the
Unionists. The Liberal peer expressed great interest and proved it in
action. Next morning he was with Redmond by ten o'clock, and got his
view in writing that it might be placed before the Cabinet, who were to
meet at eleven to decide finally the terms of their letter.

As a result of this intervention, the letter, instead of containing a
single proposal, offered two alternatives: the second was so oddly
tacked on that many at the time said it read like a postscript. So, in
point of fact, it was. That was the genesis of the Irish Convention.

His son, from whom I know this, said to me that more than once, when
things were hopeful in the Convention, Redmond said to him, "What a
lucky thing it was I went to that dinner!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: The Admiralty do not appear to have communicated their
information to Dublin Castle.]

[Footnote 8: This might mislead. The exclusively Protestant character of
the Ulster Division was not maintained in France, and it came to include
many Catholic Irishmen in the rank and file and not a few among the
officers--all in equal comradeship.--S.G.]

[Footnote 9: We had never been parties, for instance, to receptions of
Prime Ministers from the overseas Dominions, even when they were our
close friends and supporters.]

CHAPTER VIII

THE CONVENTION AND THE END

I

The Longford election had in reality been not merely a symptom, but an
event of great importance. It was a notice of dismissal to the
Parliamentary party. There was no reason to suppose anything specially
unfavourable to us in the local conditions. Neither candidate made a
special appeal to the electors; nor was the constituency in any sense a
stronghold of Sinn Fein. The fact was that the country as a whole had
ceased to believe in the Parliamentary party as an efficient machine for
obtaining the national ends. The organization of the United Irish League
had lost touch with the young; the main support we had lay in the
Ancient Order of Hibernians, which many Nationalists disliked on
principle because it was limited to Catholics. What had riot yet
disappeared up till July 1916, though it was threatened, was belief in
the principle of constitutional action as against revolutionary methods.

Willie Redmond, who never lacked instinct, and whose separation from
party politics by conditions of service gave him a vantage-ground of
detachment, reached a shrewd view of the position before the Longford
vacanc