overnment to be "to offer us
terms which they know we cannot accept, and then throw on us the odium
of having obstructed a settlement." Mr. Walter Long had the same
apprehension in March 1914 as to the purpose of Mr. Asquith's unknown
proposals. Both these leaders herein showed insight and prescience, for
not only Mr. Asquith's Government, but also that which succeeded it, had
resort on many subsequent occasions to the manoeuvre suspected by Lord
Lansdowne.

On the other hand, there were encouraging signs in the country. To the
intense satisfaction of Unionists, Mr. C.F.G. Masterman, who had just
been promoted to the Cabinet, lost his seat in East London when he
sought re-election in February, and a day or two later the Government
suffered another defeat in Scotland. On the 27th of February Lord
Milner, a fearless supporter of the Ulster cause, wrote to Carson that a
British Covenant had been drawn up in support of the Ulster Covenanters,
and that the first signatures, in addition to his own, were those of
Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, Admiral of the Fleet Sir E. Seymour, the
Duke of Portland, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Lord Desborough, Lord Lovat,
Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Sir W. Ramsay, F.R.S., the Dean of Canterbury,
Professors Dicey and Goudy, Sir George Hayter Chubb, and Mr. Salvidge,
the influential alderman of Liverpool. On the 6th of March Mr. Walter
Long, writing from the office of the Union Defence League, of which he
was President, was able to inform Carson that there was "a rush to sign
the Covenant--we are really almost overpowered." This was supplemented
by a women's Covenant, which, like the men's, "had been numerously and
influentially signed, about 3 or 4 per cent, of the signatories, it was
said, being Liberals."[62] Long believed from this and other evidence
that had reached him that "public opinion was now really aroused in the
country," and that the steadfast policy of Ulster had the undoubted
support of the electorate.

Only those who were in the confidence of Mr. Asquith and his colleagues
at the beginning of 1914 can know whether the "proposals" they then made
were ever seriously put forward as an effort towards appeasement. If
they were sincerely meant for such, it implied a degree of ignorance of
the chief factor in the problem with which it is difficult to credit
able Ministers who had been face to face with that problem for years.
They must have supposed that their leading opponents were capable of