These were the effects produced in Ireland on the mind of common people by the action of Government in enforcing the ultimate sanction of law which the members of that same Government by their action and by their inaction had brought into contempt.  In England, in the meanwhile, a new Military Service Bill was going through the House, and naturally attempts to include Ireland in its operation were renewed.  Sir Edward Carson, criticizing the Government of Ireland, said that (as Redmond put it in replying) Nationalists had held the power but not the responsibility.  There was a note of angry protest in the Irish Leader’s rejoinder.  “I wish to say for myself that certainly since the Coalition Government came into operation, and before it, but certainly since then, I have had no power in the Government of Ireland.  All my opinions have been overborne.  My suggestions have been rejected, and my profound conviction is that if we had had the power and the responsibility for the Government of our country during the past two years, recent occurrences in Ireland would never have taken place.”

I think that view was at that moment very generally shared in England.  The British Press had shown by their attitude towards the events in Dublin how deeply Redmond had made his mark.  Almost without exception Unionist papers refrained from any attempt to identify Nationalist Ireland generally with the rising:  they did full justice to the valour and the sufferings of Irish troops—­who, indeed, at that very moment were passing through a cruel ordeal.  In that Easter week the Sixteenth Division was subjected to two attacks with poison gas of a concentration and violence till then unknown, and under weather conditions which prolonged the ordeal beyond endurance.  The 48th and 49th Brigades had very terrible losses.  We of the 47th relieved them in the line.

That was a long tour of trenches, some eighteen days beginning on the 29th of April, and throughout it papers came in with the Irish news.  I shall never forget the men’s indignation.  They felt they had been stabbed in the back.  For myself, I thought that a situation had arisen in which Irish members who were serving had a more imperative duty at home, and I went to discuss the matter with Willie Redmond, whose battalion was then holding the front line to the left of Loos.

I found him in the deep company commander’s dug-out in the bay of line opposite Puits 14 bis, which will be known to many Irish soldiers.  We came up to the light to talk, and he agreed with me in my view.  We arranged that each of us should discuss with his commanding officer the question of asking for special leave.  Mine advised me to go, and I have no earthly doubt that his would have said, or did say, the same; but Willie Redmond never brought himself to leave his men.  Next month, however, he was invalided back, very seriously ill.