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?"