Ireland was still given over to a fury of resentment, issuing not alone in speeches but in active warlike preparation.

On Sunday, August 1st, memorial masses for the victims were held up and down the country.

In Belfast there was a parade of four thousand Irish Volunteers; and finally, at a point on the Wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in defiance of Government and its troops.

Now, forty-eight hours after these demonstrations, would the Irish leader ask his countrymen to blot from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a wound?
Would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation's feeling?
The boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated.
Redmond did not.
This is not to say that he spoke without full reflection.

He always thought far ahead; and in these tense days of waiting upon rumour, he must have pondered deeply upon all the possibilities--must have had intuition of what this opportunity, England's difficulty, might mean for Ireland.