efore necessary to "present a united front and be able
to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation." To continue
the Home Rule discussion must involve the House in acute controversy in
regard to "domestic differences whose importance to ourselves no one in
any quarter of the House is disposed to disparage or belittle."

The Leader of the Opposition assented. Two sentences in his speech have
importance. The first laid it down that this postponement should not "in
any way prejudice the interests of any of the parties to the
controversy." The second indicated that he spoke not only for the
Unionist party but for Ulster.

It is very difficult now, after all that has crowded in upon us, jading
the sensitive recipient surface of memory, to reconstitute the frame of
mind in which we passed those days. One thing I clearly remember,
perhaps worth noting for its significance. In a division lobby,
probably on the Wednesday night, I came in touch with a friend, then a
subordinate member of the Government, who had been among the keenest
advocates of our cause. I asked how he thought things were going. My
question had reference to our affairs, which had been for so many months
the dominant issue; but he answered with reference to the European
situation, as if that alone existed. Looking back, it seems to me
strange that one should have been so engrossed in any preoccupation as
in reality to ignore the vast and imminent possibilities. Yet, after
all, I believe my case was typical of many. For us Irish, this was the
crucial point, the climax of a struggle which had been intense and
continuous now for a period of four years--which in its wider sense had
gone on, with ebb and flow, yet always in progress during the whole
adult lifetime of our leader and his principal colleagues. For more than
us, for scores of Labour men and Liberals, it had become almost a fixed
belief that European war was only a nightmare of the imagination. War in
the Balkans, war possibly in the East of Europe, we could think of; but
war flinging the complex organization, so potent yet so delicate, of
great and fully civilized States into the melting-pot--that we never
really believed in. Prophets of finance, prophets of the labour world,
had told us the thing was impossible. Even our most recent experience,
the irruption of armed forces into the political arena, had contributed
to fix in our minds the view that all armaments were merely _in
terrorem