the estrangement of its population from the idea of
ordinary enlistment. The bulk of the population were on the land, and in
Ireland, as in Great Britain, "gone for a soldier" was a word of
disgrace for a farmer's son. More than that, the political organization
of which he was head had inculcated an attitude of aloofness from the
Army because it was the Army which held Ireland by force. Enlistment
had been discouraged, on the principle that from a military point of
view Ireland was regarded as a conquered country. A test case had arisen
over the Territorial Act, which was not extended to Ireland, any more
than the Volunteer Acts had been. We had voted against Lord Haldane's
Bill on the express ground that it put Ireland into this status of
inferiority and withheld from Irishmen that right to arm and drill which
was pressed upon Englishmen as a patriotic duty. We had explicitly
declared then in 1907 that our influence should and must be used against
enlistment.

These facts of history had not merely produced in Ireland an attitude of
mind hostile to the idea, so to say, of the British Army as an
institution, though the individual soldier had always been at least as
popular as anyone else. They had produced a population extraordinarily
unfamiliar with the idea of armament. The old Volunteers and the
Territorials had at least conveyed to all ranks of society in Great
Britain the possibility of joining a military organization while
remaining an ordinary citizen. In the imagination of Ireland, either you
were a soldier or you were not; and if you were a soldier, you belonged
to an exceptional class, remote from ordinary existence. To cross that
line was a far greater step to contemplate with us than in England.
Redmond reckoned, and reckoned rightly, that to bring Irishmen together
in military formations, learning the art of war, was the best way to
combat this disinclination to enter the Army--this feeling that
enlistment meant doing something "out of the way," something contrary to
usage and tradition. He reckoned that the attitude of Nationalist
Ireland would alter towards a Government which put arms in their hands
on their own terms; and that with a great war on foot a temper of
adventure and emulation would very soon draw young men flocking to the
ranks in which they could see the reality of war. That was Redmond's
policy and it was the statesman's. Nationalist Ireland was perfectly
ready to adopt the ideals which move