Law, and his speech was furious. "In consequence of the trifling with
this subject by the Prime Minister and the provocation, which he has
endorsed, by the First Lord of the Admiralty last Saturday, I feel I
ought not to be here but in Belfast," he said; and he indicated his
intention of proceeding there as soon as he had spoken. What he had to
say chiefly concerned the Army, and the preparations which were being
made at the War Office for the despatch of troops to Ulster. He
suggested that there was the intention to provoke an attack so that
there might be "pretext for putting them down."

"You will be all right. You will be no longer cowards. The cowardice
will have been given up. You will have become men in entrenching
yourselves behind the Army. But under your direction they will have
become assassins."

With these words--memorable in connection with what happened later, but
not in Ulster--the Ulster leader left the House, followed by Captain
Craig. Friday's papers were of course full of the debate. At noon on
that day, March 20, 1914, General Sir Arthur Paget, Commander-in-Chief
in Ireland, held a meeting with the officers at the Curragh and received
the intimation that the majority of them would resign their commissions
rather than go on duty which was likely to involve a collision with
Ulster.

It seems only fair in dealing with this whole incident to print here an
account of what happened, written from the soldier's point of view, by
the man who was the spokesman and leader of the resigning
officers--Brigadier (now Lieutenant) General Sir Hubert Gough.[2]

'"I never refused to obey orders. On the contrary, I obeyed them. I