He spoke for a nation to which autonomy had been accorded by statute; he preferred men to feel for themselves rather than be asked to admit that no self-governing nation will submit voluntarily to the imposition of the blood-tax without its own most formal consent.

All that he said was, in effect: You have Ireland with you for the first time, by our assistance; do not destroy our power to continue that assistance, do not alienate Ireland.

In the counsels of the Empire his argument prevailed; and during the early months of 1916 the relations between Great Britain and Ireland were better and happier than at any time of which history holds record.

An utterance from one Irishman, and the general response to it, showed this in extraordinary degree.
Our Division, or rather two brigades of it, had detrained in France on the 19th of December; the first impression as we shook ourselves together for the march to strange billets was the sound of guns.
Scattered about in different villages lying round Bethune, our battalions passed the next two months in the usual training before we should take up our own sector of the line, and we saw little or nothing of each other.

March found us engaged, though still only attached by companies to more seasoned troops, in some rough crater-fighting on the ugly mine-riddled stretch between Loos and Hulluch.