foundation for industrial communities. Here again,
however, Redmond's representations were in vain. When the heavy extra
tax on beer and spirits was levied by the first supplementary Budget, he
opposed it angrily:

"You are doing some shipbuilding at Belfast, you are making a few
explosives at Arklow, you are buying some woollen goods from some
of the smaller manufacturers, but apart from that, the bulk of the
hundreds of millions of borrowed money which you are spending on
the war is being spent in England and in increasing the income of
your country."

This tax on alcohol would curtail the most important urban industry of
the South and West of Ireland, and he feared that it was the old story
of crushing Ireland's trade under the wheel of British interests.

Here again Redmond could only plead with the Irish Government that they,
in their turn, should plead with the Imperial authorities. He should
have been able to act in his own right as the head of an Irish Ministry,
knowing the importance of providing employment at such a time. He saw
the need and how to meet it; but he had none of the resources of power.
As compared with the other men who occupied, in the public eye, a rank
equivalent to his--with General Botha, for instance--he was like a
commander of those Russian armies which had to take the field against
Germans with sticks and pikes.

Yet power he had--power over the heart and mind of Ireland--the power
which was given him by the response to his appeal. From January onwards
the Sixteenth Division grew steadily and strongly. Recruiting began to
get on a better basis. The appointment of Sir Hedley Le Bas in charge of
this propaganda brought about a healthy change in methods. Appeals were
used devised for Ireland, and not, as heretofore, simple replicas of the
English article. Heart-breaking instances of stupidity were still of
daily occurrence, but imagination and insight began to have some play;
and there was no longer the complete separation which had existed
between the effort of Redmond and his colleagues and the effort of men
like Lord Meath. In January Willie Redmond was posted to his battalion,
the 6th Royal Irish, at Fermoy, where the 47th Brigade had its
headquarters. In his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable
and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the Division was worth
an immense deal. There was delay also about his younger namesake, John
Redm