To arm Irishmen against each other was of all possible courses to him the most hateful.

It opened a vision of fratricidal strife, of an Ireland divided against itself by new and bloody memories.
Moreover, though he had, as the world came to know, soldiering in his blood--though the call to war, when he counted the war righteous, stirred what was deepest in him--by training and conviction he was essentially a constitutionalist: he realized profoundly how strong were the forces behind constitutionalism in Great Britain, how impregnable was the position of British Ministers if they boldly asserted the law with equality as between man and man.

Where he was mistaken was in his estimate of the Government with which he had to deal, and especially of Mr.Asquith.Speaking to his constituents early in the New Year of 1914 he said, "The Prime Minister is as firm as a rock, and is, I believe, the strongest and sanest man who has appeared in British politics in our time." The verdict of history might have borne out this judgment had Mr.
Asquith never been forced to face extraordinary times.

In the event, it was Mr.Asquith's lack of firmness and failure in strength which drove Redmond into belated acceptance of a policy modelled on Sir Edward Carson's.
As early as July 1913 the demonstrations in Ulster led to discussion of a countermove among young men in Dublin.

But there was no public proposal, until at the end of October Professor MacNeill, Vice-President of the Gaelic League, published an article in the League's official organ calling on Nationalist Ireland to drill and arm.