It is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was represented, to the outside public of Ireland.  From the inside, one thing was clear.  In our battalion every man desired the success of the Division, and more particularly of the Connaught Rangers, absolutely with a whole heart.  Anything said or done that could have offended the men—­practically all Catholic and Nationalist—­would have drawn the most condign chastisement from our commanding officer.  I never heard of any man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it.  There was very little political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question how far Redmond might be held to speak for Ireland.  So far as Redmond himself was concerned, I think there were few, if any, who did not count it an honour to meet him—­and some who had never been won to him before were won to him for his brother’s sake.

Looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself in that society.  I do not know one survivor of those men who does not desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom they led.  In not a few cases one might put the change higher; some opinions as to what was good for Ireland were profoundly affected.

Yet this also is true.  The atmosphere of the mess was one in which Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger.  He had lived all his life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief.  Knowing the other side in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never really was himself.  He was only himself with the men.

In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that the other was Ulster.  No attempt was made to make it so, and General Parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal—­though less fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man for his opinions or his creed.  Yet many persons without design, and some with a purpose, spread broadcast the belief that Catholics and Nationalists as such were relegated to a position of inferiority in the command of this Catholic and Nationalist Division.