at Sir
Edward Carson went to Buckingham Palace, held the threat of civil war
over the King, and intimidated His Majesty into using his exalted
office to screen the Orange leader and his chief advisers from
prosecution! If it does not bear this meaning, what other can it bear?
And what are we to think of its relation to constitutional authority
and right usage?

But this is not the only occasion on which Sir Edward Carson shows up
in Colonel Repington's pages. Under date 19th October 1916:

"Carson told me that a man who had been on board the _Fanny_ was
writing the story of the famous voyage and the gun-running exploit."

We have not got that story yet. When it is published it would be an
advantage if we could also have the full account of the circumstances
under which Baron von Kuhlman went over to Ireland to prospect as to
the imminence of civil war, who it was he saw in Ulster, what
arrangements and interviews he had with the Ulster Volunteers and
their leaders, who were the other prominent people he met there and,
above all, how the _Fanny's_ cargo of German rifles was arranged
and paid for? Surely these are questions vital to an understanding of
the extent of Sir Edward Carson's culpability for the outbreak of war.

Loyalist Ulster--the Ulster of law and order--was now openly defiant
of the law. Mr P.H. Pearse summed up the situation rather neatly in an
article in _Irish Freedom_:

"One great source of misunderstanding" (he wrote) "has now
disappeared; it has become clear within the last few years that the
Orangeman is no more loyal to England than we are. He wants the Union
because he imagines it secures his prosperity, but he is ready to fire
on the Union flag the moment it threatens his prosperity.... The case
might be put thus: Hitherto England has governed Ireland through the
Orange Lodges--she now proposes to govern Ireland through the Ancient
Order of Hibernians. You object: so do we. Why not unite and get rid
of the English? They are the real difficulty; their presence here the
real incongruity."

I quote this to show it was not the All-for-Irelanders alone who saw
that the Board of Erin was the real stumbling-block in the way of a
national settlement. And now when matters were to be put to the test
the Government showed a monstrous culpability. It does not avail them
to say that the Irish Party had been guilty of treachery to Ireland,
that it misled the Ministry as to the extent and depth of Ulster'