"It is miserable to see men who went out with high hearts and hopes, who have acquitted themselves so well, filled with wretchedness because their country is in an unhappy condition." He appealed for a new and genuine attempt to set all this right; and he eulogized once more with warm eloquence the conduct of the troops, Ulstermen and the rest alike.

Raw lads, who eighteen months before had never thought of seeing war, had come in before his eyes bringing prisoners by the hundreds from the most highly trained soldiery in Europe.
Man after man, when Willie Redmond had ended, rose and thanked him; but the most notable words came from Mr.Bonar Law: "His name and his action, in connection with that of the leader of his party, stand out as a landmark for all the people of this country as to what is being done by those who represent Nationalist feeling." All this increased Redmond's hopes of what might be expected from the new Premier, the representative of another small nationality, whose early days in Parliament had linked him almost more closely with Irish Nationalists than with British Liberalism.

I was on the upper bench when Mr.Lloyd George came in, amid loud cheering.

"Look at him," said Willie Redmond (his senior in the House by ten years), who sat beside me: "It seems only the other day he was sitting over here cheering like mad for the Boers; and there he is now, Prime Minister." But Mr.Lloyd George's speech, which had been deferred for several days owing to illness, was long before it came to Ireland, and then its tone was no way hopeful.

He referred back to the negotiations of June and July, with their "atmosphere of nervous suspicion and distrust, pervasive, universal, of everything and everybody." "I was drenched with suspicion of Irishmen by Englishmen and of Englishmen by Irishmen and, worst of all, of Irishmen by Irishmen.