man oftener lit up debate with some telling interruption.  He was often merely rhetorical; he had the name—­though in my experience he never deserved it—­for being indiscreetly vehement.  His early reputation, which he had never lived down, is not unkindly represented by a story which he used to tell against himself.  When the first Home Rule Bill was introduced he had a great desire to speak in the debate, and went to Parnell with his request.  “Will you promise,” said Parnell, “that you will write out what you are going to say, and show it to me, and say that and no more?” He promised, and handed in his manuscript.  Days went by and he heard nothing, so he went back to the Chief.  “Ah yes,” said Parnell, “I have it in my pocket.  An excellent speech, my dear Willie.  If I were you I shouldn’t waste it on the House of Commons.  It’s too good for them.”

Later, in the days from 1906 onwards, with all his experience, it cannot be said that he ever affected opinion in the House.  What he said was the common stuff of argument:  it was all what someone else might have said—­until the war came.  Then, he was a changed creature.  He went through in the Army the same experience as hundreds of other members of Parliament; but he and he only seemed to have got the very soul out of it.  He took to his soldier’s duty as a religion:  he saw all that concerned him in the light of it.  It has been told already how his two speeches on almost casual occasions affected public feeling:  but in them he was chiefly an Irish member of Parliament speaking about soldiers and about Irish soldiers.  In this debate he was an Irish soldier pleading with Parliament for Ireland in the name of Irish soldiers—­who had responded to the call to arms because, as he said, they were led to believe that a new and better and brighter chapter was about to open in the relations of Great Britain and Ireland.

“I do not believe that there is a single member of any party in this House who is prepared to get up and say that in the past the government and treatment of Ireland by Great Britain have been what they should have been.  Mistakes, dark, black, and bitter mistakes, have been made.  A people denied justice, a people with many admitted grievances, the redress of which has been long delayed.  On our side, perhaps, in the conflict and in the bitterness of contest, there may have been things said and done, offensive if you will, irritating if you will, to the people of this country; but what I want to ask, in all simplicity, is this, whether, in face of the tremendous conflict which is now raging, whether, in view of the fact that, apart from every other consideration, the Irish people, South as well as North, are upon the side of the Allies and against the German pretension to-day, it is not possible from this war to make a new start?—­whether it is not possible on your side, and on ours as well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries?  Why cannot we do it?  Is there an Englishman representing any party who does not yearn for a better future between Ireland and Great Britain?  There is no Irishman who is not anxious for it also.  Why cannot there be a settlement?  Why must it be that, when British soldiers and Irish soldiers are suffering and dying side by side, this eternal old quarrel should go on?....