e our
country happy and contented, and enable us, when we meet the Canadians
and the Australians and the New Zealanders side by side in the common
cause and the common field, to say to them, 'Our country, just as yours,
has self-government within the Empire.'"

I have given the speech almost in full as it stands in print after the
opening paragraph. But I cannot give the effect of what was heard by a
densely crowded House in absolute silence. It was not an argument; it
was an appeal. There was not a cheer, not a murmur of agreement. They
were not needed, they would have been felt an impertinence, so great was
the respect and the sympathy. As the speaker stood there in war-stained
khaki, his hair showed grey, his face was seamed with lines, but there
was in every word the freshness and simplicity of a nature that age had
not touched. In his usual place on the upper bench beside his brother,
he poured out his words with the flow and passion of a bird's song. He
was out of the sphere of argument; but the whole experience of a long
and honourable lifetime was vibrant in that utterance. He spoke from his
heart. All that had gone to make his faith, all the inmost convictions
of his life were implicit--and throughout all ran the sense in the
assembly who heard him, not only that he had risked, but that he was
eager to give his life for proof. It was not strange that this should be
so, for he was going on what he believed would be his last journey to
France; and when he reached the supreme moment of his passion with the
words "In the name of God, we here who are about to die, perhaps," the
last word was little more than a concession to the conventions.

It was a speech, in short, that made one believe in impossibilities; but
in Parliament no miracles happen. Mr. Lloyd George replied, as John
Redmond expected--declaring that the Government were willing to give
Home Rule at once to "the parts of Ireland which unmistakably demand
it," but would be no party to placing under Nationalist rule people who
were "as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook
from the rest of Ireland as the inhabitants of Fife or Aberdeen." No
Liberal Minister had ever before so completely adopted the Ulster theory
of two nations. Taxed with the refusal to allow Ulster counties to
declare by vote which group they belonged to, he declined to discuss
"geographical limitations" at present, but indicated that if Irish
members could accept