“Rest satisfied,” he said; “do not try to drive Ireland.”  Wise words, and they were not unwisely listened to.  There was no room for doubting this man’s earnestness when he went on to tell how he himself had recently met Irish troops in the field, and had then pledged himself to them to spare no effort in raising the necessary reserves for their ranks among their own countrymen.  “Trust us,” he said to the House, indicating himself and his colleagues, “trust us to know, after all, the best methods.  Do not carp at Irish effort, and do not belittle Irish effort.”  Then they might count on loyal and enduring support till the great struggle was ended.

That speech, as I read it, marks the highwater-line of Redmond’s achievement.  His statesmanship in the counsels of the Empire had prevailed for his own country.  The Home Rule Act was on the Statute Book, and though not in legal operation it was present in all minds; and now on a supreme issue—­the blood-tax—­Ireland’s right to be treated as self-governing was recognized in fact.  The argument which underlay implicitly Redmond’s whole contention was never set out; it was contentious, politically, and he wisely avoided it.  He spoke for a nation to which autonomy had been accorded by statute; he preferred men to feel for themselves rather than be asked to admit that no self-governing nation will submit voluntarily to the imposition of the blood-tax without its own most formal consent.  All that he said was, in effect:  You have Ireland with you for the first time, by our assistance; do not destroy our power to continue that assistance, do not alienate Ireland.  In the counsels of the Empire his argument prevailed; and during the early months of 1916 the relations between Great Britain and Ireland were better and happier than at any time of which history holds record.  An utterance from one Irishman, and the general response to it, showed this in extraordinary degree.

Our Division, or rather two brigades of it, had detrained in France on the 19th of December; the first impression as we shook ourselves together for the march to strange billets was the sound of guns.  Scattered about in different villages lying round Bethune, our battalions passed the next two months in the usual training before we should take up our own sector of the line, and we saw little or nothing of each other.  March found us engaged, though still only attached by companies to more seasoned troops, in some rough crater-fighting on the ugly mine-riddled stretch between Loos and Hulluch.  It was when we were marching out from broken houses about the minehead at Annequin that we first met again our old stable companions, the Royal Irish—­and that I first saw Willie Redmond in France at the head of his company.