the correspondence it appears that few were coming
from the South and West. From the North they poured in. In our 47th
Brigade, the 6th Royal Irish Regiment was mainly composed of Derry
Nationalists; the 7th Leinsters and the 6th Connaught Rangers were
almost to a man followers of Mr. Devlin from Belfast.

Next after Redmond, Mr. Devlin was the man to whom our Division owed
most. But the first and the main impetus came from Redmond himself. He
spoke on October 4th at Wexford, the capital of his native county; on
the 11th at Waterford, his own constituency; on the 18th at Kilkenny,
the constituency of his close friend Pat O'Brien. A week later he was at
Belfast and in the glens of Antrim, among the Nationalists of Ulster.
Then Parliament kept him for a few weeks; in December he was back, and
spoke at Tuam and in Limerick. Everywhere the Volunteers turned out in
great numbers to receive him; and to them his appeal was primarily
addressed.

At Wexford he laid stress on Mr. Asquith's pledge that the Volunteers
should remain as a recognized permanent force for the defence of the
country, and this led him to raise frankly the question of control. Who
should have authority over Volunteers in a State? Surely the elected and
responsible government. But pending Home Rule, "the policy and control
of the Volunteers must rest with the elected representatives of the
country."

More generally, he reminded them that he had always spoken of the
possibility of some great political convulsion that might destroy their
plans. "Nothing but an earthquake can now prevent Home Rule," he had
said. "The outbreak of this overwhelming war might easily have
overwhelmed Home Rule. But we have survived it."

And he went on to argue that the delay might be a blessing in disguise.
Civil war between Irishmen had always seemed to him an impossibility.
That impossibility was now universally admitted. In a passage of unusual
heat he denounced the "so-called statesmen" who came over unasked to our
country to inflame feelings--as Mr. Bonar Law had done; and he appealed
to all sections "to enable us to utilize the interval before a Home Rule
Parliament assembles to unite all Irishmen under a Home Rule
Government."

At Waterford he was largely occupied with repelling the charge that he
and his colleagues had made a bargain with the Government to ship Irish
Volunteers overseas to fight whether they would or no. This was the line
on which opposition was de