulers.
+
+This was a provision which no body of men could be expected to acquiesce
+in permanently as representing the equity of the case. It was accepted
+for the sake of peace, as a temporary expedient. A strong inducement was
+added by Mr. Lloyd George's proposal that at the close of the
+provisional period the whole matter should be referred to a Council of
+the Empire with the Prime Ministers of the Dominions taking a hand in
+the settlement. But to guarantee and seal its provisional and transitory
+character an extraordinary clause was added. Until a permanent
+settlement was reached, the Irish membership at Westminster was to
+remain at its original number of 103.
+
+The document embodying these conclusions was accepted in identical terms
+by each side, and each party of negotiators set out for Ireland to
+endeavour to secure acceptance of it. But before he left London Sir
+Edward Carson asked for an interpretation of the terms. Did the
+agreement mean that none of the six excluded counties could be brought
+under a Dublin Parliament without an Act of Parliament? In other words,
+was the exclusion permanent until Parliament should otherwise determine?
+He was answered that the Prime Minister accepted this interpretation,
+and would be prepared to say so when the matter came before Parliament.
+Knowledge of these communications was not conveyed to Redmond. Redmond's
+interpretation was that at the termination of the war this arrangement
+lapsed, and the Home Rule Act, which was the law of the land, came into
+force. If Ulster, or any part of it, were to be excluded, it must be by
+a new amending Act. Had the assurance given to Sir Edward Carson been
+conveyed to Redmond, either the negotiations must have been resumed or
+they must have been rendered abortive.
+
+On June 13th the Ulster Council accepted the terms, no doubt with great
+reluctance. The signatories to the Covenant in the three western
+counties felt themselves betrayed. The whole body found itself committed
+to acceptance of Home Rule in principle for twenty-six counties. But the
+war necessity was pressed upon them and they submitted.
+
+The Nationalist Convention met ten days later in Belfast. Mr. Devlin had
+been strenuous in his exertions throughout the province, but the whole
+force of the ecclesiastical power was thrown against him. Apart from the
+detestation of partition, the Catholic Church conceived that the
+principle of denominational education would be lost in the severed
+counties, where the dominant Presbyterian element was opposed to it.
+Very many delegates came to the Convention pledged in advance to resist
+the proposals: and the general anticipation was that Redmond would be
+thrown over.
+
+The proceedings were secret. But in the result the Nationalists of the
+North refused to be any party to denying the rest of Ireland
+self-government. A division was taken, and consent to temporary
+exclusion was carried by a large majority. The victory was in the main
+due to Mr. Devlin's extraordinary personal gifts, exercised to carry a
+conclusion which inevitably must injure himself where he was most
+sensitive to a wound, in the hearts of those among whom he was born and
+bred.
+
+It must have been in the weeks immediately after this that Redmond spoke
+to me, as I never heard him speak of any other man, his mind about Mr.
+Devlin. "Joe's loyalty in all this business has been beyond words," he
+said. "I know what it has cost him to do as he has done." He knew well
+that the younger man's influence had been more efficacious than the
+threat of his own resignation--which was not withheld. A man of other
+nature might have been jealous of the young and growing power: but such
+an element as this was so foreign to Redmond's whole being that even
+the thought of it never entered the most suspicious mind.
+
+The result of the Belfast Convention was communicated and discussed at a
+meeting of the Irish party held at the Mansion House on June 26th. It
+was one of the most hopeful moments in our experience; reaction from a
+depression approaching to despair gave confidence to the gloomiest among
+us. Hope was in the air. The effect of Mr. Asquith's sentence upon the
+whole machinery of Dublin Castle had not yet worn off. No new Government
+had been installed: the Chief Secretaryship remained vacant, the
+Lord-Lieutenant also had retired from his office. It seemed a certainty
+that we should enter, under whatever auguries, into the realization of a
+self-governing Ireland. Even those who were most enthusiastic for the
+birth of a new and glorious era that was to date from the stirring
+action of the rebels, and who were most open-mouthed in condemnation of
+Redmond's futile efforts, in practice shared our view. I asked one such
+man how he counted on securing the necessary first step of establishing
+an Irish Government. "Oh, I suppose," was his answer, "the Irish party
+will manage that somehow."
+
+But soon delay began to hang coldly on this temper of anticipation, and
+to delay were added disquieting utterances. On June 29th Lord Lansdowne
+announced in the House of Lords that the "consultations" which had been
+taking place were "certainly authorized" by the Government but were not
+binding upon it; and that he, speaking for the Unionist wing of the
+Cabinet, had not accepted the proposals. This was disturbing. Lord
+Selborne had retired from the Government before the negotiators went to
+Ireland, because he knew of the proposals and was not prepared to
+sanction them. We assumed that other Unionists who shared this view
+would have followed him in his frank action. Now we perceived that Lord
+Lansdowne and his friends had frugally husbanded their force. It was
+expected by many that Ireland would do the work for them. Failing that,
+they had still the last stab to deliver. But we counted upon one thing:
+that Mr. Lloyd George, if not Mr. Asquith, would feel himself committed
+to see the deal through--and that his resignation would have to be faced
+as a part of the consequences if attempts were made to go back on the
+bargain.
+
+Parliament reassembled and still nothing was said and nothing done: but
+the Press was full of rumours. On July 19th Redmond asked that a date
+should be fixed for the introduction of the proposed Bill, and next day
+he renewed his demand, urging that the constant delays and postponements
+were "seriously jeopardizing the chance of settlement." This was only
+too true. A furious agitation against the proposal of even temporary
+partition was raging through Ireland. Once more, the tide had been
+missed: time had been given to inculcate all manner of doubts and
+suspicions--and once more the suspicions proved to be only too well
+justified. The whole story was revealed to the House on July 24th.
+
+Redmond, in his speech, emphasized it that the proposals had come not
+from the Nationalists, but from the Government; they had, however, been
+accepted, after considerable negotiation and many changes in substance,
+as a plan which Nationalists could recommend for acceptance.
+Nationalists had been pressed to use the utmost despatch, had been told
+that every hour counted and that it was essential in the highest
+Imperial interests, if Ireland endorsed the agreement, that it should be
+put into operation at once. "That is two long months ago," he said.
+Action had been taken; the unpopularity of the proposals, fully
+foreseen, had been faced, on a clear understanding.
+
+"The agreement was in the words of the Prime Minister himself, for what
+he called a provisional settlement which should last until the war was
+over, or until a final and permanent settlement was arrived at within a
+limited period after the war. This was the chief factor of this plan,
+and without it not one of my colleagues or myself would for a moment
+have considered it, much less have submitted it to our followers."
+
+The retention of Irish members at Westminster in full strength was
+covenanted for "as an indispensable safeguard of the temporary character
+of the whole arrangement."
+
+It was on this construction of the agreement that consent to it had been
+secured, in the face of very strong and organized opposition: and
+consent was secured to it as a final document. Nevertheless, when
+Redmond arrived in London he had been at once confronted with a demand
+for modifications--of which the first were unimportant. Yet to consent
+to any alteration was a sacrifice of principle; but he was told that
+this concession would secure agreement in the Cabinet. Later, however,
+came a public statement from Lord Lansdowne that "permanent and
+enduring" structural alterations would be introduced into the Home Rule
+Act. Redmond had seen the draft Bill in which the Government's draftsmen
+embodied the terms of the agreement, and he had accepted this, as
+conforming to his covenant. In reply to Lord Lansdowne, he had pressed
+for the production of this Bill, but could not get it. The end was that,
+after a Cabinet held on July 19th, he was told that "a number of new
+proposals had been brought forward"; that the Cabinet did not desire to
+consult him about these at all; and on the 22nd Mr. Lloyd George and Mr.
+Herbert Samuel were instructed to convey to him the Cabinet's decision,
+with an intimation that there would be no further discussion or
+consultation. That decision was to make the exclusion of six counties
+permanent, and to withdraw the provision for retaining Irish members at
+full strength during the transitory period.
+
+Redmond attacked no individual. His anger was beyond words. He said
+this, however:
+
+"Some tragic fatality seems to dog the footsteps of this Government in
+all their dealings with Ireland. Every step taken by them since the
+Coalition was formed, and especially since the unfortunate outbreak in
+Dublin, has been lamentable. They have disregarded every advice we
+tendered to them, and now in the end, having got us to induce our people
+to make a tremendous sacrifice and to agree to the temporary exclusion
+of these Ulster counties, they throw this agreement to the winds, and
+they have taken the surest means to accentuate every possible danger and
+difficulty in the Irish situation."
+
+That day really finished the constitutional party and overthrew
+Redmond's power. We had incurred the very great odium of accepting even
+temporary partition--and a partition which, owing to this arbitrary
+extension of area, could not be justified on any ground of principle; we
+had involved with us many men who voted for that acceptance on the faith
+of Redmond's assurance that the Government were bound by their written
+word; and now we were thrown over.
+
+Apart from the effect on Redmond's position, the result was to engender
+in Ireland a temper which made settlement almost impossible. No British
+Minister's word would in future be accepted for anything; and any
+Irishman who attempted to improve relations between the countries was
+certain to arouse anger and contempt in his countrymen.
+
+More particularly the relations between Irish members and the most
+powerful members of the Government were hopelessly embittered. Mr. Lloyd
+George put aside completely--probably he never for a moment
+entertained--the thought of seriously threatening resignation because
+his agreement with the Irish was repudiated by his colleagues. He was
+entirely engrossed with the work of the War Office, where he thought,
+and was justified in thinking, himself indispensable. Mr. Asquith, whose
+object was to keep unity in his Government at all costs, when it came
+to a choice whether to quarrel with the Irish who formed no part of it,
+or with the Unionists who were his colleagues, had no hesitation which
+side to throw over.
+
+I have never seen the House of Commons so thoroughly discontented and
+disgusted. There was much genuine sympathy with Redmond. Sir Edward
+Carson evidently shared it, and he made a conciliatory speech in which
+he proposed that he and the Nationalist leader should shake hands on the
+floor of the House. That is a gesture which comes better from the loser
+than from the winner, and there was no doubt that Sir Edward Carson had
+won. But he knew Ireland well enough to realize the meaning of his
+victory, and his speech indicated disquiet and even horror at the
+prospect before us. He was quite avowedly anxious to see a start made
+with Home Rule, Ulster standing apart. In a later debate, when the
+Government announced its intention to fill again the vacant Irish
+offices (appointing Mr. Duke as Chief Secretary), Redmond referred
+hopefully to this utterance of the Ulster leader and generally to "the
+new and improved atmosphere which has surrounded this Irish question
+quite recently."
+
+The end of this speech dealt with one of the elements which had
+contributed most to the improvement. In the great battle of the Somme,
+which opened on July 1st, the Ulster Division went for the first time
+into general action, and their achievement was the most glorious and the
+most unlucky of that day. They carried their assault through five lines
+of trenches, and, because a division on their flank was not equally
+successful, were obliged to fall back, adding terribly in this
+withdrawal to the desperate losses of their advance. Side by side with
+them on the other flank was the Fourth Division, containing two
+battalions of Dublin Fusiliers, in one of which John Redmond's son
+commanded a company; so that he and the Ulstermen went over shoulder to
+shoulder. He came back unwounded; all other company commanders in the
+battalion were killed. The only thing in which Redmond was entirely
+fortunate during these last years of his life was in his son's record
+during the war.
+
+Another Nationalist well known to the House of Commons served also in
+the Dublin Fusiliers on the Somme, with a different fortune. Professor
+Kettle, owing to conditions of health, had been unable to come to France
+with the Sixteenth Division, and had been mainly employed in recruiting.
+Now in these summer months he pushed hard to get out to France, though
+he was not physically fit for the line. He got to France, and, as was
+easy to foresee, broke down and was sent to work at the base on records:
+but before he left his regiment he knew that it was under orders for a
+general action, and he insisted that he should have leave to rejoin for
+that day. He came back accordingly, found himself called on to take
+command of a company, and led it with great gallantry, and on the second
+day of action was shot dead. It was the fate that he expected; he, like
+so many, had a forerunning assurance of his end. So was lost to Ireland
+the most variously-gifted intelligence that I have ever known.
+
+The Sixteenth Division were still on the sector about Loos, and their
+casualties were heavy and continuous in the perpetual trench warfare.
+With the last days of August they were withdrawn--for a rest, as they
+believed at first; but their march was southwards to the Somme.
+
+The purpose was to use them for an attack on Ginchy; but a shift of
+arrangements brought the 47th Brigade into line against Guillemont and
+its quarries, which had on six occasions been unsuccessfully attacked.
+The Irish carried them. Three days later the whole division was launched
+against Ginchy. They equalled the Ulstermen's valour, and were luckier
+in the result. For these achievements praise was not stinted. Colonel
+Repington in _The Times_ described the Irish as the "best missile
+troops" in all the armies.
+
+
+III
+
+The deeds of Irish soldiers helped us greatly outside of Ireland; in
+Ireland, the news was received with mingled feelings. There was
+passionate resentment against the Government, and the question was
+asked, For what were their men dying? Redmond's answer could not be so
+confident as it would have been six months earlier. There were many who
+said that he dare not face the country. His answer to this was given at
+Waterford, where on October 6, 1916, his constituents received him with
+their old loyalty--though now for the first time there were hostile
+voices in the crowd. He spoke out very plainly, saying with justice that
+in all his life he had never played to the gallery and would not now.
+Things had to be looked at squarely.
+
+"We have taken a leap back over generations of progress, and have
+actually had a rebellion, with its inevitable aftermath of brutalities,
+stupidities and inflamed passions."
+
+He would impugn no man's motives, least of all the motives of the dead;
+but those who had set this train of events in motion had been always the
+enemies of the constitutional movement. The constitutional movement must
+go on, he said; but it would be folly to pretend that it could go on as
+if nothing had happened. Ireland must face its share in the
+responsibility. But the real responsibility rested with the British
+Government.
+
+To establish this he entered on a review of the whole series of
+circumstances, not omitting Ulster's preparations for civil war, and
+stressing heavily the mischief that was done when Sir Edward Carson was
+chosen "by strange irony" to be the First Law Officer of the Crown.
+
+Passing from his review, he issued grave warning against the idea of
+conscription: it would be resisted in every village and its attempted
+enforcement would be a scandal which would ring through the world. For
+Ireland also he had admonition. He had told them before that Home Rule
+was an impregnable position. But "no fortress is impregnable unless the
+garrison is faithful and united."
+
+This, alas! was already a counsel of perfection for a country so deeply
+divided in opinion as Nationalist Ireland had come to be. The old
+loyalties had gone--and he felt it. Ending on a personal note, he
+referred to his age: he was over sixty; he had done thirty-five years of
+work which would have broken down any man less robust in constitution
+than it had been his luck to be born. He believed in youth, he said, and
+would gladly give way to younger men.
+
+"But one thing I will not do while I have breath in my body. I will not
+give way to the abuse and calumny and the falsehoods of men whom I have
+known for long years as the treacherous enemies of Ireland."
+
+With all his reticence, he was a sensitive man; and for months now he
+could scarcely take up a newspaper, except his party's official organ,
+without finding himself accused of imbecility, of idle vanity, of
+corrupt bargaining, of every unworthy motive. Worse than all, he
+realized the inherent weakness of his position. He told his hearers at
+Waterford that the Irish party would not vary its attitude upon the war,
+but that we should now become a regular and active opposition. He was
+far too experienced not to be aware that during a war--and such a
+war--he neither could nor would offer to the Government in power
+opposition in the sense in which Nationalist Ireland would understand
+the word.
+
+But he took steps at once for raising the Irish question by a direct
+vote of censure. On October 18th he moved:
+
+"That the system of Government at present maintained in Ireland is
+inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies are fighting in
+Europe, and has been mainly responsible for the recent unhappy events
+and for the present state of feeling in that country."
+
+His speech avoided all controversial reference to what had preceded the
+war, but it reviewed with great power the long series of blunders,
+beginning with the delay in putting the Home Rule Bill on the Statute
+Book, and ending with the Cabinet's destruction of the agreement entered
+into in June. Now, as the end of all, Dublin Castle, after the Prime
+Minister's description of its hopeless breakdown, was set up again with
+a Unionist Chief Secretary and a Unionist Attorney-General: with a
+universal system of martial law in force throughout the country, and
+with hundreds of interned men in prison on suspicion. He warned the
+Government of the inevitable effect upon the flow of recruits for the
+Irish Divisions; and in a passage which showed how close his attention
+was to all this matter of recruitment, he pressed the War Office for
+certain minor concessions to Irish sentiment which would help us to
+maintain the Division that had so greatly distinguished itself at
+Guillemont and Ginchy.
+
+But the real pith of his speech was political in the larger sense. He
+pressed upon the House the injury which England's interest was suffering
+through the alienation of American opinion, and through the reflection
+of Irish discontent in Australia; he pleaded for the withdrawal of
+martial law. Nothing came of the debate, except a speech in which Mr.
+Lloyd George admitted the "stupidities, which sometimes almost look like
+malignancy," that were perpetrated at the beginning of recruiting in
+Ireland. The Labour men and a few Liberals voted for our motion. But as
+a menace to the Government it was negligible.
+
+I was in France during the period of intrigue which followed, leading up
+to the displacement of Mr. Asquith. When the change occurred, members of
+Parliament who were serving were recalled by special summons. I found
+Redmond in these days profoundly impressed with the strength of Mr.
+Lloyd George's personal position. He was convinced that the new Premier
+could, if he chose, force a settlement of the Irish difficulty, and was
+very hopeful of this happening. Sir Edward Carson dared not, he thought,
+set himself in opposition; at this moment the Ulster party was not
+popular, while there was in the House a widespread feeling that Redmond
+in particular had been treated in a manner far other than his due.
+Another of his brother's interventions in debate gave an impetus to this
+sympathy.
+
+Again in a thin House, during some discussion on Estimates, Willie
+Redmond got up and spoke out of the fullness of experiences which had
+profoundly affected his imagination. He told the House of what he had
+seen in Flanders, where the two Irish Divisions had at last been brought
+into contact, so that the left of the Ulster line in front of
+Ploegstreet touched the right of ours in front of Kemmel. It had always
+been said that the two factions would fly at each other's throats: by a
+score of happy detailed touches the soldier built up a picture of what
+had actually happened in the line and behind the line, and then summed
+it up in a conclusion:
+
+"They came together in the trenches and they were friends. Get them
+together on the floor of an Assembly, or where you will, in Ireland, and
+a similar result will follow."
+
+Then, from this theme, he passed to one even more moving--the fate of
+Irish Nationalists, who were confronted daily with evil news of their
+own land. "It is miserable to see men who went out with high hearts and
+hopes, who have acquitted themselves so well, filled with wretchedness
+because their country is in an unhappy condition." He appealed for a new
+and genuine attempt to set all this right; and he eulogized once more
+with warm eloquence the conduct of the troops, Ulstermen and the rest
+alike. Raw lads, who eighteen months before had never thought of seeing
+war, had come in before his eyes bringing prisoners by the hundreds from
+the most highly trained soldiery in Europe.
+
+Man after man, when Willie Redmond had ended, rose and thanked him; but
+the most notable words came from Mr. Bonar Law:
+
+"His name and his action, in connection with that of the leader of his
+party, stand out as a landmark for all the people of this country as to
+what is being done by those who represent Nationalist feeling."
+
+All this increased Redmond's hopes of what might be expected from the
+new Premier, the representative of another small nationality, whose
+early days in Parliament had linked him almost more closely with Irish
+Nationalists than with British Liberalism. I was on the upper bench when
+Mr. Lloyd George came in, amid loud cheering. "Look at him," said Willie
+Redmond (his senior in the House by ten years), who sat beside me: "It
+seems only the other day he was sitting over here cheering like mad for
+the Boers; and there he is now, Prime Minister."
+
+But Mr. Lloyd George's speech, which had been deferred for several days
+owing to illness, was long before it came to Ireland, and then its tone
+was no way hopeful. He referred back to the negotiations of June and
+July, with their "atmosphere of nervous suspicion and distrust,
+pervasive, universal, of everything and everybody."
+
+"I was drenched with suspicion of Irishmen by Englishmen and of
+Englishmen by Irishmen and, worst of all, of Irishmen by Irishmen. It
+was a quagmire of distrust which clogged the footsteps and made progress
+impossible. That is the real enemy of Ireland."
+
+No one could say that the transaction to which Mr. Lloyd George was
+referring had helped to destroy distrust: and in view of the opinion
+held by Irishmen--and not by Irishmen only--of Ministers' dealing with
+Ireland, it was natural that this passage should provoke the resentment
+which was evident in Redmond when he rose.
+
+He followed Mr. Asquith, and made it clear that Ireland did not keep its
+praises for the rising star. He commended in weighty words the
+patriotism, the reticence and the magnanimity of the dispossessed
+leader; he renewed Ireland's expression of gratitude for the service
+done in the Home Rule Act; then, turning to the new power, he told Mr.
+Lloyd George bluntly that his words would be received in Ireland with
+the deepest disappointment. This was to be a Ministry of quick and
+effective decisions; but so far as our question was concerned, they had
+shown every disposition to wait and see. Was Ireland only to be let
+drift? Two courses might be taken--the statesman's, of real remedy; the
+politician's, of palliatives. Even of the latter nothing had been said.
+Martial law could be removed; untried men could be released from jail.
+Yet there was no sign. The Prime Minister intervened angrily. He had
+been ill, he said. Redmond was in no way inclined to accept the reason
+as sufficient, and again Mr. Lloyd George rose to say that it was "not
+merely unfair, but a trifle impolitic" not to give him a couple of days
+to consult with the Chief Secretary.
+
+Still Redmond maintained his tone of aggression. A radical reform was
+needed, and of those things that must be borne in mind the first was
+that time was of the essence of success. Promptness was essential.
+Secondly, Government must take the initiative themselves; they must not
+seek to evade their responsibility by putting the blame on other
+shoulders (this was his rejoinder to the allegation of paralysing
+distrust); there was no use in resuming negotiations, going to this man
+and to that man to see what he would be willing to take. Thirdly, the
+problem must be approached by a different method; it must be dealt with
+on lines of a united Ireland. The time had gone by, in effect, for any
+proposals of partition, temporary or permanent.
+
+He added a caution that there must be no attempt to mix up the problem
+of an Irish settlement with conditions about recruiting or conscription.
+"That question must be left to a change of heart in Ireland." In
+conclusion he expressed to the House of Commons--though in no sanguine
+accents--what he had expressed to me a fortnight earlier in private
+talk: his belief that the time was "ripe for drastic, decided and bold
+action" by the Prime Minister. Powerful influences were at Mr. Lloyd
+George's back--in the Press of all parties, in the opinion of leading
+men of all parties. Three-quarters of the House of Commons, Redmond
+said, would welcome such action: the whole of the overseas Dominions
+would be for it; and it would have "the sympathy of all men of good will
+in the Empire."
+
+For the first time I noticed lack of cordiality in the response of the
+House--not from want of agreement, but from a profound depression. The
+old temper of bickering had revived, especially between some of our
+party and those who disagreed with them. One was glad to get back to
+France for Christmas, even in that grim winter.
+
+When I was invalided back in February, I found that things had not stood
+still in Ireland. Redmond's suggested palliative had been applied, and
+the deported persons were let back home for Christmas. But this produced
+little easing of the situation, and within a few weeks Government
+rearrested several of them.
+
+One, however, Count Plunkett, was still in Ireland when a vacancy
+occurred in Roscommon. He was not in himself a likely man to appeal to
+that constituency. He had been an applicant for the Under-Secretaryship
+at Dublin Castle, and was therefore clearly not a person of extreme
+Nationalist views. But one of his sons, a young poet, had been among the
+signatories to the proclamation of an Irish Republic, and had paid for
+it with his life; Count Plunkett stood really as the father of his son.
+He was returned by a very large majority. This was the first open defeat
+inflicted by the physical force men on the Constitutional party since
+the beginning of Parnell's day.
+
+In March, Redmond desired to bring the Irish question again before
+Parliament, and Mr. T.P. O'Connor introduced a motion calling on the
+House "without further delay to confer upon Ireland the free
+institutions long promised her."
+
+That debate will always be remembered by those who heard it for one
+speech. Willie Redmond was among the oldest members of the Parliamentary
+party; not half a dozen men in all the House had been longer
+continuously members; he had always been one of the most popular figures
+at Westminster and in Ireland; and he had always spoken a great deal.
+Yet he had never been in the front rank either as a speaker or as a
+politician. The humour and the wit which made him the joy of groups in
+the smoking-room on the occasions when he was in full vein of
+reminiscence never got into his set speeches--though no man oftener lit
+up debate with some telling interruption. He was often merely
+rhetorical; he had the name--though in my experience he never deserved
+it--for being indiscreetly vehement. His early reputation, which he had
+never lived down, is not unkindly represented by a story which he used
+to tell against himself. When the first Home Rule Bill was introduced he
+had a great desire to speak in the debate, and went to Parnell with his
+request. "Will you promise," said Parnell, "that you will write out what
+you are going to say, and show it to me, and say that and no more?" He
+promised, and handed in his manuscript. Days went by and he heard
+nothing, so he went back to the Chief. "Ah yes," said Parnell, "I have
+it in my pocket. An excellent speech, my dear Willie. If I were you I
+shouldn't waste it on the House of Commons. It's too good for them."
+
+Later, in the days from 1906 onwards, with all his experience, it cannot
+be said that he ever affected opinion in the House. What he said was the
+common stuff of argument: it was all what someone else might have
+said--until the war came. Then, he was a changed creature. He went
+through in the Army the same experience as hundreds of other members of
+Parliament; but he and he only seemed to have got the very soul out of
+it. He took to his soldier's duty as a religion: he saw all that
+concerned him in the light of it. It has been told already how his two
+speeches on almost casual occasions affected public feeling: but in them
+he was chiefly an Irish member of Parliament speaking about soldiers and
+about Irish soldiers. In this debate he was an Irish soldier pleading
+with Parliament for Ireland in the name of Irish soldiers--who had
+responded to the call to arms because, as he said, they were led to
+believe that a new and better and brighter chapter was about to open in
+the relations of Great Britain and Ireland.
+
+"I do not believe that there is a single member of any party in this
+House who is prepared to get up and say that in the past the government
+and treatment of Ireland by Great Britain have been what they should
+have been. Mistakes, dark, black, and bitter mistakes, have been made. A
+people denied justice, a people with many admitted grievances, the
+redress of which has been long delayed. On our side, perhaps, in the
+conflict and in the bitterness of contest, there may have been things
+said and done, offensive if you will, irritating if you will, to the
+people of this country; but what I want to ask, in all simplicity, is
+this, whether, in face of the tremendous conflict which is now raging,
+whether, in view of the fact that, apart from every other consideration,
+the Irish people, South as well as North, are upon the side of the
+Allies and against the German pretension to-day, it is not possible from
+this war to make a new start?--whether it is not possible on your side,
+and on ours as well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence
+a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries?
+Why cannot we do it? Is there an Englishman representing any party who
+does not yearn for a better future between Ireland and Great Britain?
+There is no Irishman who is not anxious for it also. Why cannot there be
+a settlement? Why must it be that, when British soldiers and Irish
+soldiers are suffering and dying side by side, this eternal old quarrel
+should go on?....
+
+"If there ought to be an oblivion of the past between Great Britain and
+Ireland generally, may I ask in God's name the First Lord of the
+Admiralty [Sir Edward Carson] why there cannot be a similar oblivion of
+the past between the warring sections in Ireland? All my life I have
+taken as strong and as strenuous a part on the Nationalist side as my
+poor abilities would allow. I may have been as bitter and as strong in
+the heated atmosphere of party contests against my countrymen in the
+North as ever they have been against me, but I believe in my soul and
+heart here to-day that I represent the instinct and the desire of the
+whole Irish Catholic race when I say that there is nothing that they
+more passionately desire and long for than that there should be an end
+of this old struggle between the North and the South.
+
+"The followers of the right honourable gentleman the First Lord of the
+Admiralty should shake hands with the rest of their countrymen. I appeal
+to the right honourable gentleman here in the name of men against whom
+no finger of scorn can be pointed; in the name of men who are doing
+their duty; in the name of men who have died; in the name of men who may
+die, and who at this very moment may be dying, to rise to the demands of
+the situation. I ask him to meet his Nationalist fellow-countrymen and
+accept the offer which they make to him and his followers, and on the
+basis of that self-government which has made, and which alone has made,
+the Empire as strong as it is to-day, come to some arrangement for the
+better government of Ireland in the future.
+
+"Why does the right honourable gentleman opposite not meet us half way?
+I want to know what is the reason. It surely cannot be that the right
+honourable gentleman and his friends believe that under a system of
+self-government they would have anything to fear. Nothing impressed me
+more than the opinion I heard expressed by a high-placed Roman Catholic
+officer who is in service with the Ulster Division, when he told me of
+his experience there, and when he said that although he was the only one
+of the Catholic religion in that Division, it had dawned upon him that
+they certainly were Irishmen and were not Englishmen or Scotsmen.[8] The
+right honourable gentleman knows perfectly well that it would not take
+so very much to bring his friends and our friends together, and I ask
+him why the attempt is not made? I ask him whether the circumstances of
+the time do not warrant that such an attempt should be made? I ask him
+whether he does not know in his inmost heart that it would bring to the
+common enemy more dismay and consternation than the destruction of a
+hundred of their submarines if they knew that England, Scotland and
+Ireland were really united, not merely within the confines of the shores
+of these islands, but united in every part of the world where the Irish
+people are to be found?
+
+"What is it that stands in the way of Ireland taking her place as a
+self-governing part of this Empire? Ireland is the only portion of the
+Empire now fighting which is not self-governing. The Australians whom I
+meet from time to time point to their government being free; the
+Canadians and the New Zealanders do the same, and we Irishmen are the
+only units in France to-day taking our part in the war who are obliged
+to admit that the country we come from is denied those privileges which
+have made the Empire the strong organization which it is to-day. If
+safeguards are necessary--I speak only for myself, and I do not speak
+for anybody else on these benches, because I have been away from this
+House so long that I have almost lost touch with things--as far as my
+own personal opinion goes, there is nothing I would not do, and there is
+no length to which I would not go, in order to meet the real objections
+or to secure the real confidence, friendship and affection of my
+countrymen in the North of Ireland.
+
+"For my own part, I would gladly, if it would ease the situation, agree
+to an arrangement whereby it might be possible for His Majesty the King,
+if he so desired, to call in someone at the starting of a new Irish
+government, a gentleman representing the portion of the country and the
+section of the community which the First Lord represents; and if a
+representative of that kind were placed with his hand upon the helm of
+the first Irish Parliament, I, at any rate, as far as I am concerned,
+would give him the loyal and the strong support which I have given to
+every leader I have supported in this House. After all, these are times
+of sacrifice, and every man is called upon to make some sacrifices. Men
+and women and children alike have to do something in these days, and is
+it too much to appeal to the right honourable gentleman and his friends
+to sacrifice some part of their position in order to lead the majority
+of their countrymen and to bring about that which the whole
+English-speaking world desires, namely, a real reconciliation of
+Ireland? I apologize for having detained the House so long, but this is
+a matter upon which I feel strongly, and I feel all the more strongly
+about it because I know that I am trying altogether too feebly, but as
+strongly as I can, to represent what I know to be the wishes nearest to
+the hearts of tens of thousands of Irishmen who went with me and their
+colleagues to France, many of whom will never return, all of whom are
+suffering the privations and the hardship and the risk and the wellnigh
+intolerable circumstances of life in France. I want to speak for these
+men, and if they could all speak with one voice and with one accord,
+they would say to this House, to men in every part of it, to
+Conservatives, Liberals and Labour men, to their Nationalist countrymen
+and to their countrymen from the North of Ireland: In the name of God,
+we here who are about to die, perhaps, ask you to do that which largely
+induced us to leave our homes; to do that which our fathers and mothers
+taught us to long for; to do that which is all we desire: make our
+country happy and contented, and enable us, when we meet the Canadians
+and the Australians and the New Zealanders side by side in the common
+cause and the common field, to say to them, 'Our country, just as yours,
+has self-government within the Empire.'"
+
+I have given the speech almost in full as it stands in print after the
+opening paragraph. But I cannot give the effect of what was heard by a
+densely crowded House in absolute silence. It was not an argument; it
+was an appeal. There was not a cheer, not a murmur of agreement. They
+were not needed, they would have been felt an impertinence, so great was
+the respect and the sympathy. As the speaker stood there in war-stained
+khaki, his hair showed grey, his face was seamed with lines, but there
+was in every word the freshness and simplicity of a nature that age had
+not touched. In his usual place on the upper bench beside his brother,
+he poured out his words with the flow and passion of a bird's song. He
+was out of the sphere of argument; but the whole experience of a long
+and honourable lifetime was vibrant in that utterance. He spoke from his
+heart. All that had gone to make his faith, all the inmost convictions
+of his life were implicit--and throughout all ran the sense in the
+assembly who heard him, not only that he had risked, but that he was
+eager to give his life for proof. It was not strange that this should be
+so, for he was going on what he believed would be his last journey to
+France; and when he reached the supreme moment of his passion with the
+words "In the name of God, we here who are about to die, perhaps," the
+last word was little more than a concession to the conventions.
+
+It was a speech, in short, that made one believe in impossibilities; but
+in Parliament no miracles happen. Mr. Lloyd George replied, as John
+Redmond expected--declaring that the Government were willing to give
+Home Rule at once to "the parts of Ireland which unmistakably demand
+it," but would be no party to placing under Nationalist rule people who
+were "as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook
+from the rest of Ireland as the inhabitants of Fife or Aberdeen." No
+Liberal Minister had ever before so completely adopted the Ulster theory
+of two nations. Taxed with the refusal to allow Ulster counties to
+declare by vote which group they belonged to, he declined to discuss
+"geographical limitations" at present, but indicated that if Irish
+members could accept the principle of separate treatment for two
+peoples, there were "ways and means by which it could be worked out."
+Suggestion of a Conference of Irishmen was thrown out, or of a
+Commission to discuss the details of partition. Redmond, in replying,
+answered to this that "after experience of the last negotiations he
+would enter into no more negotiations." He warned the Government that
+the whole constitutional movement was in danger. There were in Ireland
+"serious men, men of ability, men with command of money," who were bent
+on smashing it.
+
+"After fifty years of labour on constitutional lines we had practically
+banished the revolutionary party from Ireland. Now again, after fifty
+years, it has risen."
+
+The rest was a prophecy only too accurate:
+
+"If the constitutional movement disappears, the Prime Minister will find
+himself face to face with a revolutionary movement, and he will find it
+impossible to preserve any of the forms even of constitutionalism. He
+will have to govern Ireland by the naked sword. I cannot picture to
+myself a condition of things in which the Prime Minister, with his
+record behind him, would be an instrument to carry out a government of
+that kind.... I say this plainly. No British statesman, no matter what
+his platonic affection for Home Rule may have been in the past, no
+matter what party he may belong to, who by his conduct once again
+teaches the Irish people the lesson that any National leader who, taking
+his political life in his hands, endeavours to combine local and
+Imperial patriotism--endeavours to combine loyalty to Ireland's rights
+with loyalty to the Empire--anyone who again teaches the lesson that
+such an one is certain to be let down and betrayed by this course, is
+guilty of treason, not only to the liberties of Ireland but to the unity
+and strength and best interests of this Empire."
+
+After these bitter words he called on his colleagues not "to continue a
+useless and humiliating debate," but to withdraw from the House: and we
+accordingly followed him into the lobby. In our absence the discussion
+continued, in a tone not flattering to the Government. It was remarkable
+for one utterance from Mr. Healy, concerning Redmond:
+
+"I wish to say at the outset that in my opinion this Empire owes him a
+debt of gratitude which it can never repay, and I wish also to say of
+him as an opponent that in my opinion, if his advice had been taken by
+the War Office, it is absolutely true, as he contends, that you would
+have marshalled in Ireland from two hundred thousand to three hundred
+thousand men, from whom large drafts could have been drawn; and I will
+further say I believe if his advice had been taken the elements of
+rebellion would have been appeased."
+
+It was plain that matters could not stay at this point; but our breach
+with the Government was complete for the moment. Redmond's demand was
+for a full and definite statement of policy, which should be made in
+the House of Commons and there discussed. On May 15th Mr. Bonar Law
+announced that the Prime Minister would make a communication to the
+leaders of Irish parties. It was explained that this method of outlining
+the proposals would be only preliminary to discussion.
+
+On that evening a great banquet to General Smuts was given in the House
+of Lords by Parliament. Strong pressure was used with Redmond to attend
+it, and he consented unwillingly. He was ill--physically ill, probably
+with the beginnings of his fatal disease--and morally sick at heart and
+out of hope. Another Irish election in South Longford had been
+strenuously fought by the party and had been won by the Sinn Feiner; a
+decisive factor in the election was the issue of a letter from
+Archbishop Walsh which grossly misrepresented Redmond's whole policy and
+action. He was in no humour for banquetings, and at this moment the
+Irish party was nearly back at its old attitude, which dictated a
+refusal to have part or lot with the House on such ceremonial
+occasions.[9] But Redmond's feeling for South Africa was specially
+strong, his feeling about the war was unchanged; and this was a
+recognition of a great South African statesman's services in the war. He
+let himself be persuaded into accepting.
+
+At the dinner he sat next to a Liberal peer, a member of the late
+Government, who talked with him of Irish possibilities. Redmond did not
+know what the Government intended. He was told, now, that the Government
+had written a letter to him and to Sir Edward Carson setting out plainly
+an offer for the immediate introduction of Home Rule with the exclusion
+of the six counties.
+
+Redmond said: "It is impossible that we should accept; nothing can come
+of it." He was asked then what hope he saw. He answered, as he had for
+some time been saying in private, that the only chance lay in a
+Conference or Convention of Irishmen; but it must include everybody, and
+in no sense be limited to discussion between the Irish party and the
+Unionists. The Liberal peer expressed great interest and proved it in
+action. Next morning he was with Redmond by ten o'clock, and got his
+view in writing that it might be placed before the Cabinet, who were to
+meet at eleven to decide finally the terms of their letter.
+
+As a result of this intervention, the letter, instead of containing a
+single proposal, offered two alternatives: the second was so oddly
+tacked on that many at the time said it read like a postscript. So, in
+point of fact, it was. That was the genesis of the Irish Convention.
+
+His son, from whom I know this, said to me that more than once, when
+things were hopeful in the Convention, Redmond said to him, "What a
+lucky thing it was I went to that dinner!"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 7: The Admiralty do not appear to have communicated their
+information to Dublin Castle.]
+
+[Footnote 8: This might mislead. The exclusively Protestant character of
+the Ulster Division was not maintained in France, and it came to include
+many Catholic Irishmen in the rank and file and not a few among the
+officers--all in equal comradeship.--S.G.]
+
+[Footnote 9: We had never been parties, for instance, to receptions of
+Prime Ministers from the overseas Dominions, even when they were our
+close friends and supporters.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CONVENTION AND THE END
+
+I
+
+
+The Longford election had in reality been not merely a symptom, but an
+event of great importance. It was a notice of dismissal to the
+Parliamentary party. There was no reason to suppose anything specially
+unfavourable to us in the local conditions. Neither candidate made a
+special appeal to the electors; nor was the constituency in any sense a
+stronghold of Sinn Fein. The fact was that the country as a whole had
+ceased to believe in the Parliamentary party as an efficient machine for
+obtaining the national ends. The organization of the United Irish League
+had lost touch with the young; the main support we had lay in the
+Ancient Order of Hibernians, which many Nationalists disliked on
+principle because it was limited to Catholics. What had riot yet
+disappeared up till July 1916, though it was threatened, was belief in
+the principle of constitutional action as against revolutionary methods.
+
+Willie Redmond, who never lacked instinct, and whose separation from
+party politics by conditions of service gave him a vantage-ground of
+detachment, reached a shrewd view of the position before the Longford
+vacancy occurred. He pressed upon his brother that we should all retire,
+saying plainly that we had been too long in possession, and should hand
+over the task of representing Ireland at Westminster to younger men. His
+association with the Volunteer Committee, brief though it was, had made
+him more aware than most of our colleagues how wide was the
+estrangement between us and the new Ireland; but it also taught him to
+believe that many of the men whom he had met there would be willing to
+take up the task on constitutional lines.
+
+This proposal never came before the party. But after Longford had given
+its decision, it was proposed that we should accept the verdict in
+general and resign in a body. Those who put forward the suggestion felt
+that some drastic action was needed to force upon Ireland the
+responsibility for a clear choice between the two courses,
+constitutional and unconstitutional. Redmond, as Chairman, advised
+strongly against this. He said that it would be a lack of courage: that
+one defeat or two defeats should not turn us from our course. But it is
+clear to me that he welcomed the Convention as another and a better
+means of effecting the same end--of replacing the existing Parliamentary
+party by another body of men.
+
+On May 21st Mr. Lloyd George's speech gave the go-by completely to the
+detailed proposal for a settlement on the basis of partition to which
+the Cabinet--including Sir Edward Carson--had consented. It dealt only
+with the alternative plan suggested in the conclusion of the published
+letter. The Government had decided to invite Irishmen to put forward
+their own proposals for the government of their country, he said. This
+invitation was directed to a Convention not merely of political parties,
+although they must all be represented--the followers of Redmond, of Mr.
+O'Brien, the Ulster Unionists, the Southern Unionists, "and he hoped
+also the Sinn Feiners as well." But in the main it was to consist of
+"representatives of the local governing bodies, of the Churches, of the
+trade unions, of the commercial interests, of educational interests"; it
+was to be "a real representation of Irish life and activity in all their
+leading branches." It was to be pledged in advance to no
+conclusions--except one, and that was only indicated by implication. "If
+substantial agreement should be reached as to the character and scope
+of the Constitution for the future government of Ireland within the
+Empire" (these three words were the limitation), Government would
+"accept the responsibility for taking all the necessary steps to enable
+the Imperial Parliament to give legislative effect to the conclusions of
+the Convention."
+
+A recommendation was added, amounting to a direction, that the
+Convention should sit with closed doors and publish nothing of its
+proceedings till their conclusion.
+
+Nothing was said to define the all-important words "substantial
+agreement." But the Prime Minister laid grave emphasis on the importance
+of a settlement for the purpose of the war. The limitation upon Ulster's
+claim was plainly conceived by him to lie in Ulster's sense of an
+Imperial necessity. "The Empire cannot afford uncured sores that sap its
+vigour. The entire strength of Great Britain and the whole-hearted
+support of Ireland are essential to victory." He appealed "to Irishmen
+of all faiths, political and religious, and especially to the patriotic
+spirit of Ulster, to help by healing."
+
+Redmond, in following him, assumed that there would be concurrence from
+all sections of Irishmen. It must be "a free assembly"--no proposal must
+be barred in advance: it must be representative of "every class, creed
+and interest"--and in recapitulating these, he added the Irish peers. In
+regard to political parties and bodies, as such, he desired a very
+limited representation. The United Irish League, "the militant official
+organization of the Irish party," should be unrepresented, and he
+advised the same in regard to other purely political organizations and
+societies. For the Irish party itself he asked a representation only
+equal in number to that given to Irish Unionists. The Cork Independents
+must have what they considered a full and adequate number; and for Sinn
+Fein he asked "a generous representation."
+
+Then he added:
+
+"So anxious am I that no wreckers, mere wreckers, should go on that
+body--I do not believe any men would go on as wreckers, but any men who
+would be regarded by their opponents as going on it as wreckers--that on
+the question of personalities, I would be very glad, if there are
+protagonists on one side or the other who during the last twenty or
+thirty years or more have been engaged in the struggle and who--there
+have been faults on both sides--have done things and said things which
+have left bitter memories, I should be very glad that such men should be
+left off. If there were any feeling that I am such a man myself, I would
+be only too willing and happy to stand down" (he was interrupted by
+cries of "No, No") "if by doing so I could promote harmony."
+
+In this there was a genuine expression of the desire which governed his
+whole conduct in the Convention, to get away from the old lines with
+their old traditional antagonisms, and refer the solution not to Irish
+politicians but to Ireland as a whole. What followed in his speech gave
+positive development to the self-denying ordinance which he had proposed
+for the party machines. He asked for a nominated element--first, to make
+sure that men obviously suitable, who none the less might not happen to
+be elected, should find a place: and secondly, to increase still further
+the Unionist representation.
+
+He added once more a plea for quick action; dilatoriness had had much to
+do, he said, with the Government's late failures in Ireland. But, if
+prompt steps were taken on the path outlined, he would, in spite of all
+that had come and gone, face the new venture with good heart. Yet even
+in his confidence there was the pathetic accent of one who feels need to
+bid defiance to despair.
+
+"Although I know I lay myself open perhaps to ridicule as too sanguine a
+prophet, I have some assured hope that the result may be blessed for
+Ireland as for the Empire. ... The life of a politician, especially of
+an Irish politician, is one long series of postponements and compromises
+and disappointments and disillusions.... Many of our cherished ideals,
+our ideals of complete, speedy and almost immediate triumph of our
+policy and of our cause, have faded, some of them almost disappeared.
+And we know that it is a serious consideration for those of us who have
+spent forty years at this work and now are growing old, if we have to
+face further postponements. For my part, I feel we must not shrink from
+compromise. If by this Convention which is now proposed we can secure
+substantial agreement amongst our people in Ireland, it will be worth
+all the heartburnings and postponements and disappointments and
+disillusions of the last thirty or forty years."
+
+The omens were not favourable to this storm-beaten courage. When he sat
+down, Sir John Lonsdale rose to reiterate on behalf of the Ulster
+Unionists that they "could not and would not be driven into a Home Rule
+Parliament"--and that they relied absolutely on the pledges that they
+should not be coerced. Mr. William O'Brien followed. After years of
+advocating settlement by conference among Irishmen, he condemned this
+proposal as coming six or seven years too late, and as defective in its
+machinery, in that it proposed a large body of men: "A dozen Irishmen of
+the right stamp" would be the proper Conference; and the proposal of
+partition should be barred out in advance. If the experiment were tried
+now and failed, the failure would "kill any reasonable hope in our time
+of reconstructing the constitutional movement upon honest lines."
+Ireland is always fruitful in Cassandras who do not lack power to assist
+in the fulfilment, of their ill-bodings, and this speech foreshadowed
+Mr. O'Brien's intention to abstain. Sir Edward Carson and Mr. Devlin
+gave the debate a more promising tone: but it was difficult for anybody
+to be sanguine.
+
+Preparation, discussion, went on in private and in public. It was soon
+indicated that Sinn Fein would take no part, on the double ground,
+first, that the Convention was not elective in any democratic sense, for
+all the representatives of local bodies had been elected before the
+war, before the rebellion, before the new movement took hold in Ireland;
+and secondly, that it was committed in advance to a settlement within
+the Empire. On the other hand, Redmond was flooded with correspondence
+concerning candidates for membership of the new body. There was also the
+question of a meeting-place. The Royal College of Surgeons offered its
+building with its theatre, possessing admirable facilities. But Trinity
+College offered the Regent House. The conveniences here were in all ways
+inferior; but Trinity was the nearest place to the old Parliament House;
+much more than that, it was the most historic institution in Ireland.
+Its political associations of the past and the present were strangely
+blended and Redmond liked it none the less for that. He decided to press
+for acceptance of this offer.
+
+Then across the current of all our thought came the news of the Battle
+of Messines. Troops had been massing for some time on the sector of line
+which the Irish Divisions had now held since the previous October; and
+the day was plainly in sight which had been expected since spring, when
+they were to try and carry positions in front of which so much blood had
+been vainly shed. On June 7th, at the clearing of light, all was in
+readiness: the Ulstermen and ours still in the centre of the attack from
+Spanbroekmolen to Wytschaete. Just before the moment fixed, men could
+see clearly: in half a minute all was blotted out. The eighteen huge
+land-mines in whose shafts our second line had been so often billeted
+were now at last exploded and the sky was full of powdered earth, with
+God knows what other fragments. In that darkness the troops went over.
+
+For once staff-work and execution harmonized perfectly; the success was
+complete, and the sacrifice small. The Irish raced for their positions,
+and no one could say who was first on the goal. News of the victory
+quickly reached London--great news for Ireland. Australians and New
+Zealanders had their full share in it, but the shoulder to shoulder
+advance of the two Irish Divisions caught everyone's imagination: it was
+Ireland's day.
+
+Then came through the message that Willie Redmond had fallen.
+
+Ever since his illness in the previous summer he had been taken away
+from his work as company commander; at his age--fifty-six--he was
+probably the oldest man in any capacity with the Division. A post was
+found for him on General Hickie's divisional staff which made him
+specially responsible for the comforts of the men, in trenches and out
+of trenches. In the battles on the Somme he entreated hard to be let
+rejoin his battalion, but General Hickie issued peremptory orders which
+did not allow him to pass the first dressing-station. Here, indeed, he
+was under terrible shell fire and saw many of his comrades struck down;
+but he was not content. For this new battle he insisted that he must be
+in the actual advance. If he were refused leave, he said he would break
+all discipline and take it. He was permitted to be with the third
+attacking wave; but he slipped forward and joined the first, on the
+right, where the line touched the Ulstermen. So it happened that when he
+fell, struck by two rifle bullets, the stretcher-bearers who helped him
+and carried him down to the dressing-station were those of an Ulster
+regiment. He was brought back to the hospital in the convent at Locre,
+familiar to all of us by many memories; for the nuns kept a restaurant
+for officers in the refectory, and he and I had dined there more than
+once with leading men of the Ulster Division. His wounds were not grave;
+but he had overtaxed himself, and in a few hours he succumbed to shock.
+It was the death that he had foreseen, that he had almost desired--a
+death that many might have envied him. He had said more than once since
+the rebellion that he thought he could best serve Ireland by dying; and
+in the sequel, so deep was the impression left by his death that it
+seemed at times as if his thought had been true.
+
+Yet one aspect of it was overlooked by many--the loss inflicted on his
+brother, the Irish leader. It was not merely that Redmond lost the sole
+near kinsman of his generation; he lost in him the closest of those
+comrades who had been allied with him in all the stages of his life's
+fight. The veterans of the old party had been vanishing rapidly from the
+scene; name succeeded name quickly on our death-roll. This death left
+Redmond lonely, and sorely stricken in his affections. But it did more.
+It deprived him of a counsellor, and perhaps the only counsellor he had
+who temperamentally shared his own point of view. More especially now in
+the war, when the leader's wisdom in giving the lead which he had given
+began to be gravely questioned even by his own supporters, it was
+invaluable for him to have backing from one who had taken the war as
+part of his life's creed--who knew no hesitancies, no reserves in his
+conviction that the right course had been followed, for the right thing
+was to do the right. Finally and chiefly, Willie Redmond was the only
+man who could break through his brother's constitutional reserve and
+could force him into discussion. In the months that were to come such a
+man was badly needed. The loss of him meant to John Redmond a loss of
+personal efficiency. Sorrow gave a strong grip to depression on a
+brooding mind which had always a proneness to melancholy, which was now
+linked with a sick body, and which lived among disappointments and grief
+and the sense of rancorous dislike in men who once thought it a
+privilege to cheer him on his passing.
+
+Add to all this that Redmond's one hope for Ireland now lay in the
+Convention, and that he collated with good reason on his soldier
+brother's influence there--as no man could fail to do who had seen the
+effect which his last speech produced upon the House of Commons.
+
+No doubt, however, part of the service which Willie Redmond rendered to
+Ireland in dying lay in the sympathy which he conciliated to his
+leader--in whom men saw, rightly, not only his nearest kinsman, but the
+representative of the principles for which the soldier-politician died.
+The sympathy was genuine and it was widespread; yet so reserved was John
+Redmond that few, I think, guessed how deeply the blow had struck home.
+Still less did they realize how much was meant by the bereavement which
+followed immediately. Pat O'Brien, who had been through all vicissitudes
+the faithful and devoted helper of his friend and leader, was suddenly
+prostrated by a stroke. He came down to the House again; he could not
+keep away from the place of his duty, where for a quarter of a century
+he had scarcely missed one division in a hundred, where he had kept
+watch for Redmond like the most trusty sheep-dog; but death was written
+over him and it came in a few days. He was the one friend, I believe,
+whom Redmond would have taken with him to Aughavanagh after Willie
+Redmond's death. Now, Aughavanagh, which had been a place of rest, was a
+place of intense loneliness. Yet to Aughavanagh Redmond had withdrawn
+himself, like a wounded creature; and from Aughavanagh he came to Dublin
+for Pat O'Brien's funeral in Glasnevin. Then, and then only in his
+lifetime people saw him publicly break down; he had to be led away from
+the grave.
+
+Meanwhile, he was beset by ceaseless correspondence concerning the
+numbers and composition of the assembly to which the British Government
+on his suggestion had decided to entrust so great a charge. But a
+startling political event indicated only too plainly how much belated
+that decision had been.
+
+Directly the proposal for a Convention had been disclosed, with its
+attempt to create a new atmosphere, it was put to the Government that
+Sinn Fein could not be expected to take part in the Convention while its
+leaders were in jail or under detention as suspects. This
+representation came from several quarters, and it was soon publicly
+pleaded by the Nationalist party; but it was, to my knowledge,
+immediately put forward by English members of Parliament, the prime
+mover being a Unionist soldier, Major J.W. Hills, M.P. As usual, the
+advantage of prompt action was urged; and as visual, the concession was
+delayed till it had lost its grace and seemed to be extracted. Sinn
+Fein's opinion in all these days was hardening against the Convention,
+which was represented as a mere trick to gain time and to conciliate
+American good will by an unreal offer.
+
+When the prisoners were released, a new personage immediately came into
+the public eye. It was certain that one of them would be nominated to
+contest the vacancy in East Clare left by Willie Redmond's death; the
+choice fell on Mr. de Valera; and the world learnt that in these months
+while the imprisoned Sinn Feiners had been discussing their plans for
+the future--for the right of association as political prisoners had been
+conceded to them--this young man had been recognized by his fellows as
+the leading spirit. Ireland as a whole knew nothing of him. He was the
+son of a Southern American and a county Limerick woman; scholarly, a
+keen Gaelic Leaguer, by profession a teacher of mathematics. In the
+rebellion he had held Boland's bakery, a large building covering the
+approaches to Dublin from Kingstown by rail; he had been the last of the
+leaders to surrender, and had earned high opinions by his conduct in
+these operations. This was the Sinn Fein candidate for East Clare--a
+county where "extreme" men had always been numerous.
+
+The view was expressed that he should have been opposed by one who took
+up the cause where Willie Redmond left it--by a soldier who was a strong
+Nationalist and strongly identified with the Parnellite tradition. It
+was decided that we should stand a better chance if constitutional
+Nationalism were represented by a Dublin lawyer with close personal ties
+to the constituency. How it would have gone had a soldier been put up,
+no man can say; but it could not have gone worse. Mr. de Valera won by a
+majority of five thousand. He was a stranger, but he stood for an ideal.
+The alternative ideal--which was John Redmond's and Willie
+Redmond's--had never been put before the electors. The election was,
+rightly, taken as a repudiation of Redmond's policy; but in it Redmond's
+policy had gone undefended.
+
+The newly elected Sinn Fein leader was very prominent in these days, and
+a good deal of his eloquence was spent in ridicule of the Convention.
+That body was certainly starting its task under the most unpromising
+auspices.
+
+
+II
+
+The first meeting was fixed for July 25. On the evening before, Redmond
+came up and there was an informal discussion between the Nationalist
+members of Parliament and the Catholic Bishops. There were four of each
+group. Five members had been allowed to the party and as many to the
+Ulstermen. Redmond was not present at the meeting when selection was
+made, but he recommended a list, consisting in addition to himself of
+Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin, and Mr. Clancy, K.C.--the latter having been
+always his most trusted adviser in all points of draftsmanship and
+constitutional law. My name was added in the place which should have
+been his brother's, as representing Irish troops.
+
+Mr. Dillon, however, thought it better not to serve, though Redmond
+pressed him very strongly to do so. He considered he could best help the
+Convention from outside its ranks. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy had, on
+different grounds, come to the same conclusion, so that we lacked the
+assistance of three commanding personalities in Irish life, though we
+were thereby freed from some dangers of personal friction. A vacant
+place was thus left in our five, and since the Ulster party had decided
+to put in only two members of Parliament, filling the other places with
+local men, it was thought well that we should take a similar
+representative, Mr. Harbison, who spoke for the county of Tyrone.
+
+Of the four representatives of the hierarchy, Archbishop Harty of Cashel
+had always been a downright outspoken supporter of the Parliamentary
+party. He had publicly denounced the rebellion both on civil and on
+moral grounds. But he had never been prominently concerned with
+political affairs as such; nor had the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr.
+MacRory, a man young for his office and not long in it. He had been
+chosen, no doubt, to guard the special interests of Catholicism in the
+north-east corner. The others were of a very different stamp; no two in
+Ireland had a better right to the name of statesmen. Dr. O'Donnell, the
+Bishop of Raphoe, had been for many years officially one of the
+treasurers of the United Irish League. Since the foundation of the
+Congested Districts Board, he had been one of its members, and served on
+the Dudley Commission which inquired into these regions. His native
+Donegal could show the traces of his influence in applying remedial
+measures to what was once its terrible poverty. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of
+Ross, came from the extreme south of the same western coast-line; a keen
+student of finance and economics, he had been a member of the Primrose
+Committee on Financial Relations, and, before that, of Lord George
+Hamilton's Commission on the Poor Law. His repute was great in his own
+order and outside his own order. In any assembly these two brains would
+have been distinguished.
+
+The question which was discussed among us chiefly on that evening
+concerned the choice of a chairman. Government had originally proposed
+to nominate this all-important officer, but having failed to solve the
+interminable difficulties, had left it to the assembly. Much trouble was
+anticipated by the public. On the whole, our conclusion pointed, but not
+decisively, to the choice which was eventually made. Redmond swept aside
+peremptorily the suggestion of himself.
+
+Next day we assembled--some ninety persons. The main bulk consisted of
+local representatives--thirty-one chairmen of County Councils, one only
+having declined to serve. Two of these, Mr. O'Dowd and Mr. Fitzgibbon,
+were members of our party. There were eight representatives of the Urban
+Councils, over and above the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork and
+the Mayor of Derry. Labour had seven representatives, one of whom, Mr.
+Lundon, representing the Agricultural Labourers' Union of the South, was
+an Irish member of Parliament. One was a railway operative from Dublin;
+one a Catholic Trade-Unionist leader from Derry; the remaining four came
+from Belfast. Organized labour in Dublin and the Southern towns had
+endorsed Sinn Fein's attitude and declined to recognize the Convention.
+
+The Southern Unionist Group was led by Lord Midleton; with him were
+Lords Mayo and Oranmore, representing the Irish peers. The Irish
+Unionist Alliance had sent Mr. Stewart, a great land-agent, and Mr.
+Andrew Jameson (whose name, as someone said, was "a household word
+written in letters of gold throughout Ireland"). The Chambers of
+Commerce had their representatives from Dublin, Belfast and Cork.
+
+In the Ulster group, Mr. Barrie, M.P., acted as leader, Lord Londonderry
+as secretary. Of the rest, Sir George Clark, chairman of Workman and
+Clark's great shipbuilding yard, had been known to us in Parliament. A
+Scot by birth, with a life of thirty years spent in Belfast, during
+which time he had seen his business grow from two hundred hands to ten
+thousand, he knew nothing of Ireland but Belfast, and had no trace of
+Irish feeling. In this he stood alone; but unhappily no man carried more
+weight in Belfast--with the possible exception of one whom few of us
+outside Ulster knew before we came to that body. Mr. Alexander McDowell
+was a solicitor by profession, the adviser of policy to all the business
+men of Belfast. From the first day of our meeting he stood out by sheer
+weight of brain and personality. He was to some of us the surprise of
+that assembly, and made us realize how little part we had in Ulster when
+the existence of such a man could be an unknown factor to us.
+
+Mr. Pollock, President of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, was also new
+to us, and was destined to play a prominent part in our affairs. With
+the Catholic prelates sat the two Archbishops of the Church of
+Ireland--Dr. Crozier and Dr. Bernard--to both of whom the democratic
+constitution of their Church had given great experience in management of
+business and discussion. Dr. MacDermott, Moderator of the Presbyterian
+General Assembly, was the official head of his Church for the year only
+and had not equal knowledge of administration. An orator, with a touch
+of the enthusiast in his temperament, he was a simple and sympathetic
+figure; vehement in his political faith, yet responsive to all the human
+charities and deeply a lover of his country. There was no better
+representative there of Ulster, of the Ulster difficulty--at once so
+separate from and so akin to the rest of Ireland.
+
+The Government nominees included, as was only natural, the most
+personally distinguished group. First of them should be named the
+Provost of Trinity, Dr. Mahaffy, under whose aegis we assembled--a great
+scholar and a great Irishman. He brought with him an element of
+independent unregimented political thought--often freakish in
+expression, but based on a vast knowledge of men and countries. In a
+more practical sense, Lord MacDonnell and Lord Dunraven were our chief
+political theorists, devisers by temperament of constitutional
+machinery. Lord MacDonnell's repute as an administrator, Lord Dunraven's
+as a leading figure in the Land Conference, gave weight to whatever came
+from them. Lord Granard, who sat with them, was a Catholic peer who had
+commanded a battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in the Tenth Division
+and had held offices in Mr. Asquith's Government. He had now the
+brilliant idea of reopening for the period of the Convention one of the
+most beautiful eighteenth-century dwellings, Ely House, and making it a
+centre of hospitality and a meeting-place for friendly outside
+intercourse. Few more useful assistances were rendered to our purpose,
+and certainly none more pleasant.
+
+Lord Desart, a distinguished lawyer, acted closely with Lord Midleton.
+Sir Bertram Windle, President of University College, was another of
+Government's choices--a man of science who was also very much a man of
+affairs. Another, far less of a debater, far more of a power, was Mr.
+William Martin Murphy, Chairman of the Dublin Tramways, a powerful
+employer of labour who had headed the fight against Larkin in 1913, and
+had been mainly responsible for the character of the employers' victory.
+He was the owner of the most widely circulated Irish paper, the _Irish
+Independent_--which stood in journalism for what Mr. Healy represented
+in Parliament--an envenomed Nationalist opposition to the Parliamentary
+party.
+
+Mr. Edward Lysaght, the son of a great manufacturer in South Wales,
+combined like his father an aptitude for literature and for business; he
+wrote books, he was concerned in a publishing venture, but he was
+chiefly interested in his farm in county Clare--where he had voted for
+de Valera. He had been chosen deliberately as a link with Sinn Fein. It
+stamped an aspect of the Convention that he was the youngest man
+there--for he would not have been noticeably young in the House of
+Commons. We were a middle-aged assembly. Another link, though not so
+explicit, with Republican Ireland was Mr. George Russell, "A.E.," poet,
+writer on co-operative economics, a mystic, with all a mystic's
+shrewdness, an orator with much personal magnetism. Lastly, there was
+Sir Horace Plunkett, perhaps the only member of the Convention except
+Redmond whose name would have occurred to every Irishman as
+indispensably necessary.
+
+Two other personages should be noted. Mr. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh,
+Chairman of the Carlow County Council, was by tradition and training a
+strong Unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old
+Irish princely families. He had been elected to the Vice-Chairmanship of
+his County Council while still a Unionist; later, he adhered to Lord
+Dunraven's proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way
+house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member
+of our party; by temperament deeply conservative, he was in no way
+separated by that from many of the ablest Nationalists, lay and
+ecclesiastic. As a speaker he had few equals in the Convention; no man
+there, indeed, except Redmond, could throw equal passion into the plea
+of urgency for a settlement, for I think no other man felt it with such
+earnestness.
+
+Captain Doran, Chairman of the Louth Council, was on his way back to
+France when the summons to the Convention stopped him. A Methodist, he
+was divided by religion from his neighbours in County Louth: but that
+did not stop them from putting this prosperous and capable farmer,
+working his land on the most modern methods, into the Chair of their
+County Council. Before the war, when the Larne gun-running took place,
+he decided that matters looked serious, called his friends together and
+formed a company of Volunteers, who might be needed to protect
+themselves or to protect other Nationalists across the adjacent Ulster
+border. After the war had broken out and the Home Rule Act was passed,
+and Redmond had launched his appeal, this country farmer, then aged
+fifty, made his way to Mallow and asked General Parsons to accept him as
+a recruit. He was accepted, and very shortly given a commission in the
+Dublin Fusiliers. Out of his local Volunteers he took seventy-five into
+the Army with him. He was with the Sixteenth Division from its landing
+in France till after the day of Messines, commanding his company. All
+this gave him an authority in an assembly where all voices were in
+support of the war, and more particularly in an appeal to Ulster; and
+with this advantage went an unusual gift of frank and eloquent speech,
+linked with a fine idealism.
+
+These were the main personal elements in the group that came together on
+July 25th--Mr. Duke, the Chief Secretary, acting as temporary Chairman
+and Sir Francis Hopwood (soon to become Lord Southborough) having been
+brought over as Secretary. Mr. Duke having addressed us with an earnest
+suavity, we were told to select a Chairman: and on the motion of the
+Primate, Archbishop Crozier, this embarrassing task was delegated to a
+committee of ten, rapidly told off. We adjourned for lunch, and on
+reassembling found that a unanimous recommendation named Sir Horace
+Plunkett. The Ulstermen had expressed a willingness to accept Redmond.
+This he refused to discuss; but he was put into the Chair of the
+selecting committee. There was a recommendation also that Sir Francis
+Hopwood should be Secretary to the Convention. Both these proposals were
+welcomed, and we dispersed feeling that we had done a good day's work.
+
+There was, however, one set-off to it. When the Selection Committee had
+done its work, its members went off singly, and outside the gate of
+College a small group of ardent patriots were waiting, who mobbed
+Redmond on the way to his hotel. They were young, no doubt; but the
+Republican party claimed specially the youth of Ireland; and these lads
+expressed with a simple eloquence very much what was said by older and
+more articulate voices, uttering the same thought in print. It is worth
+while to illustrate here the attitude taken towards Redmond by much of
+Nationalist Ireland, for it profoundly influenced Redmond's attitude and
+action in the Convention. I take, not casual and partisan journalism,
+but a passage from a book published by a distinguished Irish writer who
+had never publicly attached himself to any party. Mr. James Stephens was
+in Dublin during the insurrection; he wrote a book about his own
+personal observation of it, which as a record of observation is
+admirable. But when Mr. Stephens comes to emit opinions, here is what he
+has to say:
+
+"Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly.
+It happened because the leader of the Irish party misrepresented his
+people in the English House of Parliament. On the day of the declaration
+of war between England and Germany he took the Irish case, weighty with
+eight centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the
+window. He pledged Ireland to a particular course of action, and he had
+no authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would
+be met. The ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional
+nature betrayed him and us and England. He swore Ireland to loyalty as
+if he had Ireland in his pocket and could answer for her. Ireland has
+never been disloyal to England, not even at this epoch, _because she has
+never been loyal to England_, and the profession of her National faith
+has been unwavering, has been known to every English person alive, and
+has been clamant to all the world beside.
+
+"Is it that he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated
+Ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality
+(if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this
+country. He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have
+gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received
+politically whatever England could have safely given him. But, alas!
+these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment. They were
+not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to
+Ireland or to England, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so
+he pledged his country's credit so deeply that he did not leave her even
+one National rag to cover herself with.
+
+"After a lie, truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and
+serene goddess we knew or hoped for--it is a disease, it is a moral
+syphilis, and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been
+purged. Mr. Redmond told the lie, and he is answerable to England for
+the violence she had to be guilty of, and to Ireland for the desolation
+to which we have had to submit. Without his lie there had been no
+Insurrection, without it there had been at this moment, and for a year
+past, an end to the 'Irish question.' Ireland must in ages gone have
+been guilty of abominable crimes, or she could not at this juncture have
+been afflicted with a John Redmond."
+
+Politicians everywhere need to grow tough skins; but Redmond, though he
+was a veteran in politics, had no special gift that way. It was not
+pleasant for the Nationalist leader, when an assembly of Irishmen were
+called together to attempt the framing of a Constitution, to find
+himself the object, and the sole object, of public insult; it was not
+pleasant for him to feel that he might at any time be subjected to a
+renewal of this experience in the streets of Ireland's capital, where he
+had been acclaimed as a hero so few years ago. It was not pleasant for
+him to feel that whenever he took up a book or paper dealing with
+Ireland he was liable to come upon some outburst such as the one which I
+have quoted. These things were pin-pricks, yet pin-pricks administered
+in public; and the mere effort to endure such things without wincing
+saps a man's vitality. Behind them lay the definite repudiation of his
+policy in election after election--for Kilkenny City followed the
+example of Clare and replaced Pat O'Brien by a Sinn Feiner. He was
+repudiated in the eye of the world, and repudiated with every
+circumstance of contumely. Plainly in the Convention he could no longer
+claim to speak for Ireland; that limited gravely his power to serve.
+
+I think, however, that deep in his heart a resentment, all the more
+rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard
+against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in
+the Convention he had sought to pledge Ireland without due mandate or
+had committed anyone but himself. All that was personal in his
+resources--his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence--all
+this he put unreservedly at the Convention's service: but he abstained,
+and I think not only out of policy but as the result of silent anger,
+from making the least use of that authority which he still possessed and
+which he might easily have augmented. If in the result he took too
+little upon him, lest anyone should ever say he had taken too much, and
+if because he left too much to others Ireland was the loser, Ireland
+must bear not the loss only but the blame.
+
+Many even of those who most agreed with his action had, under the
+influence and events of these years and of public comments on these
+events, lost confidence in him. Some weeks after the Convention
+assembled, a very able priest said to me that he regarded Redmond as "a
+worn-out man." The genuineness of his regret was proved by the delight
+with which he heard what I could tell him. Never in my life did I find
+so much cause for admiration of Redmond as in the early stages--which
+were in many ways the most important--of our meetings. Never at any time
+did I know him exert so successfully his charm of public manner. At the
+second day's meeting, when the new Chairman took up his place and
+function, there were several small points to be settled, each capable of
+creating friction; and it has to be admitted that in the technical
+aspect of his duty Sir Horace Plunkett did not shine: business quickly
+became involved. Fortunately he was of a temper to welcome help, and it
+was quickly to hand. Archbishop Crozier showed himself to be
+accomplished, resourceful, and most tactful on all points of procedure:
+and Redmond then for the first time did with extraordinary skill what he
+had to do at many stages later. By a series of questions to the Chair he
+suggested rather than recommended a way of clearing the involved issue;
+and all this was done with a precision of phrase which was none the less
+exact because it was easy, and with a dignity which was none the less
+impressive because it had no pretence to effect. His mastery both of the
+form and substance of procedure was conspicuous. One of the ablest among
+the Southern Unionists said to me in these days: "He is superb: he does
+not seem able to put a word wrong."
+
+I think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this,
+that within the Convention he was happy. There was a note in it that I
+never felt in the House of Commons, even when he was at his best. There
+he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar
+faces. Here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in
+his life in an assembly in no way sectional. For from the first it was
+plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of
+normal, ordinary Irish life: farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord,
+tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer--all were there in pleasantly familiar
+types. The atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it
+resembled rather some casual assemblage where all sorts of men had met
+by accident and conversed without prejudice. Everybody met somebody whom
+he had known in some quite different relation of life and with whom he
+had never looked to be associated in any such task as the framing of a
+Constitution. It was all oddly haphazard, full of interest and
+surprises; all of us were a little out of our bearings, but much
+disposed to reconnoitre in the spirit of friendly advance.
+
+After the first day of Sir Horace Plunkett's chairmanship there was an
+adjournment of something like a fortnight to give the Chairman and
+secretariat time for preparation: and in this interval a plan of action
+was formed. The object in view was to avoid the danger of an immediate
+break and to give play to the reconciling influences. It was decided to
+begin by a prolonged process of general discussion, in which men could
+express their minds freely without the necessity of coming to an
+operative decision on any of the controversial points, until the value
+of each could be assessed in relation to the possibility of a general
+agreement.
+
+The plan adopted was to discuss, without division taken, the schemes
+which had been submitted by members of the Convention and by others.
+Members would propose and expound their own projects: for the exposition
+of the others some member must make himself responsible.
+
+At this "presentation stage" and at all stages, Redmond absolutely
+declined to put forward a plan in his own name. This was not only from
+temperamental reasons: there was an official obstacle. He was an
+individual member of the Convention: but he was Chairman of the Irish
+party, pledged not to bind it without its consent. He felt, no doubt,
+that any detailed proposal from him would be taken as binding the party,
+whom he could not consult without bringing them into the secrets of the
+Convention.
+
+But this attitude of self-abnegation was pushed very far by him, and
+perhaps too far. In his early utterances he deprecated all official
+recognition of sections. Yet from the moment when committees came to be
+appointed this recognition was claimed; and from the first the Ulster
+group maintained a compact organization. They had their own chairman,
+Mr. Barrie, and their secretary; they secured a committee-room for their
+own purposes; they voted solidly as one man. All this, though we did not
+know it at first, was dictated by the conditions of their attendance.
+They were pledged to act simply as delegates, who must submit every
+question of importance to an Advisory Committee in Belfast--behind which
+again was the Ulster Unionist Council. They had therefore no freedom of
+action and were of necessity extremely guarded in speech.
+
+The Southern Unionists, including the representatives of the Irish
+peers, were also organized as a group; but they came to the Convention
+with much fuller powers. They felt themselves bound to consider, and in
+certain conditions to consult, those whom they represented; but they
+were free to originate suggestions, and individually each man expressed
+his own view. But they too had their meeting-place and their frequent
+consultations.
+
+The handful of Labour men also met and discussed action, though they
+were not organized as a group and did not feel pledged to a joint
+course. Each, according to his own lights, represented the interests of
+Labour. Still, they met.
+
+The only group which had no common centre of reunion was that of the
+Nationalists--a majority of the whole assembly. This included the
+representatives of the Irish party and the County and Urban Councillors,
+all of whom had been returned as its supporters. It included also the
+four representatives of the hierarchy, every one of whom had been either
+actually or potentially a part of Nationalist Conventions, and of whom
+three had been most prominent supporters of the general organization.
+
+But a difficulty existed in the presence of other personages who were in
+general support of us, but who outside the Convention belonged to a
+different category. Lord Dunraven was a Home Ruler, but had been no
+supporter of the Irish party. Lord MacDonnell stood much nearer to us,
+but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician.
+Mr. Lysaght had voted against us in Clare. Mr. Russell had very often
+attacked the party on aspects of its general action. Above all, there
+was Mr. W.M. Murphy, who, like Mr. Healy, had been at one time a member
+of the Irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support
+of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all
+forces together to discredit and weaken its influence.
+
+All of these five men were Government nominees, as were also Lord
+Granard and Sir Bertram Windle, who in different ways gave Redmond
+complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call
+together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national
+organization which would have excluded all these and included the
+Bishops;[10] but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do
+this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still
+more of partisan machinery. His conclusion was to do nothing; and it was
+a conclusion to which he was prone at all times when he did not see his
+way clear. This temperamental disinclination to take any action which
+might create difficulties was in these days at its height with him.
+Since the spring his usually perfect health had been failing; he
+suffered from the physical inertia which accompanies the growth of a
+fatal disease; and sorrow upon sorrow, rebuff upon rebuff, had weakened
+the resilience of his mind. It was not that he lacked courage or
+confidence in his own judgment; but he was bound as a statesman to make
+allowance for the estimate which others, his followers, would put upon
+that judgment when he declared it. Sensitive by nature, he was deeply
+aware of failure which had resulted from the most disparaging of
+causes--not flat rejection, but belated, half-hearted and blundering
+adoption, of whatever course he had proposed. He overrated, I am sure,
+the extent to which his personal position had been depreciated in the
+minds of those who were there. It was true, as the event was to prove,
+that he could no longer count on unquestioning support of any policy
+simply on the ground that he advocated it; but any opinion which he
+presented would have been commended not only by the cogency of his
+argument but by an old esteem for his wisdom, and, above and beyond
+this, by a personal feeling Men would have inclined to his side not for
+the argument's sake only, but for his sake.
+
+There was felt, too, precisely at the moment when it mattered most, the
+defect in his quality as leader. He lacked the personal touch. It was
+not that he would not, but that he could not, put himself into contact
+with the individual minds of men. He owed it, I think, to the rank and
+file to give them more of his guidance than they actually received. He
+was a genial presence when they met; but of confidential discussion upon
+details I am sure that nothing passed. Had he called the group together,
+had he spoken his mind to them collectively, in confidence, things would
+in all ways have been better. But there was ingrained in him a sort of
+shyness, a repugnance to force his view on others by argument, an
+indisposition to controversy, which was his limitation; and all this was
+at this time accentuated by the hurt sense that there would be always in
+men's minds a memory, not of the hundred times when his wisdom had amply
+justified itself, but of recent occasions when he had advised them and
+the result was not what he foretold.
+
+To sum up, then, this criticism--what he said and did publicly in the
+Convention could hardly by stretch of imagination have been bettered.
+But outside its sessions he did not handle his team. On the balance,
+probably, he thought it better to leave them to their own devices; but
+his temperament weighed in that decision. As a result, the County
+Councillors and other local representatives used to hold meetings of
+their own. They were shrewd and capable men; but in the matters with
+which we had to deal the most skilled direction was necessary; and there
+was never a man more capable of giving them guidance out of a lifetime's
+experience than was Redmond, nor one from whom they would have more
+willingly accepted instruction.
+
+Discussion in the Convention itself was not of great value for the
+education of opinion, because men naturally were reluctant to get up and
+state precisely their individual difficulties, which in a confidential
+interchange of views might have been shown to proceed from some defect
+in comprehension. The chief value in the debates lay in what they
+revealed rather than what they imparted. One fact was salient. No
+Nationalist was prepared to recommend acceptance of the Home Rule Act as
+it stood, though some of its most vehement assailants adopted great
+parts of its framework. Broadly speaking, Nationalists wanted for
+Ireland the powers which were possessed by a self-governing Dominion,
+but were content to leave all control of defence to the Imperial
+authority and did not press any demand for a local militia. On the other
+hand, there was strong insistence on the right of an Irish Parliament to
+have complete power of taxation within its jurisdiction.
+
+It was manifest that the financial clauses of the existing Act would no
+longer apply. They were framed in view of a situation which found
+Ireland contributing ten millions in taxation and costing twelve to
+administer. Now, less than half the taxation paid the cost of all Irish
+services and the balance went towards the war.
+
+It was also evident that Nationalists were prepared to make concessions
+to the minority quite inconsistent with the current democratic view of
+what a Constitution should be. The Bishop of Raphoe, for instance,
+expressed willingness to have the Irish peers as an Upper House. Lord
+Midleton, however, for the Southern Unionists, insisted that those whom
+he spoke for must have a voice in the House of Commons--however they got
+it; and there was general desire to give it them, even by methods which
+no one could justify for general application.
+
+In short, it became increasingly clear as the debates proceeded that we
+could come to an arrangement with Unionists if Lord Midleton represented
+Unionism. But he did not. Ulster was there; and the Ulster men made it
+plain that their business was to hear suggestions, not to put them
+forward. Two facts, however, emerged about Ulster's attitude. The first
+was that in coming to the Convention the Ulstermen had expected to
+negotiate on the basis of taking the Home Rule Act as the maximum
+Nationalist demand. The only compromise which they had contemplated was
+a mean term between the provisions of that Act and Ulster's demand for a
+continuance of the legislative Union so far as Ulster was concerned. The
+second was that Belfast regarded as ruinous to its interests any
+possibility of a tariff war with Great Britain, and believed that if
+Ireland were given the power to fix its own customs duties the dominant
+farming interest would seek to find revenue by new taxation on imports.
+Hence, the proposal to give Ireland full fiscal powers could not be
+acceptable to Ulster. Here lay the main rock in our course.
+
+As the discussion proceeded, one category of proposals was summarily
+dealt with--those which contemplated the setting up of some provincial
+authority intermediate between the central Parliament, which all
+postulated, and the existing local bodies in the counties. This policy
+did not lack advocates. But the County Councillors were solid against
+it: evidently their private meeting discussed and decided against an
+expedient which they held would detract from the dignity of the central
+Parliament and from the dignity of the County Councils. Those who
+defended it as a plan which might meet Ulster's difficulty got no
+backing from Ulster; that group said neither for nor against it. In the
+rest of the assembly there was a strong feeling against anything that
+looked like partition or might in public be called partition. Several of
+us had thought in advance that this was the most likely path to the
+solution; and looking back, I think it ought to have been much more
+fully explored. But encouragement was lacking.
+
+Another anticipation proved illusory. We all realized that in the
+circumstances Ireland could come to a financial arrangement with Great
+Britain on easier terms than at any time in her history; that to settle
+at once would be highly profitable; and more particularly, that we could
+probably secure the completion of land purchase as part of the bargain.
+It was thought that this argument would appeal to the commercial sense
+of Ulster. We were met by a resolute reiteration that Ulster considered
+it Ulster's duty and Ireland's duty to take a full share, equally with
+the rest of the United Kingdom, in all the consequences of the war--even
+if it cost them their last shilling; and Ulster speakers denounced our
+argument as a bribe. Some Nationalists were inclined to discount these
+protestations, yet I see no reason to doubt their sincerity. At all
+events, no one disputed that it was to Ireland's interest financially
+that a settlement should be made.
+
+It is quite unnecessary to summarize here in any detail the course of
+these general discussions in full Convention, which began on August
+21st. One thing, however, resulted from them on which too much emphasis
+cannot be laid. In the process of "exploring each other's minds," as the
+phrase went, we came to know and to like one another. Later in the year,
+a friend of mine, high placed in the Ulster Division, but not an
+Ulsterman by upbringing or sympathy, came home from France. He told me
+that the main impression on the minds of Ulster delegates had been made
+by the Nationalist County Councillors. They had expected noisy
+demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them
+with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than
+too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of
+dissent. What Willie Redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming
+true: Irishmen brought into contact with one another in the Convention,
+as other Irishmen had been brought into contact in the trenches, and no
+longer kept apart by those unhappy severances which run through ordinary
+Irish life, came under the influence of that fundamental fellowship,
+deeper than all divergence of politics or creed, which draws our people
+into a sense of a common bond.
+
+The desire to bring delegates together in friendly social intercourse
+had shown itself in many quarters. The Viceregal Lodge pressed
+invitations on us, and Redmond, though in the circumstances he himself
+would go to no entertainment anywhere, expressed his wish that
+Nationalists should alter their traditional attitude and accept what was
+offered in so friendly a spirit. But the first place where we met as a
+body with informal ease was at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord
+Mayor--a popular figure in our assembly.
+
+Next day the Lord Mayor of Belfast rose at the adjournment to express
+all our thanks, and to insist that there should be a session in Belfast,
+where he could return the compliment. Immediately, there came another
+proposal for a similar visit to the South of Ireland. We went to Belfast
+at the beginning of September, and the attitude of the Ulster members,
+which had till then been somewhat guarded and aloof, changed into that
+of the traditional Irish hospitality. They showed us their great linen
+mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in
+which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries,
+works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any
+cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design
+combining lightness and strength. Perhaps the most impressive sight of
+all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards. Endless lines of
+empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of some ten
+thousand artisans, who streamed past where we stood assembled; and as
+the crowds swept along, all these eyes, curious, but not unfriendly,
+scrutinized us, and one word was in all their mouths as they came
+up--"Which is Redmond? Where's John Redmond?"
+
+A fortnight later Cork completed what Belfast had begun; and, perhaps
+because Cork is less strenuous, the whole atmosphere there was even
+friendlier. It had almost the quality of a holiday excursion, for we
+assisted at the ancient ceremony by which the Lord Mayor of Cork asserts
+his jurisdiction over the harbour waters--proceeding outside the
+protecting headlands and flinging from him a ceremonial dart outwards to
+the sea. This day, however, we accomplished the ceremony well within the
+limits; we passed the narrow gateway in the chain of mines, but outside
+that, submarines were a very real menace, and the Admiralty cut short
+our steamer's voyage. We were none the less festive on board.
+
+It was not all mere holiday in Cork. One speech in particular at this
+meeting impressed the whole Convention. A Southern delegate illustrated
+from his personal knowledge how cumbrous and uneconomic were the
+dealings of a government at Westminster with the meat supply from
+Ireland; and a mass of complicated and important trade detail was
+skilfully linked to the larger issue of war interest and Imperial
+interest; there was genuine eloquence as well as commercial shrewdness
+in this discourse. A short speech, too, from one of the Ulster County
+Councillors indicated by its tone, what was in my opinion the general
+sentiment, that as a result of these preliminary discussions almost
+everybody in the assembly expected and desired an effective agreement.
+
+At least for the purposes of this book, and perhaps many purposes, the
+trend of our debates can be best summarized by reproducing Redmond's
+main contribution to them. He intervened on the first day when Mr.
+Murphy's scheme was proposed, on August 21st, but only with a few
+welcoming words, and to emphasize his view that we were all there to
+accept whatever commanded most support. But at Belfast on September 5th
+he spoke fully; and I do not think his speech would have been materially
+different had he delivered it three weeks later in Cork. What I print
+here is based on the unusually full notes made by him, so full that they
+admit of being treated like a press telegram, and read clearly when
+small and obvious words are added. The manuscript is scored with
+underlining, single, double and treble, to guide the voice in reading
+from it; it has interest as illustrating the technical devices which a
+great orator employed for a special occasion; and for this speech he
+spared no effort. I thought, then as always, that he was less impressive
+and less effective in so fully prepared an oration than when he was
+putting his thought into the form which immediately came to him. But as
+a document it represents beyond doubt his considered opinion and his
+most deliberate advice.
+
+Dealing briefly at first with the contention that the system of the
+Union had been a success and should not be touched, he outlined the
+familiar arguments. But, as he said, the existence of the Convention was
+the final answer. The head of a Coalition Ministry had declared, without
+dissent from any of his Unionist colleagues, that Dublin Castle had
+hopelessly broken down. The Prime Minister of another Coalition, mainly
+Unionist in its composition, had set up this assembly, charging it to
+find another and better system of government.
+
+Beneficent legislation had been quoted. Yes, but how was it attained?
+
+"In any constitutionally governed country, once public opinion is
+converted to some great reform, it naturally passes, surely and easily,
+though perhaps slowly, into law. In Ireland, after Irish public opinion
+has made up its mind, the reformer has to convert the public opinion of
+another country which is profoundly ignorant or apathetic, and unhappily
+it is uncontrovertible that scarcely a single piece of beneficent
+legislation on land, or anything else, has been passed since the Union
+except by long, violent, semi-revolutionary agitation.
+
+"Are we to go on for ever upon this path? Are we to go back into the
+region of perpetual and violent agitation in order to get the reforms we
+need? Are we never to be allowed to have peace in our country?"
+
+He passed then to the complaint that Ulster's special case had not been
+sufficiently considered.
+
+"The man who would hope to settle this great problem without special
+consideration of the special case of Ulster would indeed be a fool. Only
+for the special case of Ulster we should not be here at all. Our chief
+business is to endeavour to satisfy that special case.
+
+"For myself, I am one of those Nationalists to whom Mr. Barrie referred,
+who believe that the co-operation of Ulstermen is necessary for a
+prosperous and free Ireland, and there are no lengths consistent with
+common sense and reason to which I would not go to satisfy their fears
+and doubts and objections.
+
+"The special case of Ulster as put before us was this: 'We are contented
+under the Union, we have prospered under the Union. Therefore from our
+particular standpoint we have no reason to ask for a change.' But they
+declare themselves not only Ulstermen but Irishmen. They admit that the
+rest of Ireland is not prosperous as they are, and is not contented;
+and, that being so, they have come here in a spirit of true patriotism
+to see what is proposed as a remedy; and, as I understand it, they only
+stipulate that in any scheme of reform their rights and interests and
+sentiments shall be safeguarded and respected. That is a reasonable and
+patriotic attitude, and I wish most heartily and most sincerely to
+respond to it.
+
+"Now let me say what are the main objections to these schemes which have
+emerged from the debate. Some may be regarded as more particularly
+affecting Ulster, others as more particularly affecting the Southern
+Unionists, but all of them taken together make up what I may call the
+Unionist objection.
+
+"The Archbishop of Dublin grouped these objections under three heads:
+
+1. Imperial Security.
+
+2. Fiscal Security.
+
+3. Security for Minorities.
+
+"On the question of Imperial Security, objection is taken to what is
+called an 'Independent' Parliament.
+
+"It is supposed that what is called Dominion Home Rule implies an
+'Independent' Parliament. This is a complete delusion. There is only one
+Sovereign and Independent Parliament in the Empire--the Imperial
+Parliament; its supremacy is indefeasible and inalienable. Every other
+Parliament in the Empire is subordinate, and an Irish Parliament must be
+subordinate.
+
+"The Imperial Parliament has created many Parliaments and given to them
+power to deal in general as they wish with local affairs, but it never
+parted with its own overriding authority--it has no power to do so--and
+in several of the colonies it has exercised that overriding authority
+from time to time.
+
+"Gladstone spoke of the Irish Parliament which he proposed to set up as
+'practically independent in the exercise of its statutory functions.'
+But the overriding authority of the Imperial Parliament would always be
+there in the background to arrest injustice or oppression, just as it is
+in regard to every Dominion Parliament in the Empire to-day.
+
+"That position was specifically laid down and accepted by Parnell in
+1886.
+
+"Lord Midleton demands that the rights and authority of the Crown shall
+be preserved and safeguarded. There is no difference whatever between us
+on this, and no difficulty can arise upon it.
+
+"As to the control of Army and Navy, no one suggests any interference
+with the Imperial authority over the Army and the Navy. I include in
+that such naval control of harbours as is necessary for security.
+
+"Captain Gwynn has proposed that Ireland should have power to raise a
+force for home defence. In other words, to pass a Territorial Act for
+Ireland. My policy about the Volunteers is known: I proposed at the
+beginning of the war that the Government should utilize the existing
+Volunteer forces; and had this proposal been acted on in 1914 there
+would have been no rebellion in 1916. If I understand Captain Gwynn, he
+did not suggest that Irish Territorials should be under an Irish War
+Office and an Irish Minister for War, but that in his opinion a system
+of Irish Territorials was desirable, and inasmuch as the English
+Territorial Acts are not suitable to us, the Irish Parliament should be
+given the power to raise under Imperial authority a force for itself and
+on its own lines.
+
+"If this is his view, I agree with it. But this is a matter on which no
+one would think of breaking off.
+
+"Speaking generally, I think the Archbishop of Dublin and those who
+agree with him may take it for granted that upon all those questions
+which he grouped under the heading of Imperial Security there would be
+little difficulty in arriving at an agreement with, at any rate, men
+like myself.
+
+"Now let me deal with the second group of subjects put forward by the
+Archbishop of Dublin under the heading of Fiscal Security--or a
+reasonable prospect of national prosperity.
+
+"The first objection is to what is called fiscal autonomy, although,
+after listening most carefully to his speeches, it seems to me that the
+real objection is not so much an objection to fiscal autonomy as
+establishing the full power of the Irish Parliament over the collection
+and imposition of Irish taxes, as an objection to giving that Parliament
+power to set up a tariff against Great Britain."
+
+He referred then at length to the Report of the Primrose Committee on
+Irish Finance, dated October 1911.[11] That Committee had for its
+chairman a great English Civil Servant; three of its members were famous
+English financiers; another was the Professor of Political Economy at
+Oxford. Of the two names associated closely with Ireland, one was Lord
+Pirrie, whose fortune had been made in Belfast, and the only Irish
+Nationalist was the Bishop of Ross. They had reported unanimously for
+giving to Ireland full fiscal powers. "We tried hard," Redmond said, "to
+get the principle of their Report adopted in framing the Bill of 1912."
+Government insisted on adhering to the plan of "contract finance" which
+their own non-partisan committee of experts had explicitly condemned.
+
+He quoted several passages from the weighty argument by which the
+Committee had justified its conclusions, especially those dealing with
+the contention that the power would be used to set up a tariff against
+British goods.
+
+"Ireland is not a nation of fools.
+
+"If in framing a new Constitution you go on the assumption that every
+power you confer will be abused, it would be far better to desist from
+your task altogether, and instead of increasing the powers of a people
+dead to all sense of responsibility and manifestly unfit for political
+freedom, you had better disestablish all existing forms of
+constitutional government and advocate the government of Ireland as a
+Crown Colony. But none of us so distrust our people.
+
+"Dr. O'Donnell has proposed a solution of the difficulty about imposing
+a tariff against England by means of a Conference between the two
+nations. Other suggestions will be made. Protection may be found for
+Ulster by giving to them disproportionate representation. It may be
+found in the power of the Senate, it may be found in the power to
+suspend. If we are agreed somewhat on the general lines of the Primrose
+Report, the outstanding difficulty will be capable of adjustment.
+
+"Sir Crawford McCullagh rightly pointed out the terrible burden of war
+taxation, which is at present over twenty millions, and he said we
+cannot go on on those lines, and we must get back to pre-war burdens or
+the country will be ruined. How are we to get back?
+
+"If nothing is done by us, and the war goes on, as it may, for some
+years, we may easily be paying thirty, forty, or fifty millions, and
+generations to come will have to bear a crushing load. The income tax is
+certain to be raised, and excess profits also, and no part of Ireland
+will suffer more than Ulster, and especially Belfast.
+
+"The highest interest of Ulster, therefore, is a speedy settlement
+whereby the increase of war taxation will cease and Ireland's
+contribution to Imperial purposes will either disappear or, to put it at
+the very lowest, be limited and stereotyped.
+
+"Mr. Knight raised the question of land purchase. I agree with every
+word he said, but what is the difficulty? The difficulty is in providing
+the additional money needed at a low rate of interest. As part of a
+settlement I feel quite sure we could obtain the completion of land
+purchase on satisfactory terms. Indeed, I have the highest authority for
+the statement that this question would be regarded as an essential
+portion of a settlement, and that a most generous arrangement would be
+made. But if there is no settlement, do you imagine the Treasury will
+do anything to help us? No. I fear the British Government will be more
+occupied in endeavouring to deal with the state of open anarchy in
+Ireland than in making great financial concessions on land purchase. Mr.
+Knight, if he wants purchase completed, had better help us to an
+agreement.
+
+"The third group of objections mentioned by the Archbishop of Dublin
+deals with Security for Minorities.
+
+"On this, it is impossible for the Convention to break down, because we
+are all in favour of the object in view. It is a mere question of the
+best machinery to carry out our unanimous desire and intention.
+
+"Ulster may clearly claim a representation out of proportion to her
+numbers, not only, I admit, in the Senate, but in the lower chamber.
+Safeguards of the most stringent character would be accepted, at any
+rate by me, in the machinery of the Constitution to prevent the
+possibility of Ulster's interest, Ulster's prosperity and Ulster's
+sentiments being injured or over-ridden.
+
+"For Southern Unionists, the case is unanswerable. They _must_ get
+proper representation in both Houses.
+
+"Some suggestions have been made: proportional representation; Mr.
+Murphy's proposal of a special representation for property; special
+representation for creeds, and finally a nominated element in the House
+of Commons. I have an open mind on them all. It may be none of these
+will be found wholly satisfactory. But where there is a will there is a
+way. We are all agreed it must be done, and therefore it can and will be
+done.
+
+"In none of these objections, and they are the chief ones that have
+emerged on Imperial security, fiscal security, and security of
+minorities, is there in my mind any difficulty in coming to an
+agreement, if we are really animated by the desire every speaker has
+professed to answer the appeal of the Empire in this hour of her dire
+extremity by removing one of her greatest weaknesses and dangers.
+
+"We were told by Lord Midleton to play for safety. What is safety for
+us? What is safety for the Empire? I strongly say the only safety is a
+settlement of this question.
+
+"What will be the certain effect of a breakdown? No one could fail to
+have been impressed by the serious and solemn note upon which the
+Archbishop of Dublin concluded his speech. He reminded you this was not
+a question of Ulster and the rest of Ireland, not of Catholic and
+Protestant, or Unionist and Nationalist: it was a question of the
+necessity for all men of good will, all men of responsibility, all men
+who know that the foundation of freedom is the maintenance of order, to
+join hands to protect their common country from anarchy and chaos.
+
+"The Archbishop spoke of Mr. Lysaght's speech as a threat. No one here
+will be moved by threats, but let us not be mad enough to shut our eyes
+to the facts. Is there a man in this room who can contemplate without
+horror the immediate future of Ireland if this Convention fails? For my
+part, I see clearly a future following on our failure in which on one
+side there will be an angered, if you like, a maddened people, with no
+responsible control, and on the other, Government ruling by the point of
+the bayonet. Between these two forces there will be no place for a
+Constitutional party or for men like myself.
+
+"That would be the effect in Ireland. What would be the effect
+throughout the Empire?
+
+"I have close relations with statesmen of all parties in all the
+Dominions, and I am informed that twenty-five per cent, of their troops
+are of Irish birth or of Irish parents, and that they have practically
+joined because they believed the Irish problem was as good as settled.
+
+"What has happened about Ireland has caused untold difficulties in every
+Dominion. Mr. Holman, the Prime Minister of New South Wales, said that
+conscription was defeated by the Irish vote. Mr. Hughes said the same.
+Two hundred thousand troops have been lost to the Empire by the feeling
+of disgust at the failure to settle the Irish question. It has been the
+same in Canada. Everywhere a breakdown will be regarded with dismay.
+
+"What will be the effect in America? The position of America is grave
+and dangerous. I have close relations with many Americans of high
+position and influence, and they all tell me the same. This is a secret
+session, and I can repeat what they say. There is little or no
+enthusiasm for the war. Mind, I am speaking of Americans, not Irish
+Americans. The apathy is largely due to distrust of England. They
+distrust her posing as the champion of small nations while here at her
+doors the Irish question is unsettled. Lord Midleton says the Americans
+are uninformed. Perhaps so as to details. Perhaps they only see the
+broad effect. But how does that help us? The fact remains. Ireland is
+the only, or the chief, cause of American apathy to-day. This is of
+vital importance. Could we hope to win the war if America dropped out?
+Russia has gone. The President of the United States has many pacifist
+men around him. Their movement is strong. Germany is abstaining from
+outrages that would raise American feeling. I say, the danger of peace
+proposals which we could not accept being offered to America and
+accepted by her is a real and a very serious one.
+
+"Hence it is that the Government, the diplomatic service, and all
+connected with our foreign affairs are feverishly anxious as to the
+result of our deliberations. If we break down in despair and
+helplessness, God only knows how terrible and far-reaching may be the
+consequence.
+
+"Far better for us and for the Empire never to have met than to have met
+and failed of an agreement.
+
+"Finally, what would be the effect of a breakdown at the front?
+
+"We are called upon on all sides of this ancient quarrel to make what
+people call sacrifices--sacrifices of inherited predilections, of
+old-world ideas, and of ancient shibboleths, of perhaps ingrained
+prejudice. I would be ashamed to speak of the surrender of such things
+as sacrifices, when I remember the kind of sacrifices our brave boys
+have made and are making this very hour while we are safe at home
+talking. I cannot trust myself to speak upon this matter. Only the other
+day, once again the Ulster Division and the Sixteenth Irish Division,
+shoulder to shoulder, have fought and died for Ireland. The full story
+is not yet known, but it is full of tragedy, of heroism and of glory.
+Surely they deserve some encouragement. No set of men living would be
+prouder and happier than they if we can send them the news of a
+settlement of this question which will relieve them from the daily shame
+they feel, every time they meet their Allies, in the consciousness that
+their country, Ireland, for which they are facing death, is distracted
+and disunited and a source of reproach.
+
+"No, we must come to a settlement. We must rise to the occasion--if only
+to save ourselves from a lifelong remorse for wrecking this venture--for
+what the historian of the future would describe as a crime against the
+Empire in her hour of deadliest peril, and a crime against the peace and
+happiness of our own beloved and long-suffering country."
+
+One result of this speech was seen at once in an utterance from Mr.
+Andrew Jameson, a leading figure among the Southern Unionists. He said
+at once that Redmond had convinced him that all the difficulties as to
+maintaining the Imperial connection and providing safeguards for
+minorities could and would be met. The fiscal difficulty remained. He
+pressed the Ulster group to come to our assistance and depart from their
+attitude of silence. This speech went further towards our desire than
+any Unionist had previously gone.
+
+In a later debate Mr. Pollock outlined two essentials of the Ulster
+demand. The United Kingdom must remain a fiscal unit; and Ireland must
+be represented at Westminster. If these points were conceded, agreement,
+he thought, should be possible.
+
+On the whole, as discussion grew franker and more business-like,
+relations improved. There were small passages at arms, but these only
+served to show how strong was the general desire for harmony. One of my
+colleagues said that he did not know what to make of a political
+assembly where everyone applauded when you got up, and applauded when
+you sat down, and never interrupted you. Another said that the
+Convention was the only society in Ireland from which one always came
+away cheered up: and this was so generally felt that an Ulster speaker
+reminded us that the atmosphere of our proceedings was pleasant but
+exceptional. He warned us to remember that, even if we agreed, either
+side might be repudiated. Yet there was a marked feeling that the
+Convention, and the tone which prevailed in the Convention, had done
+good in the country. This was admitted by the Grand Master of the Orange
+Order, Colonel Wallace, in a speech which led to an important
+illustration of the mutual process of education, for it raised with
+great frankness the issue of religious differences and alluded specially
+to the recent Papal decrees over which so much controversy had raged.
+The Bishop of Raphoe rose to reply and expounded, as an ex-professor of
+Canon Law, the true bearing of these documents. His speech was a
+masterpiece; its candour and its lucidity commended itself to all
+hearers, but most of all to the Ulstermen, who applauded at once Lord
+Oranmore's comment that the _odium theologicum_ had been replaced by
+_divina caritas_; and at a very late stage in our proceedings, Mr.
+Barrie referred back to this speech of the Bishop's as one of the
+things which they would never forget.
+
+The Primate, who in this month of September was one of the hopeful
+hearts ("My confidence has grown daily," he said), used words which met
+with widespread response: "We can never leave this hall and speak of men
+whom we have met here as we have spoken of them in the past." There was
+good will in the air--good will to each other and to the enterprise. At
+the close of the proceedings in Cork the Lord Mayor of Belfast moved a
+vote of thanks to the citizens through their Lord Mayor, and he closed
+on a note of hope--anticipating "something in store for Ireland."
+
+Yet already these anticipations were overcast. During this week, while
+all seemed going so well, one of the endless unhappy and preventible
+things happened. It was from Redmond that I first heard the news. One of
+the Sinn Fein leaders who had been rearrested on suspicion after the
+amnesty took part in a hunger-strike as a protest against being
+subjected to the conditions imposed on a convicted felon. He was
+forcibly fed and died under the process, owing to heart-failure. Redmond
+told me with fury how he had urged again and again on the Chief
+Secretary the possibility of some such calamity, and had urged that
+these men should receive the treatment proper in any case to political
+prisoners, but above all to men who had been neither convicted nor
+tried.
+
+The result was immediately seen in some hostile demonstrations in Cork,
+chiefly against Mr. Devlin and Redmond. But this was only the beginning.
+On the following Sunday the body of the dead man, Thomas Ashe, was
+carried through the streets of Dublin at the head of a vast procession,
+in which large bodies of Volunteers, openly defying Government's
+proclamation, marched in uniform; and he was buried with military
+honours and volleys fired over his grave. With all this breach of the
+law Government dared not interfere. They had put themselves in the
+wrong; whether they prevented the demonstration or permitted it,
+mischief was bound to follow. A new incitement was given to the
+enthusiasm for Sinn Fein, a new martyr was provided, and new hostility
+was raised against the Convention, for whose success Government was
+notoriously anxious. On the other hand, Ulster Unionist opinion was
+violently offended; they were scandalized by the disregard for law and
+the impotence of constitutional authority. This attitude, however open
+to comments based on their own recent history, did not render them any
+easier to deal with. Above all, the Ashe incident emphasized the
+presence in Ireland of a great force over which Redmond had no control
+and which had no representative in the Convention. How, men asked, even
+if a bargain could be made with Constitutional Nationalists, should that
+covenant be carried into effect?
+
+
+III
+
+The Cork visit marks the close of the first stage in the history of the
+Convention. At the opening of our session there it was decided to
+appoint a Grand Committee of twenty, whose task should be, "if possible,
+to prepare a scheme for submission to the Convention, which would meet
+the views and difficulties expressed by the different speeches during
+the course of the debate." The Convention itself, after its
+deliberations of that week, would adjourn until the Committee was in a
+position to report. This second stage, purely of committee work, was to
+last much longer than anyone anticipated: the Convention did not
+reassemble till the week before Christmas. If that length of adjournment
+had been foreseen, the Committee would never have been appointed.
+
+Mr. Lysaght in his first address to the Convention had pressed upon us
+the view that Sinn Fein could be won. But he warned us also (with such
+emphasis that some speakers afterwards resented it as a threat) that if
+the Convention produced no result, or an unacceptable result, or
+provoked suspicion by delay, the result would be a revolution. Already
+impatience was growing. We could publish no account of our proceedings:
+but it became known inevitably that we had not as yet reached one
+operative conclusion in our task of Constitution building.
+
+At Cork, Sir Horace Plunkett made an encouraging speech at the public
+luncheon; he announced the appointment of our Committee, which certainly
+looked like business. But only when we got to detail did men fully
+realize the difficulties and the embarrassing nature of the position.
+
+The Ashe affair had done more harm than we knew. When the Primate was
+making the hopeful speech from which a few words have already been
+quoted, he spoke also of our experience as having been a process of
+mutual education, which we needed to extend beyond our own assembly. He
+promised his help in this, and it was felt that Ulstermen generally were
+on their honour to report well of what they commended in our presence.
+They were, it seems, at least as good as their word; the Committee
+behind them was favourably impressed, and when we went to Cork--so I
+have been informed--the question of giving the delegates full powers to
+negotiate was under discussion. But this mood was dissipated by the
+angry temper in all sections which arose out of the imprisonments, the
+hunger-strikes, the penalties imposed, and the successive concessions to
+violent resistance.
+
+To this was added a new cause of quarrel. The Franchise Bill was now
+coming before the House of Commons; and under the provisions agreed to
+by the Speaker's Conference, extension of the franchise was to be
+applied in Ireland, but there was to be no redistribution. This proposal
+was not unreasonable, since the Home Rule Act was now a statute and
+under it new and properly distributed constituencies were scheduled;
+while over and above this the Convention was in existence to occupy
+itself with the matter.
+
+On the other hand, the existing distribution of seats was hard on
+Unionist Ulster: the great mass of population in and about Belfast was
+under-represented. Ulstermen said that while Nationalists professed
+great desire to give favour to minorities, in reality they persisted in
+keeping their political opponents at an unfair disadvantage. There was
+no more question of enlarging the delegates' authority in Convention:
+the Advisory Committee hardened their attitude, and it was our task to
+convince a body which could not hear our arguments at first hand.
+Decisions lay with Ulstermen in Belfast, not in the Convention--that is
+to say, not subject to the daily, hourly, prompting to remember that
+they were not only Ulstermen but Irishmen, which arose from friendly
+intercourse with their fellow-delegates.
+
+The Grand Committee of twenty, representing all groups, met on October
+11th. Sir Horace Plunkett had in advance begged Redmond to undertake the
+presentation of a scheme which would serve as a basis for discussion.
+Redmond declined, on the ground that the initiative should come from
+someone who was not there as a politician; but he admitted that the onus
+of making a proposal was on Home Rulers. Dr. O'Donnell, though an
+office-bearer in the United Irish League, was present as a
+representative of the hierarchy; he was charged with the task. He had
+been throughout a strong advocate of claiming for Ireland all the powers
+possessed by any of the Dominions, with limitations on the military
+side; he had also been forward in his desire to give wholly exceptional
+rights of representation to minorities.
+
+But when we got into Committee one man immediately took the lead. Sir
+Alexander McDowell[12] had not spoken in any debate; there is reason to
+believe that he was glad not to commit himself in advance before the
+moment when his special gift might come into play. All his life he had
+been carrying through agreements between conflicting interests: he was a
+great mediator and negotiator. Now, he advocated what was, in
+strictness, an irregularity. A task had been delegated to us: he asked
+us to delegate it again to a smaller group. The whole case, he said, had
+been fully opened up; further debate would be no use; we all knew all
+the arguments. He deprecated formal procedure; it was plainly a family
+quarrel, and we should treat it in that spirit. Honestly, he said, he
+should be sorry if the Convention failed. Ulster had no fault to find
+with the Union; but they were living next door to a house already in
+flames.
+
+That was the general tone, but it would be difficult to convey the
+impression of experience and authority which his manner left: and
+Redmond supported him. It was plain that the two men would understand
+each other. In the upshot their view prevailed; Redmond, Mr. Barrie and
+Lord Midleton were instructed to suggest names, and after an interval
+they came back with a list of nine. Lord Midleton was for the Southern
+Unionists; Mr. Barrie, Lord Londonderry and Sir Alexander McDowell for
+the Northern; Redmond, Mr. Devlin and Bishop O'Donnell represented the
+parliamentary Nationalists, and to them were added Mr. W.M. Murphy and
+Mr. George Russell.
+
+This left eleven of us unemployed, and some days later we were formed
+into three sub-committees, the first dealing with the question of
+Electoral Reform and the composition of an Irish Parliament; the second
+with Land Purchase, and the third with a possible Territorial Force and
+the Police. But the marrow of the business rested with the original
+sub-committee of nine.
+
+They, however, could not get rapidly to work; other affairs pulled them
+in different directions. Redmond was forced to go to Westminster, where
+the Franchise Bill was coming on; moreover, the Irish party felt that
+it must raise the question of Irish administration.
+
+As our leader, he was obliged to speak on both matters. His reply to the
+Ulster amendment proposing to extend redistribution to Ireland was that
+this departed from the compromise reached at the Speaker's Conference,
+and moreover ignored the existence of the Convention. He spoke with
+studied brevity and avoidance of party spirit: but the debate became a
+wrangle. Mr. Barrie brought back into it some of the Convention's
+friendlier atmosphere; but his argument was that in the interests of the
+Convention this concession should be made.
+
+The second debate, on October 23rd, was inevitably contentious: it
+deplored the policy being pursued by the Irish Executive and the Irish
+military authorities "at a time when the highest interests of Ireland
+and the Empire demand the creation of an atmosphere favourable to the
+Convention." Redmond had an easy task in convicting the Government's
+action of incoherence and of blundering provocation--but to do this was
+of no advantage to his main purpose, which he served as best he could by
+a side-wind, eulogizing the temper of the Convention and specially the
+"sincere desire for a reasonable settlement" shown by the Ulster
+delegates.
+
+Still, at the best, it was impossible for him not to feel that the
+reaction of a debate which could not be kept in the tone on which he
+started it must be unfavourable to the meetings of the Nine which were
+about to take place. He was to go in to negotiate a settlement for his
+country while the voices of faction were yelping at his heels all over
+Ireland, and all the forces of reconciliation which he had brought into
+play were neutralized and sterilized.
+
+A debate of these days gave him a happier occasion to intervene than the
+domestic bickerings in which he had been forced to take part; yet even
+in this the note of sadness predominated. On October 29th, when a vote
+of thanks was proposed to the Navy, Army and Mercantile Marine, he
+joined his voice to that of other leaders of parties, to emphasize, as
+he said, that they spoke from an absolutely unanimous House of Commons.
+He recalled the exploits of Irish troops and dwelt again on the presence
+of a large Irish element in the Canadian and Anzac Divisions. But his
+reference was chiefly to those Nationalist Irish Brigades, who had
+remained true, he said, to the old motto of the Brigade of Fontenoy,
+_Semper et ubique fidelis_. These men had known in the midst of their
+privations and sufferings a new and poignant feeling of anguish: they
+had seen "a section at any rate of their countrymen" repudiate the view
+that in serving as they served they were fighting for Ireland, for her
+happiness, for her prosperity and her liberty.
+
+"I wish it were possible for me to speak a word to every one of those
+men. If my words could reach them, I would say to every one of them that
+they need have no misgiving, that they were right from the first, that
+time will vindicate them, that time will show that while fighting for
+liberty and civilization in Europe they are also fighting for
+civilization and liberty in their own land. I would like to say to every
+one of them, in addition, that even at this moment, when ephemeral
+causes have confused and disturbed Irish opinion, they are regarded with
+feelings of the deepest pride and gratitude by the great bulk of the
+Irish race and by all that is best in every creed and class in Ireland."
+
+The Irish Divisions had once and again been engaged shoulder to
+shoulder, but this time with very different fortune, in the third battle
+of Ypres; yet, win or lose, they won or lost together. In that same
+fighting Redmond's own son had earned special honour; the Distinguished
+Service Order was bestowed on him for holding up a broken line with his
+company of the Irish Guards. At a happier time this news would have been
+received with enthusiasm all over Ireland; now, the most one could say
+was that it delighted the Convention.
+
+It would be quite wrong, however, to regard Redmond's attitude in these
+days as unhopeful. The first meetings of the Nine were fruitful of much
+agreement--conditional at all points on general ratification. But the
+true spirit of compromise was there. So far as concerned the provision
+to give minorities more than their numerical weight, it was agreed that
+there should be two Houses, with powers of joint session, and with
+control over money bills conceded to the Upper House. In the Lower House
+Unionists should (somehow) get forty per cent, of the representation: so
+that in the joint session the influences would be equally balanced.
+
+The hitch came over finance. Nationalists wanted complete powers of
+taxation, but would agree to a treaty establishing Free Trade between
+the two countries for a long period. Ulster wanted a common fiscal
+control for Great Britain and Ireland. By November 1st a complete
+deadlock had been reached.
+
+On that date the Grand Committee met to take stock informally of the
+position, especially in regard to the procedure of the more detailed
+sub-committees, and to face the fact that a grave misfortune had
+befallen us. Sir Alexander McDowell had been prevented by illness from
+attending any of the meetings. He had no further part in the
+Convention's work, and died before it ended.
+
+Redmond in a confidential talk spoke of his absence as lamentable. The
+two had arranged--on the Belfast man's proposal--to meet for private
+interviews before the Nine came together. Neither had control of the
+forces for which he spoke; but both stood out, by everyone's consent,
+from the rest of the assembly. It is impossible to say how much they
+might have achieved had they come to an understanding; but assuredly no
+other representative of the North spoke with the same self-confidence or
+the same weight of personality as Sir Alexander McDowell. My own
+feeling about him--if it be worth while to record a personal
+impression--was that he was a man with the instinct for carrying big
+things through--that the problem tempted him, as a task which called for
+the exertion of powers which he was conscious of possessing. In losing
+him we lost certainly the strongest will in his group, perhaps the
+strongest in the Convention; and it was a will for settlement. It was,
+too, a will less hampered by regard for public opinion than that of any
+popularly elected representative man can be. He had, I think, also
+eminently the persuasive gift which is not only inclined to give and
+take but can impart that disposition to others.
+
+Mr. Pollock, who replaced him, was an able man, but singularly lacking
+in this quality. He held his own views clearly and strongly, but his
+method of exposition accentuated differences: it had always a note of
+asperity, though this was certainly not deliberate. One of the pleasant
+memories which remains with me is of a day when debate grew acrimonious
+and hot words were used. Mr. Pollock refused to reply to some phrases
+which might have been regarded as taunts, because, he said, "I have made
+friendships here which I never expected to make, and I value them too
+much to risk the loss of them." That friendly temper, combined with his
+ability, made him a valuable member of this Convention: but for the
+critical work of bringing men's minds together, of sifting the essential
+from the unessential, he was a bad exchange for Sir Alexander McDowell.
+
+Redmond said to me that he had found Mr. Barrie much more conciliatory
+than in the earlier and public stages. He was delighted with Lord
+Midleton, who was, he said, "showing an Irish spirit which I never
+expected";--standing up for the claims of an Irish Parliament if there
+was to be one. In the discussion, however, one man, Bishop O'Donnell,
+had been "head and shoulders above everyone else."
+
+Argument had ranged about the question of customs and excise. This was
+the dividing line. But when at last a deadlock was definitely reached,
+the Ulster position was stated in a letter which refused to concede to
+an Irish Parliament the control of either direct or indirect taxation.
+It was to be a Parliament with no taxing power at all.
+
+On the other hand, in the corresponding document from the Nationalist
+side, the importance of immediate and full fiscal control had been put
+very high.
+
+"Self-government does not exist," it said, "where those nominally
+entrusted with affairs of government have not control of fiscal and
+economic policy. No nation with self-respect could accept the idea that
+while its citizens were regarded as capable of creating wealth they were
+regarded as incompetent to regulate the manner in which taxation of that
+wealth should be arranged, and that another country should have the
+power of levying and collecting taxes, the taxed country being placed in
+the position of a person of infirm mind whose affairs are regulated by
+trustees. No finality could be looked for in such an arrangement, not
+even a temporary satisfaction."
+
+The genesis of this passage should be told, for it had importance in the
+history of the Convention; and also it conveys an idea of the limits to
+which Redmond carried self-effacement. It is important because it acted
+on Ulster like a red rag shown to a bull. Obviously, if this were the
+Nationalist view, then the Home Rule Act could not be said to give
+self-government--for under its system of contract finance Ireland
+certainly had not control of her fiscal and economic policy. A measure
+accepted with enthusiasm in 1912 was now regarded as impossible of
+giving "even a temporary satisfaction."
+
+What had happened was this. The Chairman in his tireless efforts to
+bring about agreement had addressed two sets of questions, to the
+Nationalists and to the Ulstermen respectively, by answering which he
+hoped they might clear the air. The direct answers for the Nationalists
+were drafted by Mr. Russell, but were shown to Redmond, Mr. Devlin and
+the Bishop of Raphoe. It was, however, suggested that as an addendum a
+summary should be added. Redmond did not ask to see this addition, and
+it was not shown to him. It led off with the paragraph which has been
+quoted. The fact that he allowed anything in any stage of such a
+negotiation to go out in his name without his own revision marks the
+loosening of grip--a tired man.
+
+His exertions for the past years, the past ten years at least, had been
+tremendous: they had been redoubled from 1912 to 1916. Towards the end,
+one resource had been failing him--the chief of all. A leader when he is
+well followed gives and takes; there is interchange of energy. For more
+than a year now Redmond had lacked the moral support, the almost
+physical stimulus, which comes from the ready response of followers.
+Labour at no time came easy to him, there was much inertia in his
+temperament; and the part which he had laid out for himself in the
+Convention as merely an individual member did not impose on him the same
+unremitting vigilance as if he acted as leader. Yet, the leadership was
+his; if he did not exercise it, no one else could; and this incident
+shows that his abnegation of leadership was not a mere phrase.
+
+On November 22nd the Grand Committee reassembled to hear the report from
+the Nine. Lord Southborough, who had presided at all their meetings,
+detailed the conclusions which had been reached or the point on which
+they had broken down.
+
+Then followed a discussion lasting some three days, in which Ulstermen
+and Nationalists reaffirmed their positions. Archbishop Bernard, the
+Primate, and Lord MacDonnell all attempted mediation. Finally, Lord
+Midleton, who described the position as "a stone wall on each side,"
+announced that he and his group would put before the Grand Committee
+certain proposals as a _via media_. These in effect conceded to an Irish
+Parliament all that Nationalists claimed, subject only to the
+reservation that customs must be fixed by the Imperial Parliament and
+the produce of them retained as Ireland's contribution to Imperial
+services.
+
+At this point our work was interrupted by the reemergence of the
+redistribution question. Redmond and the other Irish members were
+obliged to go to London and assist for two days at a debate in the worst
+traditions of the House of Commons. The change of atmosphere was
+extraordinary--and the accusations of bad faith were not limited to what
+passed at Westminster. One virulent speech declared that the Convention
+had no prospects, never had any, and was never intended to have any.
+This was accompanied by an attack on the action of the Ulster
+group--based, of course, on hearsay. Those of us who felt that at any
+rate the Convention offered a better hope for Ireland than any which now
+could be based on action at Westminster pleaded for the acceptance of a
+proposal which Redmond put forward as a compromise--that the proposed
+Irish clauses should be dropped from the main Bill and the Irish matter
+dealt with in a separate statute. It was so agreed at last, and a
+conference between Irish members, with the Speaker presiding, was set
+up, and quickly did its work. But if all this had been agreed to in
+October or earlier, much friction would have been saved and a cause of
+quarrel with the Ulster that was not in the Convention might have been
+avoided. Still, peace was achieved, and the proposal to cut down Irish
+representation was once more defeated.
+
+Grand Committee met for another session, but was chiefly concerned with
+getting ready for the reassembling of Convention--fixed for Tuesday,
+December 18th. It was decided that a group meeting of Nationalists for
+informal discussion should be held on the Monday night--the first
+occasion on which this had been done.
+
+Ill-luck, however, seemed to dog us. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of Ross, who
+was much closer in his point of view to Redmond than any of the other
+Bishops, was gravely ill. This was foreseen. But on the Monday a heavy
+snowstorm fell; Redmond, shut up in his hills at Aughavanagh, could not
+reach Dublin. The roads were not open till the Thursday, and then he
+thought it too late to come. He was in truth already too ill to face any
+unusual exertion.
+
+The Convention had been summoned, not to receive a final report from the
+Grand Committee, but to face a new situation. An offer had been put
+forward by one group which altered the whole complexion of the
+controversy. Grand Committee had abstained from deciding whether to
+counsel acceptance or rejection. But for the first time an influential
+body of Irish Unionists had agreed, not as individuals but as
+representatives, to accept Home Rule, in a wider measure than had been
+proffered by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 or by the Act of 1914.
+Limitations which were imposed in all these had been struck out by Lord
+Midleton's proposals.
+
+On the other hand, it was certain that the Ulster group would reject the
+scheme. Conversation among Nationalists made it plain that if Ulster
+would agree with Lord Midleton we should all join them. For the sake of
+an agreement reached between all sections of Irishmen, but for nothing
+less conclusive, Dr. O'Donnell and Mr. Russell were content to waive the
+claim to full fiscal independence. Such an agreement, they held, would
+be accepted by Parliament in its integrity. But if Ulster stood out,
+there would be no "substantial agreement," and the terms which
+Nationalists and Southern Unionists might combine to propose would be
+treated as a bargaining offer, certain to be chipped down by Government
+towards conformity with the Ulster demand. In the result there would be
+an uprising of opinion in Ireland against a measure so framed; the
+fiasco of July, 1916, would repeat itself.
+
+Against this, and prompting us to acceptance, was the view very strongly
+held by Redmond, that Government urgently needed a settlement for the
+sake of the war, and would use to the utmost any leverage which helped
+them to this end. An agreement with Lord Midleton would mean a Home Rule
+proposal proceeding from a leading Unionist statesman who spoke for the
+interest in Ireland, which, if any, had reason to fear Nationalist
+government. This would mean necessarily a profound change in the
+attitude of the House of Lords and of all those social influences whose
+power we had felt so painfully. Government could undoubtedly, if it
+chose, carry a measure giving effect to this compact.
+
+Further, weighing greatly with the instincts of the rank and file was
+the motive which prompted Irish Nationalists to welcome the advance made
+by those whom Lord Midleton represented. The Southern Unionists were the
+old landowning and professional class, friendly in all ways of
+intercourse, but politically severed and sundered from the mass of the
+population. Now, they came forward with an offer to help in attaining
+our desire--quite frankly, against their own declared conviction that
+the Union was the best plan, but with an equally frank recognition that
+the majority was the majority and was honest in its intent. The
+personality of the men reinforced the effect of this: Lord Oranmore, for
+instance, whom most of them had only known by anti-Home Rule speeches in
+the House of Lords, revealed himself as the friendliest of Irishmen,
+with the Irish love for a witty phrase.
+
+This temperamental attitude was of help to Lord Midleton when on
+December 18th he expounded the position of himself and his friends in a
+very powerful argument, the more persuasive because the good will in his
+audience softened his habitual touch of contentiousness. It had seemed
+to them, he said, that both in the Nationalist and Northern Unionist
+camp there was a tendency to consider dispositions out of doors and to
+conciliate certain antagonisms without considering whether they excited
+others. He and his friends had determined to fix their minds solely on
+the Convention itself, and to pursue the purpose for which they were
+summoned of endeavouring after agreement within that body. They were
+Unionists; but they had asked themselves what could be removed from the
+present system without disturbing the essence of Union; and in that
+effort they would go to the extremest limit in their power, without
+thought of conciliating opinions outside, and without any attempt to
+bargain.
+
+On one point only he indicated that their scheme was tentative. Defence
+was by consent of all left to the Imperial Parliament. This implied, he
+held, an adequate contribution, and the yield of customs to be collected
+by the Imperial Parliament seemed roughly to meet the case, for the
+period of the war. But this was not absolutely a hard-and-fast proposal.
+In any case, after the war, the amount should be the subject of inquiry
+by a joint commission.
+
+Apart from this, the offer was their last word. It conceded to Ireland
+the control of all purely Irish services. This included the fixation of
+excise, because excise on commodities produced in Ireland did not touch
+the treaty-making power. Customs touched that power, and therefore
+customs, like defence, must be left to the Imperial Parliament. But, he
+argued, Irish Nationalists were not asked to give up anything which had
+been conceded to them by any previous Home Rule proposal.
+
+To all Unionists he said: These proposals keep the power of the Crown
+over all Imperial services undiminished; they keep representation at
+Westminster--a corollary from leaving the Imperial Parliament powers
+over Irish taxation; and by accepting the suggestions already agreed
+to, they give a generous representation to Unionists in an Irish
+Parliament. This special representation of minorities was, he thought,
+sufficient to give a guarantee of "sane legislation" while it lasted;
+and he suggested that the period should be fifteen years. These
+concessions, in his opinion, sufficiently protected Southern Unionists.
+To Ulster he said, "We share every danger threatening you--we have many
+dangers you need not fear. Yet, we have no sinister anticipations. Are
+you still determined to stand out?"
+
+On the other hand, when so much of the full demand was conceded, were
+Nationalists insistent, he asked, on demanding what they had never asked
+in the discussions upon any Home Rule Bill? Nationalist leaders had now
+the chance of leading a combination of all sane elements in the
+landowning and land-cultivating classes. No Irish leader had ever before
+been able to present such an appeal to Unionist opinion as would come
+from the man who represented a Convention Party.
+
+It was a speech which Redmond, if present, must have replied to, and
+could not have replied to without indicating profound sympathy--for he
+was in agreement with its main lines; and his expression of opinion upon
+it must have influenced strongly the views of the rank and file at the
+moment when they were most open to suggestion.
+
+In his absence, men's minds were greatly affected by the fear that if we
+adopted these proposals, our decision would be exposed to attack from a
+combination of three forces--Sinn Fein, which would at least officially
+condemn anything less than complete separation, and would furiously
+assail a proposal that denied full taxing powers; the Roman Catholic
+Church, which would take its lead from Bishop O'Donnell, who set out in
+an able memorandum the reasons why Ireland must have full control of
+taxation; and finally, the powerful newspaper whose proprietor, Mr.
+Murphy, at once gave signs of his hostility by putting on the paper an
+amendment to Lord Midleton's resolution which amounted to a direct
+negative.
+
+The reassembly of the Convention was fixed for Wednesday, January 2nd.
+Redmond came to Dublin on the Monday. He told me that he was inclined to
+move that while we thanked Lord Midleton for his substantial
+contribution towards our purpose, we could not accept his proposal,
+unless it opened the way to a settlement. What he meant by this was not
+merely that if Ulster agreed, we should accept; for that would certainly
+open the way. But he had also in his mind the possibility of a guarantee
+from Government that an arrangement come to, as this might be, by
+four-fifths of the Convention, and repudiated only by the pledge-bound
+Ulster block, would be regarded as substantial agreement, and taken as a
+basis for legislation. In that case, also, the way would be open; but he
+had no written assurance of such an understanding, though I gathered
+that he was urging the Government to give it. We were, however, told on
+good authority in these days that if the Southern Unionists' proposal
+was accepted by the Nationalists and other elements outside of Ulster,
+the Prime Minister would use his whole influence with his colleagues to
+secure acceptance of the compact and immediate legislation upon it. This
+would mean, we were also assured, that the whole thing would be done
+before Easter.
+
+On January 2nd the resumed debate for the first time brought the
+Convention face to face with concrete proposals for a settlement. In
+tone and in substance it would have done credit to any Parliament that
+ever sat. I shall not try to summarize the arguments, but simply to note
+certain outstanding facts.
+
+Lord Midleton modified his original proposal that collection of customs
+should be an Imperial service throughout. He agreed that collection
+might be done by the Irish Civil Service. Moreover, he admitted that
+Ireland must have full means of checking the account for these taxes,
+great part of which must necessarily be collected at English ports,
+since tea, tobacco and the other dutiable articles were seldom shipped
+direct to Ireland.
+
+But he made it plain that the essential of his proposal was the
+maintenance of a common customs system, leaving the fixation of customs
+to the Imperial Parliament for Great Britain and Ireland. If this was
+denied, as it would be by the acceptance of Mr. Murphy's amendment, all
+Unionists would be driven once more into the same lobby; all chance of
+uniting elements heretofore divided would disappear.
+
+This was the fact against which we were brought up. Insistence on the
+full Nationalist demand as it had been outlined in the Convention meant
+the refusal of a new and powerful alliance which now offered itself, and
+the destruction of anything which could be called an agreement.
+
+In the close, Lord Midleton reinforced his appeal by a solid material
+argument. The sub-committee presided over by Lord MacDonnell had reached
+unanimous conclusions embodying proposals for the completion of land
+purchase within a very brief period. Landlords, agents, tenants,
+representatives for Ulster as well as from the South and West, were
+parties to this plan. Lord Midleton now looked back on the past as one
+who had been in the fight since Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill.
+Every fresh settlement had been wrecked, he said, by standing for the
+last shred of the demand. In 1885, if Gladstone had abandoned the
+identity of democratic franchise for both countries and had made to the
+Irish minority such concessions as this Convention was willing to make,
+he would have carried the Liberal Unionist element with him. Then, as
+now, a great land purchase scheme depended on the solution of the main
+problem. To-day land purchase stood or fell with the Convention.
+
+He was backed by Lord Dunraven--who waived his preference for his own
+original proposal--and by Lord Desart, in most able argument: the latter
+declaring that the proposal to give Ireland a separate customs system
+could never be carried in England. But the speech of the day came from
+Mr. Kavanagh, who, speaking as a Nationalist who had been a Unionist,
+ended a most moving appeal for agreement with a declaration that he at
+all events would vote for the compromise. There was no mistaking the
+effect produced by the earnestness of this speaker, who knew as much of
+Ireland and was as well fitted to judge of its true interests as any man
+in the room. That effect was felt, I think, in the tone of a private
+meeting of Nationalists held the same night. Redmond, with the art of
+which he was a master, indicated support for the proposal without
+forcing a conclusion. He dwelt on the fact that if we did not agree we
+not only lost our chance of immediate and complete land purchase but
+left ourselves subjected to the entire burden of war taxation. Other
+speakers pointed out that we ought not to let ourselves be lured into
+driving the Southern Unionists and the Ulstermen together against us.
+Mr. Clancy said in his downright manner that he would not as yet express
+his view publicly: but that he was not going to reject this offer for
+the sake of fixing taxes on tea and tobacco, and that when the right
+time came, he would say so. The strongest arguments used against this
+view were that in surrendering control of customs we lost our management
+of the taxes which pressed upon the poor; and further, that even if we
+agreed, no one knew what would result. We had no guarantee that the
+compact would be expressed in legislation. But on the whole the tone
+showed a disposition to accept, and especially to support Redmond--who
+had spoken of his political career as a thing ended. Next day the debate
+in Convention continued. Archbishop Bernard, speaking as a Unionist,
+said that the proposal was a venture beset with risks, but the greatest
+danger of all was to do nothing. It would be a grave responsibility for
+Ulster to wreck the chance of a settlement. Lord Oranmore dwelt on the
+composition of the proposed Legislature Power was to be entrusted to a
+very different Parliament from that which they had feared. He and his
+like were to get what they desired--an opportunity of taking part in
+the government of the country. It looked to him as if the only possible
+Irish Government under this scheme must be Unionist in its complexion.
+
+Perhaps there was an echo of this in Redmond's speech, by far the
+greatest he made in the Convention, when at last he intervened on
+January 4th--the Friday which ended that session.
+
+He dealt at once with Mr. Barrie's often repeated view that the proper
+object of our endeavours was to find a compromise between the Act of
+1914 and the proposal for partition put forward by Ulster. On that basis
+the Convention could never have been brought together. The Prime
+Minister's letter of May 16th which proposed the Convention suggested
+that Irishmen should meet "for the purpose of drafting a Constitution
+for their own country." On May 22nd Mr. Lloyd George had said, "We
+propose that Ireland should try her own hand at hammering out an
+instrument of government for her people." The only limitation was that
+it should be a Constitution "for the future government of Ireland within
+the Empire."
+
+Then he turned to the argument that all the sacrifices were asked from
+Unionists. Let us weigh them, he said. What sacrifices had been made by
+the Irish Nationalists, since this chain of events began?--Then followed
+a passage which I recapitulate, not necessarily in full, but in phrases
+which he actually used, and I noted down:
+
+"Personal loss I set aside. My position--our position--before the war
+was that we possessed the confidence of nearly the entire country. I
+took a risk--we took it--with eyes open. I have--we have--not merely
+taken the risk but made the sacrifice. If the choice were to be made
+to-morrow, I would do it all over again.
+
+"I have had my surfeit of public life. My modest ambition would be to
+serve in some quite humble capacity under the first Unionist Prime
+Minister of Ireland."
+
+As to other sacrifices, in the way of concessions, he recited the list
+of what had been agreed to--proposals so strangely undemocratic--the
+nomination of members of Parliament, the disproportionate powers given
+to a minority. "Shall we not be denounced for making them?" he asked.
+
+On the other hand, what sacrifices had been made by the Southern
+Unionists? These were the men who had had the hardest battle to fight in
+the struggle over Home Rule. They were not, like Ulster Unionists,
+"entrenched in a ring-fence," but the scattered few, who had suffered
+most and who might naturally have entertained most bitterness. Yet Lord
+Midleton's speech had been instinct with an admirable spirit. The speech
+of the Archbishop of Dublin had touched him deeply.
+
+"Between these men and us there never again can be the differences of
+the past. They have put behind them all bitter memories. They have
+agreed to the framework of a Bill better than any offered to us in 1886,
+1893 or 1914."
+
+As for us Nationalists--he emphasized that each man came here free,
+untrammelled.
+
+"I speak only for myself. But even if I stand alone, I will not allow
+myself, because I cannot get the full measure of my demand, to be drawn
+to reject the proffered hand of friendship held out to us. In my opinion
+we should be political fools if we did not endeavour to cement an
+alliance with these men."
+
+As concerned the Labour men, Mr. Whitley, who had always been a
+Unionist, had declared willingness to agree. But the Ulster
+Unionists--what sacrifice had they made?
+
+"The last thing I desire is to attack Mr. Barrie and his friends. But
+they are not free agents. I was shocked when I heard that a section here
+openly avowed the need to refer back to some outside body. If we had
+been told we were going into a body which would consist of two orders of
+members, it would have been difficult to get us here."
+
+On the essential point Ulster had made no concession. What did Mr.
+Barrie say in his formal document? 'We are satisfied that for Ireland
+and for Great Britain a common system of finances with one Exchequer is
+a fundamental necessity.' If they denied the taxing power to Ireland,
+any proposal on these lines must give Ireland less than any proposal for
+Home Rule ever put forward. This was Ulster's original position and they
+had not budged an inch.
+
+"This is their response to the Empire's S.O.S. Is it worthy of Ulster's
+Imperial loyalty? I don't believe it is their last word."
+
+Lord Londonderry, however, in replying, did not add any ground of hope.
+The last speech of the day announced that of six trade unionists five
+would support the compromise.
+
+Redmond that evening put on the notice paper a motion adopting Lord
+Midleton's proposals provided that they "be adopted by His Majesty's
+Government as a settlement of the Irish question and legislative effect
+be given to them forthwith."
+
+On the day before this motion was tabled, a party was given at Lord
+Granard's house which everybody attended, and which marked the most
+festive moment of our comradeship. When we separated on the Friday most
+men were absolutely confident of an agreement covering four-fifths of
+the Convention.
+
+Unhappily, the motion could not come under consideration for a period of
+ten days. In the following week Lord Midleton thought it necessary to
+attend the House of Lords. It was settled that we should spend the
+interval discussing the land purchase report, for which his presence was
+not essential. Redmond, whose health was still bad, did not come up to
+Dublin. All this gave time for agitation, and agitation was at work.
+
+Still, during that week there was no sign of any change in tone. Members
+of the local bodies who had gone to their homes at the week's end came
+back just as much inclined to settle as before.
+
+I met Redmond on the night of Monday, January 14th. He had seen no one
+in these ten days. He told me that he was still uncertain what would
+happen, but asked me to get one of the leading County Councillors to
+second his motion. Next morning I came in half an hour before the
+meeting to find the man I wanted. When I met him he was full of
+excitement, and said, "Something has gone wrong; the men are all saying
+they must vote against Redmond." Then it was evident that propaganda had
+been busy to some purpose.
+
+When Redmond came in to his place, I said, "It's all right. Martin
+McDonogh will second your motion." He answered with a characteristic
+brusqueness, "He needn't trouble. I'm not going to move it; Devlin and
+the Bishops are voting against me."
+
+He rose immediately the Chairman was in his place.
+
+"The amendment which I have on the paper," he said, "embodies the
+deliberate advice I give to the Convention.
+
+"I consulted no one--and could not do so, being ill. It stands on record
+on my sole responsibility.
+
+"Since entering the building I have heard that some very important
+Nationalist representatives are against this course--the Catholic
+bishops, Mr. Devlin--and others. I must face the situation--at which I
+am surprised; and I regret it.
+
+"If I proceeded I should probably carry my point on a division, but the
+Nationalists would be divided. Such a division could not carry out the
+objects I have in view.
+
+"Therefore, I must avoid pressing my motion. But I leave it standing on
+the paper. The others will give their advice. I feel that I can be of no
+further service to the Convention and will therefore not move."[13]
+
+There was a pause of consternation. The Chairman intervened and the
+debate proceeded, and was carried on through the week. During its course
+a letter to the Chairman from the Bishop of Ross was circulated to us,
+most dexterous in exposition, most affecting in the tone of its
+conclusion. It can be read in the Report of the Convention and it cannot
+with justice be quoted except at full length--so admirable is the
+linking of argument. It need only be said here that it was an appeal "to
+my fellow-Nationalists who have already made great concessions" to
+yield, for the sake of a settlement, this further point, and that the
+appeal was signed "from my sick-bed, not far removed from my death-bed."
+That eloquent voice and subtle brain could ill be spared from our
+assembly: but the letter came too late. It is plain that the writer had
+no inkling of what would happen till it was actually taking place.
+
+No one can overstate the effect of this episode. Redmond's personal
+ascendancy in the Convention had become very great. I am certain there
+was not a man there but would have said, "If there is to be an Irish
+Parliament, Redmond must be Prime Minister, and his personality will
+give that Parliament its best possible chance." The Ulstermen had more
+than once expressed their view that if Home Rule were sure to mean
+Redmond's rule, their objections to it would be materially lessened.
+Now, they saw Redmond thrown over, and by a combination in which the
+clerical influence, so much distrusted by them, was paramount.
+
+
+IV
+
+A new stage in the history of the Convention now opens. In the interval
+between the meeting which began by Redmond's withdrawal of his amendment
+and that of the following week, Sir Horace Plunkett went to London and
+laid the situation before the Prime Minister. Redmond had also written
+to Mr. Lloyd George stating that no progress could be made unless
+Government would declare its intentions as to legislation. The Chairman
+came back with the following letter in his pocket:
+
+     10 DOWNING STREET,
+
+     WHITEHALL, S.W. 1,
+
+     _January_ 21, 1918.
+
+     DEAR SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,
+
+     In our conversation on Saturday you told me that the situation in
+     the Convention has now reached a very critical stage. The issues
+     are so grave that I feel the Convention should not come to a
+     definite break without the Government having an opportunity of full
+     consultation with the leaders of the different sections. If, and
+     when, therefore, a point is reached at which the Convention finds
+     that it can make no further progress towards an agreed settlement,
+     I would ask that representatives should be sent to confer with the
+     Cabinet. The Government are agreed and determined that a solution
+     must be found. But they are firmly convinced that the best hope of
+     a settlement lies within the Convention, and they are prepared to
+     do anything in their power to assist the Convention finally to
+     reach a basis of agreement which would enable a new Irish
+     Constitution to come into operation with the consent of all
+     parties.
+
+     Yours sincerely,
+
+     D. LLOYD GEORGE.
+
+Before acting on this, Sir Horace Plunkett allowed the debate to
+continue during two days. Since no movement towards agreement manifested
+itself, but only evidence of widespread and various divergence, he laid
+the Prime Minister's invitation before the Convention. There was
+considerable difference of opinion before a decision was reached for
+acceptance. Groups separated to select their representatives on the
+delegation.
+
+It was agreed in private conference that only one view should be
+presented from the Nationalist side, and that the view of what was at
+this point clearly the majority. Redmond, in agreeing to act as a
+delegate, agreed to set aside his own judgment and to press the claim
+for full fiscal responsibility--which, like other Nationalists, he
+regarded as in the abstract Ireland's right. But illness prevented him
+from attending when at last the delegates were received by the Prime
+Minister on February 13th.
+
+On the 5th he had asked a question in Parliament--the last he was to ask
+there. It concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of
+aircraft in Dublin--one of the things for which he was pressing in his
+ceaseless effort to bring Ireland some industrial advantage from the
+war. I saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the House,
+and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by Sinn Feiners, in
+which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the
+aerodromes near Dublin which he had helped to establish. But the main
+thing he had to say concerned the course of the Convention. Everything,
+in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but
+ruin and chaos.
+
+He spoke of his health. A bout of sickness which had prostrated him at
+Christmas in Dublin had left him uneasy. He was at the time, I thought,
+unduly alarmed about himself, and I believed that the continuance of
+this frame of mind was simply characteristic of a man who had very
+little experience of ill-health. I left him with profound compassion for
+his trouble of spirit, but without any serious apprehension for his
+state of body.
+
+The Convention reassembled on February 26th to consider the result of
+the delegation, which was summed up in a letter from Mr. Lloyd George.
+This well-known document begins with a definite pledge of action. On
+receiving the report of the Convention the Government would give it
+immediate attention and would "proceed with the least possible delay to
+submit legislative proposals to Parliament."--The date of this pledge
+was February 25, 1918.--Mr. Lloyd George pressed, however, for a
+settlement "in and through the Convention"; and he declared his
+conviction that "In view of previous attempts at settlement and of the
+deliberations of the Convention itself, the only hope of agreement lies
+in a solution which on the one side provides for the unity of Ireland by
+a single Legislature, with adequate safeguards for the interests of
+Ulster and of the Southern Unionists, and, on the other, secures the
+well-being of the Empire and the fundamental unity of the United
+Kingdom."
+
+Ireland's strong claim to some control of indirect taxation was
+admitted; but it was laid down that till two years after the war the
+fixation and collection of customs and excise should be left to the
+Imperial Parliament: and that at the end of the war a Royal Commission
+should report on Ireland's contribution to Imperial expenditure and
+should submit proposals as to the fiscal relations of the two countries.
+
+For the war period, Ireland was to contribute "an agreed proportion of
+the Imperial expenditure," but was to receive the full proceeds of Irish
+revenue from customs and excise, less the agreed contribution. The
+police and postal services were to be reserved also as war services.
+
+These provisions were laid down as essentials. A suggestion was made of
+an Ulster Committee within the Irish Parliament, having power to modify
+or veto measures, whether of legislation or administration, in their
+application to Ulster.
+
+Lastly, Government expressed their willingness to accept and finance
+the Convention's scheme for land purchase and to give a large grant for
+urban housing.
+
+The question now before the Convention was whether it should or should
+not accept this offer, which differed from the Midleton proposals in
+that it withheld the control of excise as well as of customs, and that
+it retained control of police and Post Office for the war period. It
+also adumbrated an Ulster Committee, which had been an unpopular
+suggestion when put forward in the presentation stages. On the other
+hand, it offered great material inducements in the proposed expenditure
+for land purchase and for housing. Some of the County Councillors who
+had been most vehement in their opposition to the Midleton compromise
+were now disposed to think this too good an offer to let go, but
+believed it could be obtained without their taking the responsibility of
+voting for it. It was necessary to point out that the Irish party could
+not lower a standard of national demand set up by the Nationalists in
+the Convention, and that if they did so they would be hooted out of
+existence.
+
+The main argument of those who advised against acceptance was that
+Ministers had pledged themselves to act in any case. Let them. We could
+best help by enunciating our own programme. Then they would know the
+real facts of the Irish situation. If a majority of the Convention
+accepted the proposals of the Prime Minister's letter, there was no
+pledge that the Bill would be on those lines. We needed to keep a
+bargaining margin in what we put forward. It was even suggested that the
+Government proposals would be more likely to attract support in Ireland
+if put forward as a generous offer from a largely Unionist Government
+than if published as a compromise to which Nationalists had
+condescended.
+
+Our reply was that the essential thing was to make a beginning with
+self-government, and that by refusing to accept the Government's offer,
+on which alone we could combine with an influential Unionist section, we
+gravely increased the difficulties in the way of carrying Home Rule. If,
+as we held, the main need was to unite Ireland, the last thing on which
+we should insist was the concession of complete financial powers. When
+the lack of those powers began to prove itself injurious to Ireland's
+material interests, Ireland would certainly become united in a demand
+for the concession of them; and the history of the British Empire since
+the loss of America showed that every such demand had been granted to a
+self-governing State.
+
+At this moment interest centred on the discussion in private councils of
+Nationalists. The debates in full Convention were animated, but somewhat
+unreal by comparison. Lord Midleton's motion had been dropped, by
+consent, for a series of resolutions tabled by Lord MacDonnell which
+were in substance an acceptance of Government's proposal.
+
+But neither in the private councils nor in the public debates had we
+Redmond's presence. His illness had grown serious; an operation was
+necessary; it passed over hopefully, and on Tuesday, March 5th, when the
+debate resumed, Mr. Clancy had a telegram saying that he was practically
+out of danger.
+
+It was plain in these days that we were nearing a most critical
+decision, and Nationalist opinion was profoundly uneasy. Many men were
+drifting back to Redmond's view, and recoiled from the prospect of
+dividing the Convention once more into its original component
+parts--Nationalists on the one side, Unionists on the other. It was
+proposed that on the Wednesday Nationalists should meet and, if
+possible, concert joint action; if not, determine definitely each to go
+our own ways; for a painful part of the situation was that all of us had
+been used to act together, and none now felt himself free of some
+obligation. This had to be cleared up When we came down to Trinity
+College that morning, the news met us that Redmond was dead.
+
+The Convention adjourned its work, although time pressed most seriously,
+till after the interment. Ireland is a country where a public man can
+always count on a good funeral. The body was brought to Kingstown, and
+thence by special train to Wexford, where he had expressed the wish to
+be laid, in the burying-place of his own people and in the town with
+which he had been most closely associated. Hundreds of men came from
+distant parts to mark their sorrow and respect: what remained of him was
+carried in long and imposing procession through the streets. Over the
+grave Mr. Dillon, who had been chosen to succeed him in the chair of the
+Irish party, spoke eloquent and fitting words. Some day, no doubt, a
+monument to his memory will be set up in the streets of Wexford, where
+his great uncle's statue stands, and where will be placed the memorial
+to his gallant brother, subscribed for from all parts of the kingdom and
+from all Irish regiments in the Army.
+
+But I say without hesitation that the first and most striking endeavour
+to put in lasting shape a tribute to John Redmond was made in the
+Convention, not by great men, but by the ordinary rank and file of Irish
+Nationalists, who went back from the graveside to the work which his
+death had interrupted.
+
+Those who had been inclined before to accept his advice--still standing
+on our minutes--were now more than ever determined to follow it. That
+advice was not to refuse the hand of friendship which offered itself
+from men who by alliance with us could take away from the Home Rule
+demand all sectarian character: who could bring for the first time a
+great and representative body of Irish landlord opinion and Irish
+Protestant opinion into line with the opinion of Irish tenants and Irish
+Catholics. In order to act upon this advice men needed to face a
+powerful combination of forces and much threatened unpopularity: they
+had to encounter the hostility of an able and vindictively conducted
+newspaper; they had to separate themselves politically from the united
+voice of their own hierarchy; they had to break away from the politician
+who for many years now had equalled Redmond in his influence in Ireland
+and surpassed him in popularity. All of them were representative of
+constituents, all were living among those whom they represented; not a
+man of them but knew he would worsen his personal and political position
+by what he did. Yet, for that is the true way to state it, they stood to
+their dead leader's policy.
+
+It needs not to follow out in any detail the steps by which we reached
+the end of our labours. In the upshot, the Ulster group of nineteen
+dissented from everything and joined in a report which renewed the
+demand for partition. The Primate and the Provost signed a separate note
+declaring that a Federal Scheme based on the Swiss or Canadian system
+offered the only solution which could avoid the alternative choice
+between the coercion of Ulster and the partition of Ireland. The
+remaining members, sixty-six in all, accepted one common scheme.[14]
+Their number included ten Southern Unionists, five Labour
+representatives (three of whom were Protestant artisans from Belfast),
+with Lords Granard, MacDonnell and Dunraven, Sir Bertram Windle and the
+representatives of the Dublin and Cork Chambers of Commerce.
+
+The scheme on which we concurred recommended the immediate establishment
+of self-government by an Irish Ministry responsible to a Parliament
+consisting of two Houses, composed on highly artificial lines. For a
+period of fifteen years Southern Unionists were to be represented by
+nominated members, while Ulster was to have extra members elected by
+special constituencies representing commercial and agricultural
+interests. The Parliament was to have full control of internal
+legislation, administration and direct taxation. The fixation of customs
+and excise was to be from Westminster, but the proceeds of these taxes
+to be paid into the Irish Exchequer. There was to be a contribution to
+the cost of Imperial defences, and representation at Westminster, but a
+representation of the Irish Parliament rather than of the
+constituencies. All of this was agreed to at our last meeting, and
+nothing could have been more pleasant than the atmosphere of good will
+which prevailed. But this was after a critical division--the most
+critical in which I have ever voted--in which those of us Nationalists
+who were for accepting the Government proposals voted with the Southern
+Unionists and those who were against with the Ulster group. The
+combination of Ulstermen and extreme Nationalists was thirty-four
+strong; those who adopted Redmond's policy and Lord Midleton's were
+thirty-eight. We had in our lobby sixteen of the Nationalist County and
+Urban Councillors; they had eleven.
+
+If that vote had gone otherwise, we were told plainly that the Southern
+Unionists would be no parties to the rest of the compromise. They were
+willing to recommend self-government only if the Convention recommended
+the reservation of customs to the Imperial Parliament. This point had
+become in their minds important even more as a symbol of the close union
+between the two kingdoms than by reason of the economic advantages which
+they attributed to it.
+
+Once the sticking-point was passed, the divided Nationalists recombined,
+and we were all at one in our mutual felicitations on the harmony which
+prevailed at the close. But as one of our rank and file said in my ear,
+"If we had not given the vote we did, where would be all this talk of
+harmony? And mind you now, it was not easy to give it."
+
+He was right, and within six months it cost him the chairmanship of his
+County Council. Others paid the same penalty, I am sure, without
+grudging it, for most of us were prouder of that action than of any
+other in our political lives. It may be well to set down the names of
+the local representatives and Labour men who voted as Redmond would have
+advised on that first crucial division.
+
+They were: W. Broderick, Youghal Urban Council; J.J. Coen, Westmeath
+County Council; D. Condren, Wicklow County Council; J. Dooly, Kings
+County County Council; Captain Doran, Louth County Council; T. Fallon,
+Leitrim County Council; J. Fitzgibbon, Roscommon County Council; Captain
+Gwynn, Irish Party; T. Halligan, Meath County Council; W. Kavanagh,
+Carlow County Council; J. McCarron, Labour; M. McDonogh, Galway Urban
+Council; J. McDonnell, Galway County Council; C. McKay, Labour; J.
+Murphy, Labour; J. O'Dowd, Sligo County Council; C.P. O'Neill, Pembroke
+Urban Council; Dr. O'Sullivan, Mayor of Waterford; T. Power, Waterford
+County Council; Sir S.B. Quin, Mayor of Limerick; D. Reilly, Cavan
+County Council; M. Slattery, Tipperary (S. Riding); H.T. Whitley,
+Labour.[15]
+
+In so far as we were led by anyone, Mr. Clancy, fulfilling in public
+what he had privately spoken, was our leader and spokesman.
+
+We were along with the Southern Unionists and our natural allies, Lords
+Granard and MacDonnell and Sir Bertram Windle. Archbishop Bernard and
+Dr. Mahaffy voted with us in that pinch, so that both the late Provost
+of Trinity and the present one did their part to secure an agreement.
+
+In the other list, the Archbishop of Armagh and the Moderator were
+grouped with the Archbishop of Cashel and the Bishops of Raphoe and Down
+and Connor; the Lord Mayor of Cork and Lord Mayor of Belfast were
+together; Mr. Devlin was with Mr. Barrie. This list represented no unity
+except a common refusal to agree to any compromise. Those who voted in
+it followed one or other of two trains of cogent reasoning; but the
+reasonings led to opposite conclusions. These men were beyond doubt as
+honest in their convictions as those who went the other way; but they
+took the easier course, whether they were Nationalist or Unionist: they
+swam with the tide.
+
+The troubles which Nationalists brought on themselves by supporting Lord
+Midleton were answered by the troubles which his group met for
+supporting Nationalist demands. The men who refused to make the
+compromise possible have the laugh of us. Neither section of us who
+voted for agreement achieved anything by facing the risk of
+unpopularity. We had followed Redmond's policy and we shared Redmond's
+fate. We had done our best to help the British Government and that
+Government itself defeated us.
+
+By the Prime Minister's letter Government was pledged to legislate for
+the better government of Ireland, not upon condition of our reaching
+substantial agreement, but in any event. Yet the letter emphasized the
+"urgent importance of getting a settlement in and through the
+Convention." We had secured a report for a scheme in which sixty-six out
+of eighty-seven concurred in the broad lines; and of the twenty-one
+dissentients, nineteen were a group sent to the assembly with a pledge
+which they construed as giving them a special position, in that no
+legislation affecting them was to be passed without their concurrence.
+The agreement which we had reached enabled the Government, when it
+undertook legislation, to quote Unionist authority on the one hand and
+Nationalist authority on the other for many wise provisions which
+otherwise a Coalition Ministry might have found it most difficult to
+propose.
+
+But no legislation followed. Once more an Irish issue became involved in
+the wheels of the English political machine.
+
+We have ourselves in part to thank for it. We might in January have
+taken Redmond's advice, and Lord Midleton's declared view that
+legislation would follow might have proved correct. Yet, what use are
+might-have-beens? History is concerned with what happened, and our work
+in the Convention dragged itself on till the great German offensive had
+been launched and the Allied line pushed back to the very gates of
+Paris, and Government was at its wits' end for men. It is hard to blame
+a Ministry for what harm was done in the frantic rush to cope with
+perhaps the most critical instant in all history; but what was done
+produced infinite mischief and no good result. Immediately after the
+Convention's report (signed upon April 8th) had been received,
+Government proposed to apply conscription to Ireland.
+
+It is said, and it is not difficult to believe, that without making this
+proposal they dare not have come upon the British people with so extreme
+demands for compulsory service as were made. But by making it Ministers
+tore up and scattered in fragments whatever results the Convention had
+to show for its labours, and by legislating for conscription in Ireland
+they gained not one man. The proposal, as Redmond had always told them,
+proved impossible to carry out.
+
+I do not believe that if Redmond had lived this would ever have
+happened. His record in the war gave him an authority in Parliament
+which no other Irishman could possibly claim. It would have been
+impossible for Mr. Lloyd George to take such a step without giving him
+notice; and once that notice came, Redmond could have insisted upon the
+significance of the report of the Convention's sub-committee on
+questions of defence. This committee consisted of two civilians and
+three soldiers. Lord Desart, a Unionist, was in the chair; Mr. Powell,
+K.C., a Unionist (afterwards Irish Solicitor-General and now a judge),
+was the other civilian; the soldiers were the Duke of Abercorn, an
+Ulster Covenanter, with Captain Doran and myself, Nationalists from the
+Sixteenth Division. We found unanimously that if an Irish Parliament
+existed, whatever might be the claims of the Imperial authority, it
+would be impracticable to impose conscription without the Irish
+Parliament's consent. This unanimous finding was bound to influence the
+view of any Ministry, no matter how hard pressed. But, as debate
+revealed, Mr. Lloyd George had never heard of it.
+
+I believe that Redmond could have persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to adopt in
+April the course on which--but after the harm was done--he fell back in
+June, when Lord French asked for a large, but limited, number of
+recruits to refill the Irish Divisions within a specified time--at the
+end of which time, failing the production of the volunteers, other
+measures must be taken. Here, however, we are back in the region of
+speculation. Conscription was proposed and anarchy let loose in Ireland.
+Redmond's words, "Better for us never to have met than to have met and
+failed," stand as the final sentence on this notable episode in Irish
+history.
+
+That is the Convention's epitaph as, I think, he would have written it.
+How shall we write his own?
+
+No attempt has been made in this book, and none shall be made, to
+represent him as a hero. But there are certain attributes which malice
+itself can scarcely deny him. All his ideals were generous. His love of
+country, the master-motive in his life, had nothing in it exclusive or
+tribal or partisan. His was a policy forward-looking and constructive;
+without narrowness or jealousy, it aimed to bring the destinies of
+Ireland into the hands of Irishmen, not greatly caring what Irishmen
+they were--indeed, if they were in a real measure responsible to
+Ireland, not caring at all. In this spirit he grasped masterfully at the
+chance which the war offered; in this spirit, he went out to meet his
+fellow-countrymen in the Irish Convention.
+
+And not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous. His love of
+Ireland was free from all attendant hates. His resentment was never on
+private grounds, and it was without rancour. He spent his whole life in
+opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after
+thirty years spent in criticism. His experience of political life and of
+English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his
+instinct was always to perceive the best in men. The friend who knew him
+best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and
+long ago, said this of him: "He was always an optimist." The speaker did
+not mean--he could not have meant--that in those last months Redmond was
+sanguine. He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where
+suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives
+and with his own love of Ireland.
+
+If he went wrong at any time, he went wrong by too generous a judgment
+of other men, too open-handed a policy. Perhaps, too, he may have
+erred--it was his characteristic defect--in not pressing his policy upon
+others with more vehemence. He had not the temperament which, when once
+possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and
+spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into
+effect. There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the
+ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he
+had none--none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during
+which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely
+devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always
+underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer,
+more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more
+for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more
+love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch
+with the mass of his following.
+
+The way of life to which he was committed was in its essence distasteful
+to him. I do not believe that history shows an example of a statesman
+who served his country more absolutely from a sense of duty.
+
+All this might be admitted without conceding greatness to him. But he
+was a great man, unlike others, cast in a mould of his own. Without the
+least affectation of unconventionality, and indeed under a formal
+appearance, he was profoundly unconventional. His tastes, whether in
+literature, in art, in the choice of society, in the choice of his way
+of life, were utterly his own, unaffected by any standard but that which
+he himself established. Without subtlety of interpretation, his
+judgments cut deep into the heart of things. You could not hear him
+speak, could not be in his presence, without feeling the weight of his
+personality.
+
+A statesman, if ever there was one, he was never given the opportunity
+of proving himself in administration; he can be judged only by his gifts
+in counsel and by his power of guiding action. As a counsellor, he was
+supreme. He had that faculty for anticipating the future, that broad,
+far-reaching vision of the chain of events which can proceed only from
+long, deep and constant thought, and which is truly admirable when
+united, as it was in him, to a sovereign contempt for this or that
+momentary outcry. In these qualities of insight and foresight I have
+only seen one man approach him, the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
+to whose credit stands the greatest work of Imperial reconciliation
+accomplished in our day. But Redmond had supremely what the wise old
+Scotsman lacked--the gift of persuasive speech, to win acceptance for
+his wisdom and his vision.
+
+He could persuade, but he could not compel. His was not the magnetism
+which constrains allegiance almost in despite of reason--the power which
+was possessed by his first and only leader, Parnell. Redmond's appeal
+was to men's judgment and convictions, not to those instincts which lie
+deepest and most potent in the heart of man. That was the limitation to
+his greatness. He could lead only by convincing men that he was right.
+
+If in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed
+to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in
+his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but
+by those who desired the same end. Yet admit that he failed and that he
+fell from power. No man holds power for ever, and during seventeen
+continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far
+more than all the personal ascendancy of a Prime Minister in one of the
+oversea Dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which
+control of administration and patronage bestows. He left his people
+improved in their material circumstances to an almost incredible degree,
+as compared with their state when he began his work.
+
+Yet Ireland counts his life a failure, and he most assuredly accepted
+that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for
+Ireland's, because he had not won through to the goal. His action upon
+the war was his life's supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it
+had failed to achieve its end. By that action let us judge him, for all
+else is trivial in comparison beside it.
+
+It is said by his critics that he bargained badly. If reply were made
+that he believed the Allied cause to be right and desired to lead his
+country according to his conception of justice, we should be answered
+that he was in charge of his country's interests, not of her morals; and
+he would have admitted an element of truth in this. Yet, as in the Boer
+War he had led his countrymen to support what he conceived to be the
+right cause, even with certain injury to their own, so now assuredly he
+would not have acted as he did, had he not been convinced that Ireland's
+honour was to be served as well as her advantage.
+
+But when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had
+to bargain with. No one in August 1914 anticipated the course of the
+war. No one foresaw the need for the last man available. It was more
+than a year before Great Britain could even equip the men who pressed
+themselves forward for service. All that he really had in his hand to
+give or to withhold was the value of Ireland's moral support. Could he
+by waiting his time have made a better bargain?
+
+When that critical hour came, Redmond knew in his, bones the weight of
+Ireland's history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly
+tend to assert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong
+counter-emotion. He knew that if Ireland said nothing and did nothing at
+the crisis, things would be said of Ireland which would rapidly engender
+rising passion; and with the growth of that passion all possibility, not
+of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries
+would be gone. In plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only
+chance for action would have been in heading an Ireland hostile to
+England. In this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset,
+he could only have done this by denying all that he believed. But apart
+from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be
+served. Ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of.
+How could he hope for an Ulster united to Ireland, if Ulster were
+divided from Ireland on the war?
+
+Everything depended on an instant and almost desperate move. He might
+have left the sole offer of service from Ireland to lie with Sir Edward
+Carson. What he did actually was to offer instantly all that the
+Ulstermen had offered, and more, for he proposed active union in Ireland
+itself. It was a bold stroke, but it was guided by an ideal perpetually
+present with him--the essential unity of Ireland. To set Irishmen
+working together at such a crisis in the common name of Ireland was an
+object for which he was willing to jeopardize the whole organization
+which stood behind him, at a moment when he could speak of full right
+for three-fourths of his countrymen. And, when he is called a failure,
+let it be remembered that in this he did not fail.
+
+This fight is not yet ended, the long battle is not lost. Had Ireland
+from the first stood aloof, had she been drawn at the war's opening into
+the temper which she displayed in its closing stages, then indeed we
+might despair of any hopeful issue, any genuine peace between these two
+neighbouring islands, and, what matters infinitely more, between the
+strong yet divergent strains that make up Ireland itself.
+
+But as the mists of passion clear and deeds rather than words come into
+sharp light, it will be seen and realized that for a thousand Irishmen
+who risked their lives to defeat Redmond's effort there were fifty
+thousand who at his summons took on themselves far greater hardships and
+faced dangers far more terrible. By them we take our stand--we who
+followed Redmond, who believed and still believe in his wisdom. We wish
+no word of his last years unspoken, no act undone by that great and
+generous-hearted Irishman in the supreme period of his life. In his
+defeat and ours, we accept no defeat; we shall endeavour to keep our
+will set, as his was, for a final triumph which can mean humiliation for
+no Irish heart. Tangled as are the threads of all his policy, he leaves
+the task far nearer to accomplishment than he found it; and if in the
+end freedom and prosperity come to a united Ireland, they will be found
+to proceed--however deeply overlaid by years and by events may be the
+chain of causation--from the action which John Redmond took in August
+1914, and upon which his brother, with a legion like him, set the seal
+of his blood.
+
+To have served long and faithfully without reward--to have given all of
+life to one high purpose--to have faced a great crisis greatly--these
+are claims enough for Redmond that the allegiance of his comrades and
+followers may be justified when it is judged. The grave has closed over
+him, and the rest is for us to do, that a coping-stone may be set on his
+life's labours, and that reparation final and conclusive, for what he
+suffered undeservedly, may yet be offered to the dead.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 10: When ultimately we did meet, these were the elements which
+assembled.]
+
+[Footnote 11: His notes here are only references to quotations. I
+supplement on this page by my own notes.--S.G.]
+
+[Footnote 12: He was knighted for his work in connection with the war.]
+
+[Footnote 13: These are my notes, jotted as he spoke.--S.G.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Subject to the publication of a Report signed by Bishop
+O'Donnell, and these in agreement with him reaffirmed their view.]
+
+[Footnote 15: The following, though unavoidably absent at the critical
+moment, joined with us: M.K. Barry, Cork County Council; J. Butler,
+Kilkenny County Council; Patrick Dempsey, Belfast; M. Governey, Carlow
+Urban Council; M.J. Minch, Kildare County Council.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Agar-Robartes, Mr., 68-69
+Ancient Order of Hibernians, 259
+Army--
+  Irish Brigades raised for the War--
+    Sixteenth Division,
+      staffing of, 174, 187-188;
+      development of opinions in, 188;
+      10th Division made up from, 194-195;
+      proceeds to France, 200-201;
+      in action, 230, 241;
+      Messines, 264-265;
+      Ypres, 306
+    Tenth Division, 195
+    Tyneside Battalions, 190
+    Ulster Division, 201;
+      on the Somme, 240;
+      Messines, 264-265;
+      Ypres, 306
+  Irish Nationalist attitude to, 140-141
+  Irish recruiting--
+    Redmond's efforts, 154-155, 158, 176-179, 185, 191-192, 199, 202,
+                       207, 211;
+    efforts handicapped by Government, 163, 175-6, 177, 190-191, 206;
+    letter to Birrell, 160;
+    Sinn Fein propaganda against, 219
+  Irish Regulars' achievements, 150;
+    in Gallipoli, 195 ff.
+  Ulster sympathies of, 83, 99, 104 ff.;
+    the Curragh incident, 105-109
+Ashe, Thomas, 300-2
+Asquith, H.H.,
+  struggle of, with House of Lords, 43-46, 50;
+  on indivisibility of Ireland, 69, 72;
+  Ladybank speech, (Oct., 1913), 85
+  War Minister, 109
+  response to Redmond's National Defence offer, 138, 143
+  on Ulster preparations for resisting Home Rule, 148
+  fails Redmond, 153, 167
+  recruiting speech in Dublin, 155-157
+  the Coalition, 192
+  Redmond's letter to, against conscription, 208-209
+  the Rebellion, 226
+  reports on his visit to Ireland, 232
+  breaks faith with Redmond, 239-240
+  displaced, 244
+  estimate of, 87, 93
+  mentioned, 30, 34, 41, 73, 138, 139
+Aughavanagh, 37-39, 267
+
+
+Balfour, A.J., 55-56
+Balfour, G., 23
+Barrie, Mr., 271, 304, 308, 321
+Beatty, Admiral, 158
+Bernard, Dr., Abp. of Dublin, 272, 310, 318
+  three points of, 291 ff.
+Biggar, Joseph, 6
+Birrell, A., Redmond's letter to, on the Volunteers, 160
+  on Kitchener's attitude to Irish National Volunteers, 162
+  _Appreciation_ of Redmond quoted, 162, 184
+  the Rebellion, 219-220
+  mentioned, 31, 69, 139, 198
+Blake, E., 24
+Brade, Sir R., 203
+Budget of 1909-10, 42, 47
+Butler, Sir W., 5
+Butt, Isaac, 6
+
+Campbell, Sir James, 219
+Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 34, 337
+Carson, Sir E.,
+  the Covenant demonstrations, 72;
+  moves exclusion of Ulster, 75;
+  on Ulster and the Army, 105;
+  on possibility of persuading Ulster, 114;
+  the Speaker's Conference, 121;
+  attitude to Home Rule enactment, 148-149;
+  joins the Coalition, 192-193;
+  interpretation of exclusion proposals, 234;
+  refuses joint platform at Newry, 200;
+  kills Volunteer Bill, 208;
+  on conscription for Ireland, 210, 211;
+  final victory against Redmond, 240;
+  temperamental attitude to Home Rule, 96-97;
+  quoted, 67, 71, 80-81, 83, 100;
+  appeal on Ulster's claim, 97-98;
+  mentioned, 89, 229, 260, 263
+Casement, Sir Roger, 116, 221, 223;
+  quoted, 115, 118
+Castletown, Lord, 24
+Cecil, Lord Hugh, 50
+Cecil, Lord Robert, 115
+Chamberlain, Austen, 102
+Churchill, Winston,
+  Belfast speech of (1912), 62, 67;
+  devolution proposal, 71;
+  Bradford speech (1914), 103-104;
+  the Larne gun-running, 113;
+  mentioned, 77, 84
+Citizen Army, the, 180, 183;
+  the Rebellion, 218
+Clark, Sir George, 271-272
+Clarke, ----, execution of, 224
+Clancy, J.J., 269, 318, 332
+Coalition formed, 192-193
+Coercion, 8-9, 16, 82
+Colthurst, Capt., 228, 231
+Commons, House of,
+  Parnell's obstruction in, 6 ff.;
+  payment of members, 52;
+  scene after passing Home Rule Bill, 152;
+  disgust of, at Redmond's defeat, 240;
+  Redmond's estimate of, 12;
+  his familiarity with, 111
+Congested Districts Board, 28
+Connolly, James, 183;
+  the Rebellion, 218, 224
+Conscription,
+  Redmond's opposition to, 208 ff., 242, 247-248;
+  application of, to Ireland, 334
+Convention, _see_ Irish Convention
+Craig, Capt., 51, 70, 105;
+  quoted, 95
+Crooks, Will, 152
+Crozier, Dr., Abp. of Armagh, 198, 272, 279, 300, 302, 310, 330
+Curragh incident, 105-109
+Curzon, Col., 187
+
+Dalton, Miss (Mrs. John Redmond), 14, 20
+Davitt, Michael, 8, 19
+Davitt (young), 116
+de Robeck, Admiral, despatch of, 195-196
+de Valera, E., 268, 269
+Desart, Lord, 273, 318
+Devlin, J.,
+  in Redmond's "inner cabinet," 25, 36;
+  his supporters' disappointment on compromise, 109;
+  recruiting successes of, 177, 179;
+  indispensable in Ireland, 183;
+  carries Belfast Convention for exclusion proposals, 235;
+  on the Irish Convention, 269, 304, 310, 322;
+  estimate of, 21;
+  Redmond's estimate of, 235;
+  mentioned, 48, 84, 155, 263
+Devolution, 28, 71
+Dillon, John,
+  relations with Redmond, 25, 36;
+  on coercion, 82;
+  an Irish Volunteer movement, 115;
+  speech on suppression of the Rebellion, 231;
+  declines to serve on the Irish Convention, 269;
+  mentioned, 16, 100, 109, 121, 129, 155
+Doran, Capt., 274-275
+Doyle, Sir A. Conan, cited, 131-132
+Dublin strike (1913), 90, 273
+Duke, Sir. H.E., 240, 275
+Dunraven, Lord, 27, 28, 77;
+  on the Convention, 273, 282, 317-318, 330
+
+
+Ewart, Sir S., 108
+
+
+Field, William, 24
+Financial Relations Commission, 24, 75
+Fingall, Lord, 174
+Forster, W.E., 79
+Franchise Bill (1917), 302, 304-305, 311
+French, Sir John, 107, 108
+Friend, General, 198
+
+
+Gallipoli, Irish troops in, 195 ff.
+General Elections--
+  1906, 43
+  1910 (Jan.), 43-44
+  1910 (Dec.), 49
+  1918, 231
+George V, King, 121
+George, D. Lloyd,
+  non-Irish preoccupations of, 41-42;
+  Conciliation mission after the Rebellion, 232;
+  agreement with the Irish, 234;
+  agreement thrown over, 239;
+  Redmond's hopes from, as Premier, 244-245;
+  on Irish distrust, 246;
+  supports the "two nations" theory, 255;
+  the Convention, 260;
+  letter to Plunkett, 324;
+  conference with Convention representatives, 325;
+  proposals to the Convention, 326 ff.;
+  quoted on Ulster, 73
+Gladstone, W.E., 11, 17, 42, 130, 317;
+  breach with Parnell, 18-19;
+  retirement, 23
+Gladstone, W.G.C., 66
+Gough, Gen., quoted, 105 ff.
+Government, delays of, 185, 236-237, 244, 247;
+  general attitude to Redmond, _see under_ Redmond
+Granard, Lord, 273, 282
+Grey, Earl, 78
+Grey, Lord (Sir Edward), Ulster proposals of, 85, 86;
+  speech on outbreak of War, 128-130;
+  quoted, 66;
+  mentioned, 30, 108
+
+
+Harbison, Mr., 270
+Harty, Abp. of Cashel, 270
+Hayden, Mr., 38, 130-131
+Hazleton, Mr., 14
+Healy, T.M., returned for Wexford, 7-8;
+  attacks on Redmond and Nationalist Party, 34, 273;
+  opposition to county option, 100, 111-112;
+  declines to serve on Convention, 269;
+  quoted, 256;
+  mentioned, 15, 16, 47, 49
+Hickie, Maj.-Gen, W.B., 201, 265
+Hulk, Maj.-Gen., 268
+Hobson, Bulmer, quoted, 115,159
+Home Rule Bill (1912), demonstrations for and against, 62;
+  National Convention, 65, 66;
+  Ulster's attitude, 65, 67 ff.;
+  exclusion proposals, 68, 78, 84, 99;
+  devolution proposals, 71;
+  Unionist converts, 73;
+  in Committee, 68, 74;
+  financial arrangements under, 74-75;
+  Report stage, 75;
+  Third Reading, 77;
+  in the Lords, 77 ff.;
+  third Introduction (1914), 99;
+  inadequate private discussion of, by Irish Party, 100-101;
+  the Amending Bill, 121, 126;
+  the Speaker's Conference, 121 ff.;
+  amending Bill postponed, 126;
+  operation of, to be deferred, 148-149;
+  Royal assent, 151;
+  Asquith's move towards securing immediate operation of,
+                               after the Rebellion, 232;
+  O'Connor's demand for, 249
+Hopwood, Sir Francis, 275
+
+
+Industrial depression in Ireland under the War, 184
+_Irish at the Front, The_, quoted, 201
+Irish Brigades, _see under_ Army
+Irish Convention--
+  Committee of Nine, 304, 307, 310
+  Financial considerations, 285, 286, 293-295, 307, 309;
+    Lord Midleton's proposals, 312-323;
+    Lloyd George's proposals, 326-332
+  First meeting of, 271
+  Fraternization between representatives, 286-287
+  Grand Committee of Twenty, 301, 303, 307, 311
+  Inception of, 258, 260
+  Intermediate Authority proposal, 285-286
+  Land Purchase Sub-Committee, 304, 317
+  Personnel of, 271 ff.
+  Preliminaries, 269
+  Procedure adopted, 280
+  Reports presented by, 330
+  Sinn Fein attitude to, 263-264, 267-268
+  Spirit of, 279-280
+  Ulster representatives, attitude of, 321;
+    attitude to Redmond, 323;
+    Report presented by, 330
+Irish Council Bill (1907), 31 ff., 78
+_Irish Independent_, 273, 330
+Irish Party, discipline of, 12-13;
+  personnel of, 59;
+  Redmond's relations with, 59-61
+Irish relations with England most cordial (1916), 213
+Irish suspicion, 189-90
+Irish Volunteers, Redmond's policy repudiated by, 155-156;
+  collisions with National Volunteers, 180;
+  Rebellion of 1916, 218 ff.
+  (_See also_ National Volunteers)
+
+
+Jameson, Andrew, 271, 298
+Judge, M.J., cited, 132
+
+
+Kavanagh, W.M., 274, 318
+Kelley, Dr., Bp. of Ross, 270, 293, 310, 323
+Kenny, Dr., 38
+Ker, S.P., quoted, 202
+Kettle, Prof., T.M., 14, 93;
+  recruiting work of, 186;
+  killed in action, 241;
+  estimate of, 185
+Kitchener, Earl,
+  attitude of, to Irish Volunteers, 138-140, 153, 160, 162, 175, 181;
+  Redmond's interview with, on recruiting, 198-199, 205;
+  letter on Irish recruiting, 199;
+  estimate of, 138
+Knight, Mr., 294-295
+
+
+Labour Party, 44, 87, 108
+Land Act (1909), 41
+Land League, 8
+Land Purchase, 17, 27-28
+Lang, Dr., Abp. of York, on Ulster, 78-80
+Lansdowne, Marquis of, 29, 236, 238
+Larkin, James, 90, 183, 273
+Larne Gun-running, 112-114
+Law, A. Bonar,
+  speeches of, on Ulster, 65, 70;
+  Ulster policy, 77, 83, 87, 99, 163;
+  protest against enactment of Home Rule, 149;
+  quoted on Major Willie Redmond, 245;
+  estimate of, 56;
+  mentioned, 132, 178
+Liberal Party, 13, 29
+Lincolnshire, Marquis of,
+  Volunteer Bill of, 205, 208
+Liquor trade in Ireland, 42
+Local Government Act (1897), 24
+Long, W., quoted, 216
+Longford Election, 257, 259
+Lonsdale, Sir John, 263
+Lords, House of,
+  Veto controversy, 42 ff., 50, 52, 57;
+  Conference, 48
+Loreburn, Lord, 84
+Lynch, Arthur, 129
+Lysaght, Edward, 273, 282, 296, 301-302
+
+
+McCarthy, Justin, 13;
+  quoted, 26
+McCullagh, Sir C., 284
+MacDermott, Dr., 272
+MacDonagh, 201;
+  the Rebellion, 218, 224
+MacDonnell, Sir Anthony,
+  devolution scheme of, 28-29;
+  supports Home Rule Bill, 78;
+  in the Convention, 273, 282, 310, 317
+McDowell, Sir Alexander, 272, 303-304, 307-308
+MacNeill, Prof.,
+  promotes Nationalist arming, 93;
+  volunteer following of, 180;
+  the Rebellion, 219;
+  cited, 164, 180-181;
+  mentioned, 64, 116
+MacRory, Dr., Bp. of Down and Connor, 270
+MacSweeney, Capt., 153
+Mahaffy, Dr., Provost of Trinity, 272, 330
+Maxwell, Sir John, 225-226
+Meath, Lord, 158, 169
+Midleton, Lord, 271, 273, 285, 296, 304, 308;
+  Customs proposals, 310 ff.
+Mooney, J.J., 21, 38
+Moore, Lt.-Col. M., 159-160, 203
+Murphy, W.M., 273, 282, 295, 304, 315, 317
+
+
+Nathan, Sir M., 220
+National Volunteers,
+  establishment of, 91-92, 94-95, 99;
+  Redmond's adhesion to, 114;
+  formidable character of, 114-115;
+  committee difficulties, 117 ff.;
+  Bachelor's Walk affair, 123-125;
+  Redmond's offer of, for National Defence, 134 ff., 203 ff.;
+  general response, 136-138;
+  demand for recognition, 153, 159-161, 202-203;
+  refused, 153, 162, 167, 181, 203, 207-208, 222;
+  secession of Irish Volunteers from, 155;
+  Asquith's pledge regarding, 157;
+  Review of, in Phoenix Park, 204;
+  Bulmer Hobson's _History_ of, quoted, 115, 159
+O'Brien, Patrick, 38, 267
+O'Brien, William, attacks by,
+  on Redmond and National Party, 34;
+  opposition to Budget (1909), 42, 47;
+  to Home Rule Bill (1912), 74;
+  to county option, 100, 111-112;
+  to the Convention, 263;
+  declines to serve, 269
+O'Cathasaigh, Mr., cited, 91
+O'Connor, "Long John," 38
+O'Connor, T.P.,
+  Canadian tour 1910, 48;
+  recruiting successes of, 190;
+  motion for immediate Horns Rule, 249;
+  cited, 203;
+  mentioned, 25, 100, 130-131
+O'Donnell, Dr., Bp. of Raphoe, 270, 284, 294, 303, 304,
+  308, 310, 312, 330;
+  speech on Papal Decrees, 299-300
+Oranmore, Lord, 313, 319
+
+
+Paget, Gen. Sir Arthur, 105ff.
+Parliament, _see_ Commons _and_ Lords
+Parnell, C.S., 6-13, 17-19, 92;
+  property of, 7, 37;
+  power of, 58;
+  anecdote of Willie Redmond and House of Commons, 249
+Parnellites, 19-21, 23-25;
+  fusion of, with anti-Parnellites, 25
+Parsons, Lt.-Gen. Sir L., 170ff., 200-201, 204-205
+Pearse, Patrick, speech of, in Dublin, 63-64;
+  Limerick speech, quoted, 94;
+  secedes from National Volunteers, 118;
+  the Rebellion, 218, 222-223;
+  execution, 224
+_Phoenix_ Park murders, 14
+Pigott, 18
+Pirrie, Lord, 293
+Plunket, Count, 248
+Plunkett, Lord (Sir Horace),
+  Conference scheme of (1895), 23;
+  the Convention, 274, 302, 309;
+  as Chairman, 279;
+  Lloyd George's letter to, 324
+Poe, Col. Sir Hutcheson, 145
+Pollock, Mr., 272, 299, 308
+Primate, the, _see_ Crozier
+Primrose, Neil, 68-69
+Primrose Committee, 270, 293-294
+Protestant Ascendency, 86, 96, 101
+
+
+Raymond Le Gros, 2-3
+Rebellion, Redmond's attitude to, 3
+Rebellion of 1916, 218-219, 221, 227;
+  denounced by Redmond, 223-224;
+  suppression of, 224-229;
+  Government's fomentation of _disaffection_, 227-229;
+  comparison with South African Rebellion (1914), 225
+Recruiting, _see under_ Army
+Redmond, John Edward, 4
+Redmond, John--
+  Ancestry and family of, 2-4
+  Career--
+    education, 5;
+    clerkship in the House, 6;
+    returned for New Ross, 8;
+    Parliamentary _debut_, 9-11;
+    Australian and American mission, 14;
+    marriage, 14;
+    second American mission, 17;
+    imprisoned (1888), 17;
+    chosen leader of Parnellites, 19;
+    returned for Waterford, 19;
+    attitude to Roman Catholic Church, 20:
+    widowed, 20;
+    second marriage, 21-22;
+    work with Plunkett, 23-24;
+    on Commission on Financial Relations, 24;
+    Chairman of United Irish Party, 25, 58;
+    his inner cabinet, 25, 58, 100;
+    attitude to Irish Council Bill, 31-33;
+    campaign for Home Rule (1907), 34-35;
+    House of Lords controversy, 45-46, 57;
+    "Dollar Dictator," 48;
+    the Nottingham Meeting (1912), 73;
+    Home Rule campaign (1912) following Carson, 84;
+    on proposed exclusion of Ulster, 85-86;
+    attitude to National Volunteers, 92;
+    speeches on the Ulster position, 98, 99, 102, 109-111;
+    the Ulster gun-running, 114;
+    relations with National Volunteers thereafter, 114 ff.;
+    the Speaker's Conference, 121-122;
+    speech on outbreak of War, 132 ff.;
+    offers the Volunteers for national defence, 134ff;
+    Recruiting manifesto, 151;
+    refuses office in Coalition Government, 192;
+    interview with Kitchener on recruiting, 198, 205;
+    Conference at Viceregal Lodge, 198-199;
+    visits Irish troops at the Front, 201-202;
+    opposes Conscription for Ireland, 208 ff.
+    letter to Asquith, 208
+    Rebellion of 1916, 219 ff.
+    Government breach of faith, 238-240;
+    moves vote of censure, 243;
+    criticizes Lloyd George, 245;
+    renewed opposition to conscription, 248;
+    the Smuts dinner, 257;
+    the Convention, 258, 261-263;
+    death of his brother, 256;
+    death of Pat O'Brien, 267;
+    in the Convention, 278-279;
+    relations with Nationalist representatives, 283-284;
+    speech in Belfast, 289 ff.;
+    at Westminster, 304;
+    speech on vote of thanks to the Forces, 305-306;
+    Meetings of Committee of Nine, 307 ff.;
+    ill-health, 257, 282, 312, 322;
+    attitude to Lord Midleton's proposals, 316, 318-321;
+    tables motion conditionally accepting, 321;
+    withdraws owing to Nationalist opposition, 322-323;
+    illness, 325;
+    operation, 328;
+    death, 329
+  Characteristics--
+    Ambition, lack of, 40, 336
+    Caution, 282
+    Courtesy, 26, 35
+    Eloquence, 41, 88
+    Lucidity, 41, 53, 59
+    Moderation, 3, 11
+    Modesty, 36, 336
+    Optimism, 74
+    Peaceable temperament and tolerance, 21, 25, 26, 35, 88
+    Rest, love of, 38
+    Reticence, 37
+    Romantic strain, 37
+    Self-abnegation, 278, 280
+    Sensitiveness, 243, 282
+    Tact, 88
+    Trustworthiness, 194
+  Comparison of,
+    with Campbell-Bannerman, 337;
+    with Parnell, 338;
+    position compared, with that of Botha, 158, 172, 184, 212, 224
+  Estimate of, 335;
+    Birrell's estimate, 194;
+    Healy's tribute, 256;
+    estimate as leader, 59-61, 283, 310, 338;
+    estimate of his work, 338-341
+  Government slighting of, and disregard of his advice, 153, 163, 167,
+                           175-176, 190-191, 220, 226, 229, 238-239;
+    instances of bad faith, 153, 239-240, 246;
+    recruiting efforts handicapped, 163, 175-176, 177, 190-191, 206
+  House of Commons life of, 111
+  Imperialism of, 15
+  Irishmen, attitude towards, 27, 63
+  Military sympathies of, 107-108
+  Oratorical style of, 5
+  Recruiting efforts of, _see under_ Army
+  Status of, in Ireland, 171-172
+  Social isolation of, 13
+  Stephens' attack on, 276-277
+  War policy of, 132, 216
+Redmond, Major "Willie,"
+  Australian mission and marriage, 14;
+  imprisoned (1888), 17;
+  returned for East Clare, 20;
+  War service, 182-3, 185, 213-214, 230;
+  position in his regiment, 188-189;
+  speeches in the House quoted, 215-216, 245;
+  advises resignation of Parliamentary party, 259;
+  last speech in the House, 249-254;
+  killed in action, 51, 265;
+  estimate of, 249;
+  mentioned, 4, 13, 19, 38, 118, 128
+Redmond, Major William Archer, 4, 185;
+  on the Somme, 240;
+  wins D.S.O., 306;
+  returned as Nationalist in 1918 election, 231
+Redmond, William Archer, 4, 5, 7
+Richardson, Gen., 163
+Roberts, Lord, 176
+Roman Catholic Church, 49, 187
+Russell, George ("A.E."),
+  in the Convention, 274, 282, 304, 310, 312
+
+
+Sclater, Sir Henry, 204-205
+Selborne, Lord, 236
+Seely, Col., 108-109
+Sexton, Th., 16, 24
+Shaw, Mr., 6
+Sheehy-Skeffington, Mr., 228, 231
+Sinn Fein--
+  Convention ignored by, 263-264, 267-268
+  Demonstration by, at funeral of Thomas Ashe, 300
+  Electoral successes of, 231, 257, 268, 278
+  Growth of, from May 1916, 232
+  Propaganda, suspicion fostered by, 189
+  Rebellion of 1916, _see that heading_
+Smith, F.E., quoted, 95
+South African War, 24
+Stephens, James, quoted, 276-277
+
+
+Taylor, Capt., J.S., 27
+Tennant, H.J., 198, 206
+Thomas, J.H., 108
+_Times_ forgeries, 18
+
+
+Ulster--
+  Administrative autonomy proposal, 85, 86
+  Arms importation by, 81, 94;
+  Larne gun-running, 112-114
+  Asquith's moratorium concession to, 149
+  Belfast Convention (1916), 235
+  Churchill's speech (1912), 62
+  Convention, the (1917), representatives at, 271-272, 285;
+    their attitude and procedure, 281, 299
+  County option proposals, 77, 85, 99 ff.;
+    difficulties of the scheme, 101
+  Covenant, the, 72;
+    military covenanters, 83
+  Exclusion proposals, 68, 78, 84, 233-234;
+    embodied in the Bill, 99;
+    time limit discussions, 101-103;
+    Council of 1916 accepts exclusion proposals, 235
+  Favouritism applied to, 95, 120, 123, 125, 164, 169, 170, 174
+  Friendly relations with Nationalists, 51
+  Home Rule, resistance to, 65, 67 ff.;
+    Parliamentary majority for, 77;
+    distribution of Home Rulers, 101
+  Inseparability of, 69, 76-77, 84
+  Lloyd George's scheme, 234
+  Protestant ascendency, 86, 96, 101
+  Provisional Government formed, 80, 83
+Rebellion preparations of, 148
+  Redmond's efforts to conciliate, 76-77, 109-110, 114
+  War, attitude on outbreak of, 130
+    mistrustful of Irish Volunteers, 142
+United Irish League, 58, 259, 261
+University Act (1908), 41
+
+
+Vatican Decrees, 49
+
+
+Wallace, Col., 299
+Walsh, Abp., 257
+War--
+  Outbreak, 126 ff.
+  Redmond's policy regarding, 132, 216;
+    Nationalist criticism of, 276-277 (_see also_ Army, recruiting)
+  Ulster's attitude, 130, 142
+Ward, Col. John, 108
+Waterford, 19
+Wexford, 3
+_What the Irish Regiments have done_ quoted, 202
+White, Capt., J.R., 90-91
+Whitley, H.T., 320
+Wicklow surroundings, 37-39
+Wimborne, Lord, 198, 199, 205
+Windle, Sir B., 282, 330
+Wyndham, G., 27-29
+
+
+
+
+              Shall a man understand,
+    He shall know bitterness because his kind,
+    Being perplexed of mind,
+    Hold issues even that are nothing mated.
+    And he shall give
+    Counsel out of his wisdom that none shall hear
+    And steadfast in vain persuasion must he live,
+    And unabated
+    Shall his temptation be.
+
+    JOHN DRINKWATER, in _Abraham Lincoln_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's John Redmond's Last Years, by Stephen Gwynn
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