Captain Doran, Chairman of the Louth Council, was on his way back to France when the summons to the Convention stopped him.  A Methodist, he was divided by religion from his neighbours in County Louth:  but that did not stop them from putting this prosperous and capable farmer, working his land on the most modern methods, into the Chair of their County Council.  Before the war, when the Larne gun-running took place, he decided that matters looked serious, called his friends together and formed a company of Volunteers, who might be needed to protect themselves or to protect other Nationalists across the adjacent Ulster border.  After the war had broken out and the Home Rule Act was passed, and Redmond had launched his appeal, this country farmer, then aged fifty, made his way to Mallow and asked General Parsons to accept him as a recruit.  He was accepted, and very shortly given a commission in the Dublin Fusiliers.  Out of his local Volunteers he took seventy-five into the Army with him.  He was with the Sixteenth Division from its landing in France till after the day of Messines, commanding his company.  All this gave him an authority in an assembly where all voices were in support of the war, and more particularly in an appeal to Ulster; and with this advantage went an unusual gift of frank and eloquent speech, linked with a fine idealism.

These were the main personal elements in the group that came together on July 25th—­Mr. Duke, the Chief Secretary, acting as temporary Chairman and Sir Francis Hopwood (soon to become Lord Southborough) having been brought over as Secretary.  Mr. Duke having addressed us with an earnest suavity, we were told to select a Chairman:  and on the motion of the Primate, Archbishop Crozier, this embarrassing task was delegated to a committee of ten, rapidly told off.  We adjourned for lunch, and on reassembling found that a unanimous recommendation named Sir Horace Plunkett.  The Ulstermen had expressed a willingness to accept Redmond.  This he refused to discuss; but he was put into the Chair of the selecting committee.  There was a recommendation also that Sir Francis Hopwood should be Secretary to the Convention.  Both these proposals were welcomed, and we dispersed feeling that we had done a good day’s work.

There was, however, one set-off to it.  When the Selection Committee had done its work, its members went off singly, and outside the gate of College a small group of ardent patriots were waiting, who mobbed Redmond on the way to his hotel.  They were young, no doubt; but the Republican party claimed specially the youth of Ireland; and these lads expressed with a simple eloquence very much what was said by older and more articulate voices, uttering the same thought in print.  It is worth while to illustrate here the attitude taken towards Redmond by much of Nationalist Ireland, for it profoundly influenced Redmond’s attitude and action in the Convention.  I take, not casual and partisan journalism, but a passage from a book published by a distinguished Irish writer who had never publicly attached himself to any party.  Mr. James Stephens was in Dublin during the insurrection; he wrote a book about his own personal observation of it, which as a record of observation is admirable.  But when Mr. Stephens comes to emit opinions, here is what he has to say: