It is quite unnecessary to summarize here in any detail the course of these general discussions in full Convention, which began on August 21st.  One thing, however, resulted from them on which too much emphasis cannot be laid.  In the process of “exploring each other’s minds,” as the phrase went, we came to know and to like one another.  Later in the year, a friend of mine, high placed in the Ulster Division, but not an Ulsterman by upbringing or sympathy, came home from France.  He told me that the main impression on the minds of Ulster delegates had been made by the Nationalist County Councillors.  They had expected noisy demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of dissent.  What Willie Redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming true:  Irishmen brought into contact with one another in the Convention, as other Irishmen had been brought into contact in the trenches, and no longer kept apart by those unhappy severances which run through ordinary Irish life, came under the influence of that fundamental fellowship, deeper than all divergence of politics or creed, which draws our people into a sense of a common bond.

The desire to bring delegates together in friendly social intercourse had shown itself in many quarters.  The Viceregal Lodge pressed invitations on us, and Redmond, though in the circumstances he himself would go to no entertainment anywhere, expressed his wish that Nationalists should alter their traditional attitude and accept what was offered in so friendly a spirit.  But the first place where we met as a body with informal ease was at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord Mayor—­a popular figure in our assembly.

Next day the Lord Mayor of Belfast rose at the adjournment to express all our thanks, and to insist that there should be a session in Belfast, where he could return the compliment.  Immediately, there came another proposal for a similar visit to the South of Ireland.  We went to Belfast at the beginning of September, and the attitude of the Ulster members, which had till then been somewhat guarded and aloof, changed into that of the traditional Irish hospitality.  They showed us their great linen mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries, works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design combining lightness and strength.  Perhaps the most impressive sight of all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards.  Endless lines of empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of some ten thousand artisans, who streamed past where we stood assembled; and as the crowds swept along, all these eyes, curious, but not unfriendly, scrutinized us, and one word was in all their mouths as they came up—­“Which is Redmond?  Where’s John Redmond?”