s
irreconcilability, and that it had betrayed its own supporters by
reposing a childish faith in Liberal promises. The Government must
bear their own responsibility for allowing Sir Edward Carson and the
Ulster Covenanters to defy and thwart them at every point, for
permitting what amounted to a mutiny in the army, for ordering the
Channel Fleet and the soldiers to Ulster "to put these grave matters
to the test even if the red blood should flow," and then withdrawing
them again, for issuing a proclamation forbidding the importation of
arms and allowing the Covenanters to spit at it in mockery, and
finally for admitting, in the famous Army Order I have quoted, the
Right of Rebellion as part of the constitutional machinery of the
State.

"The gigantic game of bluff"--as the Ulster preparations were
termed--had won outright. The political gamesters, who would not
surrender an inch to Ulster when it could be negotiated with, were now
willing to surrender everything, including the principle of an
indivisible Irish nationhood. "Conversations" between the various
leaders went on during the early months of 1914 to arrange a compromise
and a settlement, the gigantic crime of Partition as a substitute for
Irish Freedom was traitorously perpetrated by Ireland's own
"representatives" and by the so-called "Home Rule Government," and
Ireland woke up one fine morning to find that the Home Rule Act even
when on the Statute Book might as well not be there--all the bonfires
that were lighted in Ireland to hail its enactment
nothwithstanding--that "Dark Rosaleen," the mother that they loved so
well, was to be brutally dismembered, and that "A Nation Once Again" was
to mean, in the words of Sir Horace Plunkett: "Half Home Rule for
three-quarters of Ireland." The Prime Minister had proposed the
partition of Ireland--three-fourths to go to the Nationalists and
one-fourth to the Orangemen--and the Irish Party had accepted the
proposal, nay, more, they summoned a Conference of Northern Nationalists
and compelled them to pass a resolution, strongly against their
inclination, in favour of the proposal, under threat of the resignation
of Messrs Redmond, Dillon and Devlin if the resolution were not adopted.

An Amending Bill was immediately introduced into Parliament (23rd June
1914), which provided for the exclusion of such Ulster counties as
might avail themselves of it. This measure was transformed by the
House of Lords so as permanently to