r. It was felt to be a time of individual preparation
for the _Sacramentum_ of the following day, which Protestant Ulster had
set apart as a day of self-dedication to a cause for which they were
willing to make any sacrifice.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] _The Scotsman_, November 2nd, 1911.

[29] See Sir B. Carson's speech in _Belfast Newsletter_, September 24th,
1912.

[30] See _ante_, p. 53.

[31] See p. 106.

[32] See p. 248.

[33] _The Times_, September 23rd, 1912.

[34] _The Daily Telegraph_, September 25th, 1912.

[35] _Belfast Newsletter_, September 24th, 1912.

[36] The article which appeared on the following Sunday in _The
Observer_, showed how profoundly a distinguished London editor and
writer had been moved by what he saw in Belfast.

CHAPTER X

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT

Ulster Day, Saturday the 28th of September, 1912, was kept as a day of
religious observance by the Northern Loyalists. So far as the
Protestants of all denominations were concerned, Ulster was a province
at prayer on that memorable Saturday morning. In Belfast, not only the
services which had more or less of an official character--those held in
the Cathedral, in the Ulster Hall, in the Assembly Hall--but those held
in nearly all the places of worship in the city, were crowded with
reverent worshippers. It was the same throughout the country towns and
rural districts--there was hardly a village or hamlet where the parish
church and the Presbyterian and Methodist meeting-houses were not
attended by congregations of unwonted numbers and fervour. Not that
there was any of the religious excitement such as accompanies revivalist
meetings; it was simply that a population, naturally religious-minded,
turned instinctively to divine worship as the fitting expression of
common emotion at a moment of critical gravity in their history. "One
noteworthy feature," commented upon by one of the English newspaper
correspondents in a despatch telegraphed during the day, "is the silence
of the great shipyards. In these vast industrial establishments on both
sides of the river, 25,000 men were at work yesterday performing their
task at the highest possible pressure, for the order-books of both firms
are full of orders. Now there is not the sound of a hammer; all is as
silent as the grave. The splendid craftsmen who build the largest ships
in the world have donned their Sunday clothes, and, with Unionist
buttons on the lapels of their coats, or O