ely
stronger grounds for their impeachment than anything relating to their
"proposals" for amending the Home Rule Bill. It was an enterprise that,
when it did become known, very nearly brought about their fall from
power.

The whole truth about the famous "Curragh Incident" has never been
ascertained, and the answers given by the Ministers chiefly concerned,
under cross-examination in the House of Commons, were so evasive and in
several instances so contradictory as to make it certain that they were
exceedingly anxious that the truth should be concealed. But when the
available evidence is pieced together it leads almost irresistibly to
the conclusion that in March 1914 the Cabinet, or at any rate some of
the most prominent members of it, decided to make an imposing
demonstration of military force against Ulster, and that they expected,
if they did not hope, that this operation would goad the Ulstermen into
a clash with the forces of the Crown, which, by putting them morally in
the wrong, would deprive them of the popular sympathy they enjoyed in so
large and increasing a measure.

When Mr. Churchill spoke at Bradford on the 14th of March of "putting
these grave matters to the proof" he was already deeply involved in what
came to be known as "the plot against Ulster," to which his words were
doubtless an allusion. That plot may perhaps have originated at Mr.
Lloyd George's breakfast-table on the 11th, when he entertained Mr.
Redmond, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin, Mr. O'Connor, and the Chief Secretary
for Ireland, Mr. Birrell; for on the same day it was decided to send a
squadron of battleships with attendant cruisers and destroyers from the
coast of Spain to Lamlash, in the Isle of Arran, opposite Belfast Lough;
and a sub-committee of the Cabinet, consisting of Lord Crewe, Mr.
Churchill, Colonel Seely, Mr. Birrell, and Sir John Simon, was appointed
to deal with affairs connected with Ulster. This sub-committee held its
first meeting the following day, and the next was the date of Mr.
Churchill's threatening speech at Bradford, with its reference to the
prospect of bloodshed and of putting grave matters to the proof. Bearing
in mind this sequence of events, it is not easy to credit the contention
of the Government, after the plot had been discovered, that the despatch
of the fleet to the neighbourhood of the Ulster coast had no connection
with the other naval and military operations which immediately followed.

For on the 14