t conceivable likelihood of
arriving at definite decisions. Neither of the leaders of the two
parties whose agreement was essential if the Convention was to have any
result took the initiative in bringing forward proposals. Mr. Redmond
was invited to do so, but declined. Mr. Barrie had no reason to do so,
because the Ulster scheme for the government of Ireland was the
legislative union. So it was left to individuals with no official
responsibility to set forth their ideas, which became the subject of
protracted debates of a general character.

It was further arranged that while contentious issues--the only ones
that mattered--should be avoided, any conclusions reached on minor
matters should be purely provisional, and contingent on agreement being
come to ultimately on fundamentals. Month after month was spent in thus
discussing such questions as the powers which an Irish Parliament ought
to wield, while the question whether Ulster was to come into that
Parliament was left to stand over. Committees and sub-committees were
appointed to thresh out these details, and some of them relieved the
tedium by wandering into such interesting by-ways of irrelevancy as
housing and land purchase, all of which, in Gilbertian phrase, "had
nothing to do with the case."

The Ulster group raised no objection to all this expenditure of time and
energy. For they saw that it was not time wasted. From the standpoint of
the highest national interest it was, indeed, more useful than anything
the Convention could have accomplished by business-like methods. The
summer and autumn of 1917, and the early months of 1918, covered a
terribly critical period of the war. The country was never in greater
peril, and the attitude of the Nationalists in the House of Commons
added to the difficulties of the Government, as Mr. Bonar Law had
complained in March. It was to placate them that the Convention had been
summoned. It was a bone thrown to a snarling dog, and the longer there
was anything to gnaw the longer would the dog keep quiet. The Ulster
delegates understood this perfectly, and, as their chief desire was to
help the Government to get on with the war, they had no wish to curtail
the proceedings of the Convention, although they were never under the
delusion that it could lead to anything in Ireland.

Having regard to the origin of this strange assembly of Irishmen it
might have been supposed that its ingenuity would be directed to finding
some mod