e, a vast
proportion of the citizen army of Ulster would cheerfully hold
itself at the disposal of the Imperial Government and volunteer for
service either at home or abroad!"[90]

The only error in the prediction was that the writer underestimated the
sacrifice Ulster would be willing to make for the Empire. When the
testing time came fifteen months after this appreciation was published
all hope of unimpaired maintenance of the Union had to be sorrowfully
given up, and only those who were in a position to comprehend, with
sympathy, the depth and intensity of the feeling in Ulster on the
subject could realise all that this meant to the people there. Yet, all
the same, their "citizen army" did not hesitate to "hold itself at the
disposal of the Imperial Government, and volunteer for service at home
or abroad."

In August 1914 the U.V.F., of 100.000 men, was without question the
most efficient force of infantry in the United Kingdom outside the
Regular Army. The medical comb did not seriously thin its ranks; and
although the age test considerably reduced its number, it still left a
body of fine material for the British Army. Some of the best of its
officers, like Captain Arthur O'Neill, M.P., of the Life Guards, and
Lord Castlereagh of the Blues, had to leave the U.V.F. to rejoin the
regiments to which they belonged, or to take up staff appointments at
the front. In spite of such losses there was a strong desire in the
force, which was shared by the political leaders, that it should be kept
intact as far as possible and form a distinct unit for active service,
and efforts were at once made to get the War Office to arrange for this
to be done. Pressure of work at the War Office, and Lord Kitchener's
aversion from anything that he thought savoured of political
considerations in the organisation of the Army, imposed a delay of
several weeks before this was satisfactorily arranged; and the
consequence was that in the first few weeks of the war a large number of
the keenest young men in Ulster enlisted in various regiments before it
was known that an Ulster Division was to be formed out of the U.V.F.

It was the beginning of September before Carson was in a position to go
to Belfast to announce that such an arrangement had been made with Lord
Kitchener. And when he went he had also the painful duty of telling the
people of Ulster that the Government was going to give them the meanest
recompense for the prompt