No such step was taken.

No attempt was made to enlist Nationalists of position as patrons of the recruiting campaign.

In Catholic Nationalist districts it was the rule rather than the exception to select gentlemen of the Protestant Church, and of strong Unionist opinions, as recruiting officers.

If Catholic Nationalists had been selected as the official agents to assist in raising the Ulster Division, there would have been an outcry, and very rightly; it would have been contrary to common sense.

But the War Office, always even obsequiously ready to consider the Ulstermen's point of view, completely lacked sympathy for that of the majority in Ireland.
In some cases the choice of a man locally unpopular on public grounds afforded--to speak plainly--an excuse for those leading Nationalists who were loath to depart from all the tradition of their lifetime.