The worst of our difficulties lay in the long inherited suspicions of the Irish mind.  At a recruiting meeting one would argue in appealing to Nationalists that the Home Rule Act was a covenant on which we were in honour bound to act, and that every man who risked his life on the faith of that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded.  The listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would come up privately and say:  “Are you sure now they aren’t fooling us again?” The Sinn Fein propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not fail to emphasize the pronouncement of the Tory Press that there should be no Home Rule because Ireland had failed to come forward; or to point the moral of Mr. Bonar Law’s excursion to Belfast, with its violent asseveration that Ulster should be backed without limit in opposition to control by an Irish Parliament.  Ireland, always suspect, has learnt to be profoundly suspicious; and suspicion is the form of prophecy which has most tendency to fulfil itself.

In one part of the Irish race, however, this cold paralysis of distrust had no operation.  The Irish in Great Britain, always outdoing all others in the keenness of their Nationalism, were nearer the main current of the war, and were more in touch with the truth about English feeling.  They had a double impulse, as Redmond had; they saw how to serve their own cause in serving Europe’s freedom; and their response was magnificent.  Mr. T.P.  O’Connor probably raised more recruits by his personal appeal than any other man in England.

A great part of Redmond’s correspondence in these months came from Irishmen in England who were joining as Irishmen, and who had great difficulty in making their way to our Division.  Many thousands had already enlisted elsewhere; hundreds, at least, tried to join the Sixteenth Division, and failed to get there.  But there was one instance to which attention should be directed.  In Newcastle-on-Tyne a movement was set on foot to raise Tyneside battalions, including one of Irish.  Mr. O’Connor went down, and the upshot was that four Irish battalions were raised.  They were in existence by January 1, 1915, when General Parsons was already writing that unless Irishmen could be found to fill up the Division, we must submit to the disgrace of having it made up by English recruits.  The obvious answer was to annex the Tyneside Irish Brigade.  Redmond, moreover, held that to bring over this brigade to train in Ireland, and to incorporate it bodily in the Sixteenth Division, would please the Tyneside men—­for a tremendous welcome would have greeted them in their own country—­and would have an excellent effect on Irish opinion generally.  But the proposal was rigorously opposed by the War Office.  It was argued that these men had enlisted technically as Northumberland Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers they must remain.  In reality, as far as one can judge, the War Office were penny wise and pound foolish.  “We have got these men,” they said, “and we have a promise from Redmond to fill a Division.  Why relieve him of one-third of his task?”