The question, therefore, which the Ulster people had now to decide was no longer simply how they could bring about the rejection of a Home Rule Bill by propaganda in the British constituencies, as they had hitherto done with unfailing success, although that object was still kept in view, but what course they should adopt if a Home Rule Act should be placed on the Statute-book without those constituencies being consulted.  Was the day at last approaching when Lord Randolph Churchill’s exhortation must be obeyed?  Or were they to be compelled, because the Cabinet had coerced the Sovereign and tricked the people by straining the royal prerogative in a manner described by Mr. Balfour as “a gross violation of constitutional liberty,” to submit with resignation to the government of their country by the “rebel party “—­the party controlled by clerical influence, and boasting of the identity of its aims with those of Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet?  This was the real problem in the minds of those who flocked to Craigavon on Saturday, the 23rd of September, 1911, to hear what proposals Sir Edward Carson had to lay before his followers.

Craigavon was the residence of Captain James Craig, Member of Parliament for East Down.  It is a spacious country house standing on a hill above the road leading from Belfast to Holywood, with a fine view of Belfast Lough and the distant Antrim coast beyond the estuary.  The lawn in front of the house, sloping steeply to the shore road, forms a sort of natural amphitheatre offering ideal conditions for out-of-door oratory to an unlimited audience.  At the meeting on the 23rd of September the platform was erected near the crest of the hill, enabling the vast audience to spread out fan-wise over the lower levels, where even the most distant had the speakers clearly in view, even if many of them, owing to the size of the gathering, were unable to hear the spoken word.

It was on this occasion that Captain Craig, by the care with which every minute detail of the arrangements was thought out and provided for, first gave evidence of his remarkable gift for organisation that was to prove so invaluable to the Ulster cause in the next few years.  The greater part of the audience arrived in procession, which, starting from the centre of the city of Belfast, took over two hours to pass a given point, at the quick march in fours.  All the Belfast Orange Lodges, and representative detachments from the County Grand Lodges, together with Lord Templetown’s Unionist Clubs, and other organisations, including the Women’s Association, took part in the procession.  But immense numbers of people attended the meeting independently; it was calculated that not less than a hundred thousand were present during the delivery of Sir Edward Carson’s speech, and although there must have been very many of them who could hear nothing, the complete silence maintained by all was a remarkable proof—­or so it appeared to men experienced in out-door political demonstrations—­of the earnestness of spirit that prevailed.  To some it may appear still more remarkable that, with such a concourse of people within a couple of miles of Belfast, not a single policeman was present, and that none was required; no disturbance of any sort occurred during the day, nor was a single case of drunkenness observed.