y
intimated that if voluntary recruiting improved it might be possible to
dispense with compulsion. But although Mr. Shortt--who succeeded Mr.
Duke as Chief Secretary in May, at the same time as Lord Wimborne was
replaced in the Lord-Lieutenancy by Field-Marshal Lord French--complained
on the 29th of July that the Nationalists had given no help to the
Government in obtaining voluntary recruits in Ireland, and, "instead of
taking Sinn Fein by the throat, had tried to go one better,"[101] the
compulsory powers of the Military Service Act remained a dead letter.

The fact was that the Nationalists had followed up their fierce
opposition to the Bill by raising a still more fierce agitation in
Ireland against conscription. In this they joined hands with Sinn Fein,
and the whole weight of the Catholic Church was thrown into the same
scale. From the altars of that Church the thunderbolts of ecclesiastical
anathema were loosed against the Government, and--what was more
effective--against any who should obey the call to arms. The Government
gave way before the violence of the storm, and the lesson to be learnt
from their defeat was not thrown away on the rebel party in Ireland.
There was, naturally, widespread indignation in England at the spectacle
of the youth of Ireland taking its ease at home and earning
extravagantly high war-time wages while middle-aged bread-winners in
England were compulsorily called to the colours; but the marvellously
easy-going disposition of Englishmen submitted to the injustice with no
more than a legitimate grumble.

In June 1918, while this agitation against conscription was at its
height, the hostility of the Nationalists took a new turn. A manifesto,
intended as a justification of their resistance to conscription, was
issued in the form of a letter to Mr. Wilson, President of the United
States, signed by Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin, Mr. William O'Brien, Mr.
Healy, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, and some others, including leaders of
Sinn Fein. It was a remarkable document, the authorship of which was
popularly attributed to Mr. T.M. Healy. If it ever came under the eye of
Mr. Wilson, a man of literary taste and judgment, it must have afforded
him a momentary diversion from the cares of his exalted office. A longer
experience than his of diplomatic correspondence would fail to produce
from the pigeon-holes of all the Chanceries a rival to this
extraordinary composition, the ill-arranged paragraphs of which