and ending with the Cabinet's destruction of the agreement entered
into in June. Now, as the end of all, Dublin Castle, after the Prime
Minister's description of its hopeless breakdown, was set up again with
a Unionist Chief Secretary and a Unionist Attorney-General: with a
universal system of martial law in force throughout the country, and
with hundreds of interned men in prison on suspicion. He warned the
Government of the inevitable effect upon the flow of recruits for the
Irish Divisions; and in a passage which showed how close his attention
was to all this matter of recruitment, he pressed the War Office for
certain minor concessions to Irish sentiment which would help us to
maintain the Division that had so greatly distinguished itself at
Guillemont and Ginchy.

But the real pith of his speech was political in the larger sense. He
pressed upon the House the injury which England's interest was suffering
through the alienation of American opinion, and through the reflection
of Irish discontent in Australia; he pleaded for the withdrawal of
martial law. Nothing came of the debate, except a speech in which Mr.
Lloyd George admitted the "stupidities, which sometimes almost look like
malignancy," that were perpetrated at the beginning of recruiting in
Ireland. The Labour men and a few Liberals voted for our motion. But as
a menace to the Government it was negligible.

I was in France during the period of intrigue which followed, leading up
to the displacement of Mr. Asquith. When the change occurred, members of
Parliament who were serving were recalled by special summons. I found
Redmond in these days profoundly impressed with the strength of Mr.
Lloyd George's personal position. He was convinced that the new Premier
could, if he chose, force a settlement of the Irish difficulty, and was
very hopeful of this happening. Sir Edward Carson dared not, he thought,
set himself in opposition; at this moment the Ulster party was not
popular, while there was in the House a widespread feeling that Redmond
in particular had been treated in a manner far other than his due.
Another of his brother's interventions in debate gave an impetus to this
sympathy.

Again in a thin House, during some discussion on Estimates, Willie
Redmond got up and spoke out of the fullness of experiences which had
profoundly affected his imagination. He told the House of what he had
seen in Flanders, where the two Irish Divisions had at last been brough