xcept that
but few of them were beyond the best fighting age--of the finest
class of our National Reserve. There was certainly nothing of the
mock soldier about them. Led by keen, smart-looking officers, they
marched past in quarter column with fine, swinging steps, as if
they had been in training for years. Officers who have had the
teaching of them tell me that the rapidity with which they have
become efficient is greater than has ever come within their
experience in training recruits for either the Territorials or the
Regular Service."[56]

The 24th of September, it will be remembered, was the day when the
formation of the Provisional Government and the Indemnity Fund (with the
subscription of a quarter of a million sterling in two hours) was made
public; on Saturday the 27th, the country parades of Volunteers of the
preceding weeks reached a climax in a grand review in Belfast itself,
when some 15,000 men were drawn up on the same ground where the Balmoral
meeting had been held eighteen months before. They were reviewed by Sir
George Richardson, G.O.C., and it was on this occasion that Mr. F.E.
Smith became famous as "galloper" to the General. The Commanders of the
four regiments on parade--one from each parliamentary division of the
city--comprising fourteen battalions, were: Colonel Wallace, Major F.H.
Crawford, Major McCalmont, M.P., and Captain the Hon. A.C. Chichester.
More than 30,000 sympathetic spectators watched the arrival and the
review of the troops.

Among these spectators were a large number of special military
correspondents of English newspapers, whose impressions of this
memorable event were studied in every part of the United Kingdom on the
following Monday morning. That which appeared in a great Lancashire
journal may be quoted as a fair and dispassionate account of the scene:

"It is quite certain that the review of Volunteers at Balmoral
to-day will go down into history as one of the most extraordinary
events in the annals of these islands. Not since the marshalling of
Cromwell's Puritan army have we had anything approaching a
parallel; but, whereas the Puritans took up arms against a king of
whom they disapproved, the men of Ulster strongly protest their
loyalty to the British Throne. The great crowd which lined the
enclosure was eager, earnest, and sympathetic. It was not a
boisterous crowd. On the con