were held up and down the country.  In Belfast there was a parade of four thousand Irish Volunteers; and finally, at a point on the Wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in defiance of Government and its troops.  Now, forty-eight hours after these demonstrations, would the Irish leader ask his countrymen to blot from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a wound?  Would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation’s feeling?  The boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated.  Redmond did not.

This is not to say that he spoke without full reflection.  He always thought far ahead; and in these tense days of waiting upon rumour, he must have pondered deeply upon all the possibilities—­must have had intuition of what this opportunity, England’s difficulty, might mean for Ireland.  Other minds were on the same trail.  In the Dublin papers of that morning were two letters of moment—­one of them from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“The chief point which has divided Protestant Ulster from the rest of Ireland,” he wrote, “is that Nationalists were not loyal to the Empire.”  Then, recalling briefly the extent to which Irish Nationalists had helped in creating that Empire, he went on:  “There is no possible reason why a man should not be a loyal Irishman and a loyal Imperialist also....  A whole-hearted declaration of loyalty to the common ideal would at the present moment do much to allay the natural fears of Ulster and to strengthen the position of Ireland.  Such a chance is unlikely to recur.  I pray that the Irish leaders may understand its significance and put themselves in a position to take advantage of it.”

The other letter, written from a different standpoint, was signed by Mr. M.J.  Judge, a most active Irish Volunteer who had been wounded in the scuffle on the way back from Howth.  “England,” he said, “might inspire confidence by restoring it.  She could bestow confidence by immediately arming and equipping the Irish Volunteers.  The Volunteers, properly armed and equipped, could preserve Ireland from invasion, and England would be free to utilize her ‘army of occupation’ for the defence of her own shores.”

Redmond could not have seen either of these letters, but those two trains of thought were blended in his speech—­which was less a speech than a supreme action.  It was the utterance of a man who has a vision and who, acting in the light of it, seeks to embody the vision in a living reality.

Mr. Bonar Law followed Sir Edward Grey with a few brief sentences of whole-hearted support.  Then Redmond rose, and a hush of expectation went over the house.  I can see it now, the crowded benches and the erect, solid figure with the massive hawk-visaged head thrown back, standing squarely at the top of the gangway.  While he spoke, as during Sir Edward Grey’s speech, the cheering broke out first intermittently and scattered over the House, then grew gradually