t trouble him, and, lest he should go
short of accustomed plenty, it was even forbidden to carry a parcel of
butter across the Channel from Ireland. Horse-racing went on as usual.
Emigration had been suspended during the war, so that Ireland was
unusually full of young men who, owing to the unwonted prosperity of the
country resulting from war prices for its produce, were "having the
time of their lives." Mr. Bonar Law, in the debates on the Military
Service Bill, gave reasons for the calculation that there were not far
short of 400,000 young men of military age, and of "Al" physique, in
Ireland available for the Army.

No wonder that Mr. Lloyd George said it would be impossible to leave
this reservoir of man-power untouched when men of fifty, whose sons were
already with the colours, were to be called up in Great Britain! But the
bare suggestion of doing such a thing raised a hurricane of angry
vituperation and menace from the Nationalists in the House of Commons.
When Mr. Lloyd George, in conciliatory accents, observed that he had no
wish to raise unnecessary controversy, as Heaven knew they had trouble
enough already, "You will get more of it," shouted Mr. Flavin. "You will
have another battle front in Ireland," interjected Mr. Byrne. Mr.
Flavin, getting more and more excited, called out, with reference to the
machinery for enrolment explained by the Prime Minister--"It will never
begin. Ireland will not have it at any price"; and again, a moment
later, "You come across and try to take them." Mr. Devlin was fully as
fierce as these less prominent members of his party, and after many
wrathful interruptions he turned aside the debate into a discussion
about a trumpery report of one of the sub-committees of the Irish
Convention.

It was truly a sad and shameful scene to be witnessed in the House of
Commons at such a moment. It would have been so even if the contention
of the Nationalists had been reasonably tenable. But it was not. They
maintained that only an Irish Parliament had the right to enforce
conscription in Ireland. But at the beginning of the war they had
accepted the proviso that it should run its course before Home Rule came
into operation. And even if it had been in operation, and a Parliament
had been sitting in Dublin under Mr. Asquith's Act, which the
Nationalists had accepted as a settlement of their demands, that
Parliament would have had nothing to do with the raising of military
forces by conscrip