ber, the day before the
demonstration at Enniskillen, when a resolution proposed by Lady
Londonderry declaring the determination of Ulster women to stand by
their men in the policy to be embodied in the Covenant, was carried with
immense enthusiasm and without dissent. No women were so vehement in
their support of the Loyalist cause as the factory workers, who were
very numerous in Belfast. Indeed, their zeal, and their manner of
displaying it, seemed sometimes to illustrate a well-known line of
Kipling's, considered by some to be anything but complimentary to the
female sex. Anyhow, there was no divergence of opinion or sympathy
between the two sexes in Ulster on the question of Union or Home Rule;
and the women who everywhere attended the meetings in large numbers were
no idle sightseers--though they were certainly hero-worshippers of the
Ulster leader--but a genuine political force to be taken into account.

It was during the September campaign that the "wooden guns" and "dummy
rifles" appeared, which excited so much derision in the English Radical
Press, whose editors little dreamed that the day was not far distant
when Mr. Asquith's Government would be glad enough to borrow those same
dummy rifles for training the new levies of Kitchener's Army to fight
the Germans. So far as the Ulstermen were concerned the ridicule of
their quasi-military display and equipment never had any sting in it.
They were conscious of the strength given to their cause by the
discipline and military organisation of the volunteers, even if the
weapons with which they drilled should never be replaced by the real
thing; and many of them had an instinctive belief that their leaders
would see to it that they were effectively armed all in good time. And
so with grim earnestness they recruited the various battalions of
volunteers, gave up their evenings to drilling, provided cyclist corps,
signalling corps, ambulances and nurses; they were proud to receive
their leader with guards of honour at the station, and bodyguards while
he drove through their town or district to the meetings where he spoke.
Few of them probably ever so much as heard of the gibes of _The Irish
News_, _The Daily News_, or _The Westminster Gazette_ at the "royal
progresses" of "King Carson"; but they would have been in no way upset
by them if they had, for they were far too much in earnest themselves to
pay heed to the cheap sneers of others. At each one of the September
meet