re was no word of an Irish Republic and no explicit
claim beyond immediate operation for the Home Rule Act.

Ireland's attitude towards the war was defined by a resolution:

"To declare that Ireland cannot, with honour or safety, take part
in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a
National Government of her own; and to repudiate the claim of any
man to offer up the blood and lives of the sons of Irishmen and
Irishwomen to the service of the British Empire while no National
Government which could speak and act for the people of Ireland is
allowed to exist."

Mr. Asquith, when he spoke on Thursday night, must have been informed
that this split was imminent, and he spoke with a view to that
situation. He said:

"Speaking here in Dublin, I address myself for a moment
particularly to the National Volunteers, and I am going to ask them
all over Ireland--not only them, but I make the appeal to them
particularly--to contribute with promptitude and enthusiasm a large
and worthy contingent of recruits to the second new army of half a
million which is now growing up, as it were, out of the ground. I
should like to see, and we all want to see, an Irish Brigade--or,
better still, an Irish Army Corps. Don't let them be afraid that by
joining the colours they will lose their identity and become
absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or what is perhaps equally
repugnant, be artificially redistributed into units which have no
national cohesion or character.

"We shall, to the utmost limit that military expediency will allow,
see that men who have been already associated in this or that
district in training and in common exercises shall be kept together
and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them.
One thing further. We are in urgent need of competent officers, and
when the officers now engaged in training these men prove equal to
the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly
and gratefully retained. But, I repeat, gentlemen, the Empire needs
recruits and needs them at once. They may be fully trained and
equipped in time to take their part in what may prove to be the
decisive field in the greatest struggle of the history of the
world. That is our immediate necessity, and no Irishman in
responding to it need be afrai