THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES The first stir of a new movement in Nationalist Ireland outside the old political lines came from Labour--from Irish Labour, as yet unorganized and terribly in need of organization.

On August 26, 1913, a strike in Dublin began under the leadership of Mr.Larkin.It had all the violence and disorder which is characteristic of economic struggles where Labour has not yet learned to develop its strength; it opened new cleavages at this moment when national union was most necessary: it was fought with the passion of despair by workers whose scale of pay and living was a disgrace to civilization; and after five months it was not settled but scotched, leaving dark embers of revolutionary hate scattered through the capital of Ireland.
One incident showed some of the consequences ready to spring, even in England itself, from the action taken in Ulster.

Mr.Larkin at the end of October 1913 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sedition and inciting to disturbance.

A fierce outcry ran through the Labour world in Great Britain; by-elections were in progress, and Government was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for Labour and another for the Unionist party.

To this pressure Government yielded, and Mr.Larkin was liberated after a few days in jail.
But in Ireland more formidable symptoms soon made themselves manifest.
Captain J.R.White, son of Sir George White, the defender of Ladysmith, was a soldier by hereditary instinct and had won the Distinguished Service Order in South Africa.