pass, not merely that
these two men should wear the same uniform, on a common service, but
that the same Gazette should publish both their names as enrolled on the
same day in the French Legion of Honour. On that day Mr. Charles Craig
was a prisoner in Germany, wounded in a famous fight; and Willie Redmond
was in a grave towards which Ulster comrades had been the first to carry
him. There is an Irish saying, "Men may meet, but the mountains stand
apart." In July 1911 such an association as the Gazette of July 1917
illustrated would have seemed hardly more possible than the meeting of
the everlasting hills.

The dramatic crisis of the parliamentary struggle between the two Houses
of Parliament did not, and could not, come in the House of Commons. Its
place was in the final citadel of privilege, and privilege surrendered
on August 10th, when the Bill passed the Lords after the most exciting
and uncertain division that is ever likely to be known. But there were
elements in the Tory party which did not accept defeat, though they had
not yet clearly decided on what battleground to renew their efforts. For
the moment, however, men were disposed to pause and take stock of the
new situation.

But at such a time events cannot stand still, and almost at the same
moment as the Parliament Act was carried, the Government took a step
which gravely affected the Irish party. Payment of members was
established by a resolution of the House of Commons.

Irish Nationalist members had always been paid from the party fund, that
is to say, by their supporters. Payment was conditional, not of right,
and it was not made except when the member was in attendance: it
amounted only to twenty pounds a month. The new payment came from the
British Treasury; it was made irrespective of the desire of
constituents, or of any other consideration; and it amounted to a sum
which in a country of small incomes sounded very imposing.
Unquestionably the receipt of it weakened the position of the party in
the eyes of Ireland, and gave a new sting to the charge of a bargain.

All this was clearly discerned in advance, by no one more than by
Redmond; and an amendment was moved to strike Irish members out of the
application of the resolution. But the situation was hopelessly
involved, the Irish party having repeatedly voted for payment of members
as part of the Radical programme which they supported as affecting any
normally governed country; and Government re