There the matter might have ended had not some of the facts become known to Unionist members of the House of Commons, and to the Press.  On Sunday, the 22nd, Mr. Asquith sent a communication to The Times (published on the 23rd) in which he minimised the whole matter, putting forward the original pretext of movements of troops solely to protect Government property—­an account at variance with a statement two days later by Churchill in regard to the reason for naval movements—­and on the 23rd Seely also made a statement in the House of Commons on the same lines as the Prime Minister’s, which ended by saying that all the movements of troops were completed “and all orders issued have been punctually and implicitly obeyed.”  This was an hour or two after his interview with the generals who had been summoned from Ireland to be dismissed for refusal to obey orders.

But Mr. Bonar Law had his own information, which was much fuller than the Government imagined.  A long and heated debate followed Colonel Seely’s statement, and was continued on the two following days, gradually dragging to light the facts with a much greater profusion of detail than is necessary for this narrative.  On the 24th Mr. L.S.  Amery made a speech which infuriated the Radicals and Labour members, but the speaker, as was his intention, made them quite as angry with the Government as with himself.  The cause of offence was that the Government was thought to have allowed itself to be coerced by the soldiers, while the latter had been allowed to make their obedience to orders contingent on a bargain struck with the Government.  This aspect of the case was forcibly argued by Mr. J. Ward, the Labour member for Stoke, in a speech greatly admired by enthusiasts for “democratic” principles.  Although Mr. Ward’s invective was mainly directed against the Unionist Opposition, the latter listened to it with secret pleasure, perceiving that it was in reality more damaging to the Government than to themselves, since Ministers were forced into an attitude of defence against their own usually docile supporters.  It may here be mentioned that at a much later date, when Mr. John Ward, in the light of experience gained by his own distinguished service as an officer in the Great War, had come to the conviction that “the possibility of forcing Ulster within the ambit of a Dublin Parliament has now become unthinkable,” he acknowledged that in 1914 the only way by which Mr. Asquith’s Home Rule Act could have been enforced was through and by the power of the Army.[77]

So much shaken were the Government by these attacks that on the next day, the 25th of March, Colonel Seely, at the end of a long narrative of the transaction, announced his resignation from the Government.  He had, he said, unintentionally misled his colleagues by adding without their knowledge to the paper given to General Gough; the Cabinet as a whole was quite innocent of the great offence given to democratic sentiment.