“As far as I could detect in a very careful observation, there were not half a dozen of them unqualified by physique or age to play a manly part.  They reminded me more than anything else—­except that but few of them were beyond the best fighting age—­of the finest class of our National Reserve.  There was certainly nothing of the mock soldier about them.  Led by keen, smart-looking officers, they marched past in quarter column with fine, swinging steps, as if they had been in training for years.  Officers who have had the teaching of them tell me that the rapidity with which they have become efficient is greater than has ever come within their experience in training recruits for either the Territorials or the Regular Service."[56]

The 24th of September, it will be remembered, was the day when the formation of the Provisional Government and the Indemnity Fund (with the subscription of a quarter of a million sterling in two hours) was made public; on Saturday the 27th, the country parades of Volunteers of the preceding weeks reached a climax in a grand review in Belfast itself, when some 15,000 men were drawn up on the same ground where the Balmoral meeting had been held eighteen months before.  They were reviewed by Sir George Richardson, G.O.C., and it was on this occasion that Mr. F.E.  Smith became famous as “galloper” to the General.  The Commanders of the four regiments on parade—­one from each parliamentary division of the city—­comprising fourteen battalions, were:  Colonel Wallace, Major F.H.  Crawford, Major McCalmont, M.P., and Captain the Hon. A.C.  Chichester.  More than 30,000 sympathetic spectators watched the arrival and the review of the troops.

Among these spectators were a large number of special military correspondents of English newspapers, whose impressions of this memorable event were studied in every part of the United Kingdom on the following Monday morning.  That which appeared in a great Lancashire journal may be quoted as a fair and dispassionate account of the scene: 

“It is quite certain that the review of Volunteers at Balmoral to-day will go down into history as one of the most extraordinary events in the annals of these islands.  Not since the marshalling of Cromwell’s Puritan army have we had anything approaching a parallel; but, whereas the Puritans took up arms against a king of whom they disapproved, the men of Ulster strongly protest their loyalty to the British Throne.  The great crowd which lined the enclosure was eager, earnest, and sympathetic.  It was not a boisterous crowd.  On the contrary, beyond the demonstration following the call for cheers for the Union there was comparatively little cheering.  The crowd seemed burdened with a heavy sense of the importance of the occasion.  The conduct of the gathering was serious to the point of positive solemnity.

“The Volunteers from their own ranks policed the grounds, not a solitary member