is true, took
a leading part in all the activities to which the war gave rise
--encouraging recruiting, organising hospitals, and making provision of
every kind for soldiers and their dependents, in Ulster and in the
County of Durham. But when in London in November, Lord Londonderry would
sit moodily at the Carlton Club, speaking to few except intimate
friends, and apparently overcome by depression. He was pessimistic about
the war. His only son was at the front, and he seemed persuaded he would
never return. The affairs of Ulster, to which he had given his whole
heart, looked black; and he went about as if all his purpose in life was
gone. He went with Lady Londonderry to Mount Stewart for Christmas, and
one or two intimate friends who visited him there in January 1915 were
greatly disturbed in mind on his account. But the public in Belfast, who
saw him going in and out of the Ulster Club as usual, did not know
anything was amiss, and were terribly shocked as well as grieved when
they heard of his sudden death at Wynyard on the 8th of February.

The death of Lord Londonderry was felt by many thousands in Ulster as a
personal bereavement. If he did not arouse the unbounded, and almost
delirious, devotion which none but Sir Edward Carson ever evoked in the
North of Ireland, the deep respect and warm affection felt towards him
by all who knew him, and by great numbers who did not, was a tribute
which his modesty and integrity of character and genial friendliness of
disposition richly deserved. He was faithfully described by Carson
himself to the Ulster Unionist Council several months after his death as
"a great leader, a great and devoted public servant, a great patriot, a
great gentleman, and above all the greatest of great friends."

Ulster, meantime, had already had a foretaste of the sacrifices the war
was to demand when the Division should go to the front. In November 1914
Captain the Hon. Arthur O'Neill, M.P. for Mid Antrim, who had gone to
the front with the first expeditionary force, was killed in action in
France. There was a certain sense of sad pride in the reflection that
the first member of the House of Commons to give his life for King and
country was a representative of Ulster; and the constituency which
suffered the loss of a promising young member by the death of this
gallant Life Guardsman consoled itself by electing in his place his
younger brother, Major Hugh O'Neill, then serving in the Ulster
Divisi