use of Commons on
Thursday, the 30th of July.

Here was the old deadlock. The last glimmer of hope that civil war might
be averted seemed to be extinguished. Only ten days had elapsed since
Carson had gloomily predicted at Larne that peace was impossible "unless
something happens, the evidence of which is not visible at present." But
that "something" did happen--though it was something infinitely more
dreadful, infinitely more devastating in its consequences, even though
less dishonouring to the nation, than the alternative from which it
saved us. Balanced, as it seemed, on the brink of civil war, Great
Britain and Ireland together toppled over on the other side into the
maelstrom of world-wide war.

On the 30th of July, when the Amending Bill was to be discussed, the
Prime Minister said that, with the concurrence of Mr. Bonar Law and Sir
Edward Carson, it would be indefinitely postponed, in order that the
country at this grave crisis in the history of the world "should present
a united front and be able to speak and act with the authority of an
undivided nation." To achieve this, all domestic quarrels must be laid
aside, and he promised that "no business of a controversial character"
would be undertaken.

Thus it happened that the Amending Bill was never seen by the House of
Commons. Four days later the United Kingdom was at war with the greatest
military Empire in the world. The opportunity had come for Ulster to
prove whether her cherished loyalty was a reality or a sham.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] _Annual Register_, 1914, p. 110.

[89] _Annual Register_, 1914, p. 114.

CHAPTER XX

ULSTER IN THE WAR

More than a year before the outbreak of the Great War a writer in _The
Morning Post_, describing the Ulster Volunteers who were then beginning
to attract attention in England, used language which was more accurately
prophetic than he can have realised in May 1913:

"What these men have been preparing for in Ulster," he wrote, "may
be of value as a military asset in time of national emergency. I
have seen the men at drill, I have seen them on parade, and experts
assure me that in the matter of discipline, physique, and all
things which go to the making of a military force they are worthy
to rank with our regular soldiers. It is an open secret that, once
assured of the maintenance unimpaired of the Union between Great
Britain and Ireland under the Imperial Parliament alon