le difference of opinion before a decision was reached for
acceptance. Groups separated to select their representatives on the
delegation.

It was agreed in private conference that only one view should be
presented from the Nationalist side, and that the view of what was at
this point clearly the majority. Redmond, in agreeing to act as a
delegate, agreed to set aside his own judgment and to press the claim
for full fiscal responsibility--which, like other Nationalists, he
regarded as in the abstract Ireland's right. But illness prevented him
from attending when at last the delegates were received by the Prime
Minister on February 13th.

On the 5th he had asked a question in Parliament--the last he was to ask
there. It concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of
aircraft in Dublin--one of the things for which he was pressing in his
ceaseless effort to bring Ireland some industrial advantage from the
war. I saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the House,
and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by Sinn Feiners, in
which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the
aerodromes near Dublin which he had helped to establish. But the main
thing he had to say concerned the course of the Convention. Everything,
in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but
ruin and chaos.

He spoke of his health. A bout of sickness which had prostrated him at
Christmas in Dublin had left him uneasy. He was at the time, I thought,
unduly alarmed about himself, and I believed that the continuance of
this frame of mind was simply characteristic of a man who had very
little experience of ill-health. I left him with profound compassion for
his trouble of spirit, but without any serious apprehension for his
state of body.

The Convention reassembled on February 26th to consider the result of
the delegation, which was summed up in a letter from Mr. Lloyd George.
This well-known document begins with a definite pledge of action. On
receiving the report of the Convention the Government would give it
immediate attention and would "proceed with the least possible delay to
submit legislative proposals to Parliament."--The date of this pledge
was February 25, 1918.--Mr. Lloyd George pressed, however, for a
settlement "in and through the Convention"; and he declared his
conviction that "In view of previous attempts at settlement and of the
deliberations of the Convention itself,