rievances led to the South African War, and
they will represent a community greater in numbers than the white
population of South Africa as a whole. Unless all the signs are
misleading, it will be the demonstration of a community in the
deadliest earnest. By the Protestant community of Ulster, Home Rule
is regarded as a menace to their faith, to their material
well-being and prosperity, and to their freedom and national
traditions, and thus all the most potent motives which in history
have stirred men to their greatest efforts are here in operation."

No written description, unless by the pen of some gifted imaginative
writer, could convey any true impression of the scenes that were
witnessed the following day in the Show Ground at Balmoral and the roads
leading to it from the heart of the city. The photographs published at
the time give some idea of the apparently unbounded ocean of earnest,
upturned faces, closely packed round the several platforms, and
stretching away far into a dim and distant background; but even they
could not record the impressive stillness of the vast multitude, its
orderliness, which required the presence of not a single policeman, its
spirit of almost religious solemnity which struck every observant
onlooker. No profusion of superlative adjectives can avail to reproduce
such scenes, any more than words, no matter how skilfully chosen, can
convey the tone of a violin in the hands of a master. Even the mere
number of those who took part in the demonstration cannot be guessed
with any real accuracy. There was a procession of men, whose fine
physique and military smartness were noticed by visitors from England,
which was reported to have taken three hours to pass a given point
marching in fours, and was estimated to be not less than 100,000 strong,
while those who went independently to the ground or crowded the route
were reckoned to be at least as many more. The Correspondent of _The
Times_ declared that "it was hardly by hyperbole that Sir Edward Carson
claimed that it was one of the largest assemblies in the history of the
world."

But the moral effect of such gatherings is not to be gauged by numbers
alone. The demeanour of the people, which no organisation or stage
management could influence, impressed the English journalists and
Members of Parliament even more than the gigantic scale of the
demonstration. There was not a trace of the picnic spirit. Th