“What aboot Canada, Major Muir?” The major did not reply as he had at a previous meeting at Carrickfergus that he hoped that the time would come when there would be a “truly imperial parliament in London—­one that would represent not only the three kingdoms but the whole empire."[7] Instead he went on: 

“The Unionist party stands for improved social legislation.”

“What aboot old age pensions?” and “Why didn’t the Unionist party vote for working-men’s compensation, Major Muir?”

As he was preparing to drive away from the booing crowd, one of his supporters began to distribute dodgers.  I had two in my hand when the small, pale-faced man with the jaw applied a match to them, and cried out as they flared in my hand: 

“That’s what we do with trash.”

Who won?  When the election returns were made public in June, they read:  Major Moore, 7,549; Hanna, 8,714.

Laying the ghost of Carsonism by the permanent settlement of the Irish political question was attempted last spring.  It was then that Ulster labor backed the rest of the Irish Labor party at Berne when it asked for the “free and absolute self-determination of each and every people in choosing the sovereignty under which they shall live.”

THE SINN FEIN BABY IN BELFAST

The pacific endeavors of the high cost of living are greatly aided by the natural kindliness of the people.  I think I have never met simpler charity to strangers.  For instance, in the little matter of appealing for street directions, I found the shawled women and the pale men would go far out of their ways to put me on the right path.  Even when I inquired for the home of Dennis McCullough, they looked at me quickly, said:  “Oh, you mean the big Sinn Feiner”? and readily directed me to his home.

In the red brick home in the red brick row on the outskirts of the red brick town of Belfast, Mrs. Dennis McCullough, daughter of the south of Ireland, gave testimony that the goodheartedness of her neighbors prevails over their prejudice even in time of crisis.  Her husband, a piano merchant, has been in some seven prisons for his political activities.  He had told of plank beds, of food he could not eat, of the quelling of prison outbreaks by hosing the prisoners and then letting them lie in their wet clothes on cold floors.  He had spoken of evading prison at one time by availing himself of the ancient privilege of “taking sanctuary”:  he went to the famous pilgrimage center of Lough Derg, and though no sanctuary law prevails, the military did not care or dare to violate the religious feelings of the inhabitants by seizing him there.  And then he had told of the last time:  before his last arrest he had taken great care not to provoke the authorities because Mrs. McCullough was about to give birth to her first child; but one evening when the couple and friends were seated about a quiet Sunday evening tea table, six constables entered and hurried him off to jail without even presenting a warrant.  It was at this point that Mrs. McCullough gave her testimony: