CHAPTER XVI.
THE CURRAGH INCIDENT When Mr.Bonar Law moved the vote of censure on the Government on the 19th of March he had no idea that the Cabinet had secretly taken in hand an enterprise which, had it been known, would have furnished infinitely stronger grounds for their impeachment than anything relating to their "proposals" for amending the Home Rule Bill.

It was an enterprise that, when it did become known, very nearly brought about their fall from power.
The whole truth about the famous "Curragh Incident" has never been ascertained, and the answers given by the Ministers chiefly concerned, under cross-examination in the House of Commons, were so evasive and in several instances so contradictory as to make it certain that they were exceedingly anxious that the truth should be concealed.

But when the available evidence is pieced together it leads almost irresistibly to the conclusion that in March 1914 the Cabinet, or at any rate some of the most prominent members of it, decided to make an imposing demonstration of military force against Ulster, and that they expected, if they did not hope, that this operation would goad the Ulstermen into a clash with the forces of the Crown, which, by putting them morally in the wrong, would deprive them of the popular sympathy they enjoyed in so large and increasing a measure.
When Mr.Churchill spoke at Bradford on the 14th of March of "putting these grave matters to the proof" he was already deeply involved in what came to be known as "the plot against Ulster," to which his words were doubtless an allusion.

That plot may perhaps have originated at Mr.
Lloyd George's breakfast-table on the 11th, when he entertained Mr.
Redmond, Mr.Dillon, Mr.Devlin, Mr.O'Connor, and the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr.Birrell; for on the same day it was decided to send a squadron of battleships with attendant cruisers and destroyers from the coast of Spain to Lamlash, in the Isle of Arran, opposite Belfast Lough; and a sub-committee of the Cabinet, consisting of Lord Crewe, Mr.
Churchill, Colonel Seely, Mr.Birrell, and Sir John Simon, was appointed to deal with affairs connected with Ulster.

This sub-committee held its first meeting the following day, and the next was the date of Mr.
Churchill's threatening speech at Bradford, with its reference to the prospect of bloodshed and of putting grave matters to the proof.