an Ulster Covenanter, with Captain Doran and myself, Nationalists from the Sixteenth Division.  We found unanimously that if an Irish Parliament existed, whatever might be the claims of the Imperial authority, it would be impracticable to impose conscription without the Irish Parliament’s consent.  This unanimous finding was bound to influence the view of any Ministry, no matter how hard pressed.  But, as debate revealed, Mr. Lloyd George had never heard of it.

I believe that Redmond could have persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to adopt in April the course on which—­but after the harm was done—­he fell back in June, when Lord French asked for a large, but limited, number of recruits to refill the Irish Divisions within a specified time—­at the end of which time, failing the production of the volunteers, other measures must be taken.  Here, however, we are back in the region of speculation.  Conscription was proposed and anarchy let loose in Ireland.  Redmond’s words, “Better for us never to have met than to have met and failed,” stand as the final sentence on this notable episode in Irish history.

That is the Convention’s epitaph as, I think, he would have written it.  How shall we write his own?

No attempt has been made in this book, and none shall be made, to represent him as a hero.  But there are certain attributes which malice itself can scarcely deny him.  All his ideals were generous.  His love of country, the master-motive in his life, had nothing in it exclusive or tribal or partisan.  His was a policy forward-looking and constructive; without narrowness or jealousy, it aimed to bring the destinies of Ireland into the hands of Irishmen, not greatly caring what Irishmen they were—­indeed, if they were in a real measure responsible to Ireland, not caring at all.  In this spirit he grasped masterfully at the chance which the war offered; in this spirit, he went out to meet his fellow-countrymen in the Irish Convention.

And not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous.  His love of Ireland was free from all attendant hates.  His resentment was never on private grounds, and it was without rancour.  He spent his whole life in opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after thirty years spent in criticism.  His experience of political life and of English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his instinct was always to perceive the best in men.  The friend who knew him best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and long ago, said this of him:  “He was always an optimist.”  The speaker did not mean—­he could not have meant—­that in those last months Redmond was sanguine.  He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives and with his own love of Ireland.