maintained through all its stages. Mr. Bonar Law
announced emphatically that the Government intended to enforce the
compulsory powers in Ireland; but he also said that yet another attempt
was to be made to settle the constitutional question by bringing in "at
an early date" a measure of Home Rule which the Government hoped might
be carried at once and "without violent controversy."

After the experience of the past this seemed an amazingly sanguine
estimate of the prospects of any proposals that ingenuity could devise.
But what the nature of the measure was to have been was never made
known; for the Bill was still in the hands of a drafting committee when
a dangerous German intrigue in Ireland was discovered; and the
Lord-Lieutenant made a proclamation on the 18th of May announcing that
the Government had information "that certain of the King's subjects in
Ireland had entered into a treasonable communication with the German
enemy, and that strict measures must be taken to put down this German
plot."[98] On the same day one hundred and fifty Sinn Feiners were
arrested, including Mr. De Valera and Mr. Arthur Griffith, and on the
25th a statement was published indicating the connection between this
conspiracy and Casement's designs in 1916. The Government had definitely
ascertained some weeks earlier, and must have known at the very time
when they were promising a new Home Rule Bill, that a plan for landing
arms in Ireland was ripe for execution.[99] Indeed, on the 12th of April
a German agent who had landed in Ireland was arrested, with papers in
his possession showing that De Valera had worked out a detailed
organisation of the rebel army, and expected to be in a position to
muster half a million of trained men.[100]

Such was the fruit of the Government's infatuation which, under the
delusion of "creating an atmosphere of good-will" for the Convention,
had released a few months previously a number of dangerous men who had
been proved to be in league with the Germans, and who now took advantage
of this clemency to conspire afresh with the foreign enemy. It was not
surprising that Mr. Bonar Law said it was impossible for the Government,
under these circumstances, to proceed with their proposals for a new
Home Rule Bill.

On the other hand, no sooner was the Military Service Act on the
Statute-book than the Government began to recede from Mr. Bonar Law's
declaration that they would at all costs enforce it in Ireland. The