The conditions seem to me to be exceptionally favorable for the purpose.  We have of late been witnessing here in Ireland a spontaneous enrollment and organization in all parts of the country of bodies of volunteers.  I say nothing—­for I wish tonight to avoid trespassing upon even a square inch of controversial ground—­I say nothing of the causes or motives which brought them originally into existence, [laughter,] and have fostered their growth and strength.  I will only say—­and this is my nearest approach to politics tonight—­that there are two things which to my mind have become unthinkable.  The first is that one section of Irishmen are going to fight. [Loud cheers.] The second is that Great Britain is going to fight either. [Renewed cheers.] Speaking here in Dublin, I may perhaps address myself for a moment particularly to the National Volunteers, and I am going to ask them all over Ireland—­not only them, but I make the appeal to them particularly—­to contribute with promptitude and enthusiasm a large and worthy contingent of recruits to the second new army of half a million, which is growing up as it were out of the ground. [Cheers.] I should like to see, and we all want to see, an Irish brigade, [cheers,] or, better still, an Irish army corps. [Loud cheers.] Do not let them be afraid that by joining the colors they will lose their identity and become absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or, what is perhaps equally repugnant, be artificially redistributed in units which have no national cohesion or character.  We wish to the utmost limit that military exigencies will allow that men who have been already associated in this or that district in training and in common exercises should be kept together and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them. ["Hear, hear!”] And of one thing further I am sure.  We are in urgent need of competent officers, and we think that if the officers now engaged in training these men are proved equal to the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly and gratefully retained.  I repeat that the empire needs recruits, and needs them at once, that they may be fully trained and equipped in time to take their part in what may well be the decisive fields of the greatest struggle in the history of the world.  That is our immediate necessity, and no Irishman in responding to it need be afraid that he is prejudicing the future of the volunteers. [Cheers.] I do not say, and I can not say, under what precise form or organization, but I trust and believe, and indeed I am certain, that the volunteers will become a permanent part, an integral and a characteristic part, of the defensive forces of the Crown. [Cheers.] I have only one more thing to say to you. [Cries of “Go on.”] If our need is great your opportunity is also great. [Cheers.] The call which I am making is, as you know well, backed by the sympathy of your fellow-Irishmen in all parts of the empire and the world.  Old animosities