Redmond knew, and we all knew, that the essential was to get our Division complete and into the field at the earliest possible moment.  He had confidence that once they got to work they would make a name for themselves, which would be the best attraction for recruits.  Let it be remembered that at this moment popular expectation put the end of the war about July.  When I joined the Rangers in April 1915, our mess was full of young officers threatening to throw up their commissions and enlist in some battalion which would give them the chance of seeing a fight.  We could not expect to move to France before August, and by that time all that we could hope would be to form part of the army of occupation.  Rumour was rife, too, that the Division would be broken up and utilized for draft-finding, that it would never see France as a unit.  All this talk came back to Redmond and increased his anxiety to make the work complete.

He held, and I think rightly, that the whole machinery of recruiting worked against us; that every officer had instructions to send no man to the Sixteenth Division who could be got into a draft-finding reserve battalion.  Knowing what we know, I cannot blame them; but the game was not fairly played.  A man would come in and say he wanted to join the Irish Brigade.  “Which regiment?” Often he might not realize that a brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for instance, “The Dublins,” he was more likely than not to be shipped off to the Curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept, instead of to Buttevant, where our Dublins were in training.

Still, with all our troubles, things were marching ahead in that April of 1915; recruits were coming in to the tune of 1,500 a week.  Then came a political crisis and the formation of a Coalition Government.  Redmond was asked to take a post in it.  The letter in which the invitation was conveyed made it clear that the post could not be an Irish office.

Redmond refused.  He said to me afterwards that under no conditions did he think he could have accepted.  But he added, “If I had been Asquith and had wished to make it as difficult as possible to refuse, I should have offered a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio and without salary.”

He was well aware how many and how unscrupulous were his enemies in Ireland; he was not prepared to give them the opportunity of saying that he had got his price for the blood of young Irishmen and the betrayal of his principles.  Even apart from the question of salary, the tradition against acceptance of office under Government till Ireland’s claim was satisfied would have been very hard to break.  Yet Redmond saw fully how disastrous would be the effect on Irish opinion if he were not in the Government and Sir Edward Carson was.

Knowing Ireland as he did, he knew that the acceptance of Sir Edward Carson as a colleague would be taken in Ireland to imply that the Government had abandoned its support of Home Rule.  Ireland would assume that the Ulster leader would not come in except on his own terms.  Redmond made the strongest representations that he could to the Prime Minister to exclude both Irish parties to the unresolved dispute.  But Sir Edward Carson in those days was making himself very disagreeable in the House of Commons and Mr. Asquith, as usual, followed the line of least resistance.