It was to this aspect of the case that Mr.Kipling gave prominence in the poem published on the day of the Balmoral meeting,[40] although no one was less prone than he to magnify a "side-show" in Imperial policy; and it was the same note that again was sounded on the eve of the Covenant by another distinguished English poet.

The general feeling of bewilderment and indignation that the only part of Ireland which had consistently upheld the British connection should now be not only thrown over by the British Government but denounced for its obstinate refusal to co-operate in a separatist movement, was finely expressed in Mr.William Watson's challenging poem, "Ulster's Reward," which appeared in _The Times_ a few days before the signing of the Covenant in Belfast: "What is the wage the faithful earn?
What is a recompense fair and meet?
Trample their fealty under your feet-- That, is a fitting and just return.
Flout them, buffet them, over them ride, Fling them aside! "Ulster is ours to mock and spurn, Ours to spit upon, ours to deride.
And let it be known and blazoned wide That this is the wage the faithful earn: Did she uphold us when others defied?
Then fling her aside.
"Where on the Earth was the like of it done In the gaze of the sun?
She had pleaded and prayed to be counted still As one of our household through good and ill, And with scorn they replied; Jeered at her loyalty, trod on her pride, Spurned her, repulsed her, Great-hearted Ulster; Flung her aside." Appreciating to the full the sympathy and support which their cause received from leading men of letters in England, it was not the fault of the Ulstermen themselves that the larger Imperial aspects of the question thus dropped into the background.

They continually strove to make Englishmen realise that far more was involved than loyal support of England's only friends in Ireland; they quoted such pronouncements as Admiral Mahan's that "it is impossible for a military man, or a statesman with appreciation of military conditions, to look at a map and not perceive that if the ambition of the Irish Separatists were realised, it would be even more threatening to the national life of Britain than the secession of the South was to that of the American Republic....

An independent Parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends"; and they showed over and over again, quoting chapter and verse from Nationalist utterances, and appealing to acknowledged facts in recent and contemporary history, that it was not to "avowed friends," but to avowed enemies, that Mr.Asquith was prepared to concede an independent Parliament.
But those were the days before the rude awakening from the dream that the world was to repose for ever in the soft wrappings of universal peace.

Questions of national defence bored Englishmen.