The intimation was not at once accepted.  An order was issued calling on the Volunteers to elect additional representatives by counties to be added to the Committee.  Redmond at once publicly declared that this amounted to refusal of his offer, and he put the issue very plainly.  The Provisional Committee was originally self-constituted and had been increased only by co-option.  The majority of its members, he was informed, were not supporters of the Irish party:  of the rank and file at least 95 per cent., he said, were supporters of the Irish party and its policy.

“This is a condition of things which plainly cannot continue.  The rank and file of the Volunteers and the responsible leaders of the Irish people are entitled, and indeed are bound, to demand some security that an attempt shall not be made in the name of the Volunteers to dictate policy to the National party who, as the elected representatives of the people, are charged with the responsibility of deciding upon the policy best calculated to bring the National movement to success.

“Moreover, a military organization is of its very nature so grave and serious an undertaking that every responsible Nationalist in the country who supports it is entitled to the most substantial guarantees against any possible imprudence.  The best guarantee to be found is clearly the presence on the Governing Body of men of proved judgment and steadiness.”

As a last word he renewed his threat of calling on his supporters to organize separate county committees independent of the Dublin centre.  This was carrying matters with a high hand, and the fact that he succeeded proves the greatness of his prestige at the moment.  The Committee in a published manifesto accepted his terms, but accepted them with declared regret, and eight of the original members seceded.  Among them was Patrick Pearse, with whom went three others who suffered death in Easter week two years later.

All this was a disastrous business, and the worst part of it lay in the public avowal of divided councils.  Moreover, a committee so constituted could not, and did not, operate efficiently.  The original members were primarily interested in the Volunteer Force; the added ones primarily in the parliamentary movement.  Nearly all of the latter—­selected for their “proved judgment and steadiness”—­were men past middle age; and of the whole twenty-five Willie Redmond alone subsequently bore arms.

There was indeed an underlying difference of principle.  Redmond knew well, and all parliamentarians with him, that under the terms of the Home Rule Bill no army could be raised or maintained in Ireland without the consent of the Imperial Parliament.  The original Volunteer Committee laid it down as an axiom that the Volunteer Force should be permanent; they were, as Casement put it, “the beginning of an Irish army.”  Sir Edward Carson’s policy had produced a new mentality among Irish Nationalists, and it made many take Redmond’s constitutionalism for timidity.