They were, it is true, but "half-baked" levies, with more zeal than knowledge of military duties.

But competent critics--and there were many such amongst the visitors--praised their bearing and physique and the creditable measure of discipline they had already acquired.

And it must be remembered that in September 1912 the Ulster Volunteer Force was still in its infancy.

In the following two years its improvement in efficiency was very marked; and within three years of the time when its battalions paraded before Sir Edward Carson, with dummy rifles, and marched before him to his meetings in Lisburn, Newtownards, Enniskillen, and Belfast on the eve of the Covenant, those same men had gloriously fought against the flower of the Prussian Army, and many of them had fallen in the battle of the Somme.
The final meeting in the Ulster Hall on Friday the 27th of September was an impressive climax to the tour.

Many English journalists and other visitors were present, and some of them admitted that, in spite of all they had heard of what an Ulster Hall meeting was like, they were astonished by the soul-stirring fervour they witnessed, and especially by the wonderful spectacle presented at the overflow meeting in the street outside, which was packed as far as the eye could reach in either direction with upturned faces, eager to catch the words addressed to them from a platform erected for the speakers outside an upper window of the building.[36] Messages of sympathy and approval at this supreme moment were read from Mr.Bonar Law and Lord Lansdowne, Mr.Long, Mr.Balfour, and Mr.Austen Chamberlain.