Labour benches Mr. John Ward (now Colonel), who had been a private soldier, gave the first indication of the volume of resentment.  His speech, remarkable in its power both of phrasing and of thought, was delivered quite unexpectedly in a thin House; but its effect was electrical.  Later, Mr. J.H.  Thomas spoke in the same strain.  When a railway strike was threatened, the soldiers had been called out and had come without a murmur.  Was the Army to be used against all movements except those under the patronage of the Tory party?  If so, he would tell his four hundred thousand railway men to equip themselves to defend their own interests.

These speeches set people thinking very gravely, but their effect was to increase the confidence of Home Rulers—­the more so as Sir Edward Grey, in one of his rare moments of emphasis, declared his determination to go as far as either speaker if the case which they foreshadowed should arise.  But new occurrences disquieted the public; the bungling which had characterized dealings with the officers at the Curragh was not ended there.  General Gough received a document from Colonel Seely, Secretary of State for War, countersigned by Sir John French and Sir Spencer Ewart, the military heads of the War Office; and this document was in part disavowed by the Cabinet.  The two Generals resigned and Colonel Seely followed their example.  I have never seen the House of Commons so completely surprised as on the afternoon when the Prime Minister announced that he himself would succeed to the vacant office.  The surprise passed at once into a feeling of immense relief, very widely shared by all parties.  The right thing had been done in the right way, and it was clear that Mr. Asquith possessed enormous authority, if he chose to assert it.

The effect of all these happenings was immediately perceptible in the resumed discussion on the Home Rule Bill.  Mr. Dillon, speaking on the second day, said:  “Yesterday for the first time I heard this question debated in a spirit of reasonableness and conciliation and with an evident desire on both sides to reach an agreement.”  A proposal frequently put forward from the Tory side suggested exclusion until a federal arrangement for the United Kingdom could be completed.  The official Tory demand was for either a referendum or a general election.  But, as Redmond pointed out when he spoke on the fourth and last day of the debate, any proposal for a settlement must be a settlement which Ulster would accept, and Ulster declared that it would not be influenced by any vote of the British people or by any Act of Parliament.  In a passage of very genuine feeling he indicated what Ulster might do to assist him in securing for Ulster the extremest limit of concession: