pleasure some talk over a dinner-table with this or that famous
soldier--Sir John French (as he then was), for instance. It was
happiness for him to find himself on friendly terms with the service to
which so many sentiments bound him. The Curragh incident was to him more
than a grave political event; it pained him beyond measure that this
opposition should be headed by a representative of one of the Irish
families most famous for their military record. In the debates which
dealt with all this matter he said no word, and he kept our party
silent--a wise course, and one to which every instinct prompted him.

In its political aspect, this action of General Gough and the fifty
officers allied with him revealed a new and formidable impediment on the
path to Home Rule; yet it was one of those barriers which rally forces
rather than weaken them, and in surmounting which, or sweeping them
aside, a new impetus may be gained. The incident was first discussed in
the House on Monday, March 23rd, and continued to dominate all other
questions for several days. From the Labour benches Mr. John Ward (now
Colonel), who had been a private soldier, gave the first indication of
the volume of resentment. His speech, remarkable in its power both of
phrasing and of thought, was delivered quite unexpectedly in a thin
House; but its effect was electrical. Later, Mr. J.H. Thomas spoke in
the same strain. When a railway strike was threatened, the soldiers had
been called out and had come without a murmur. Was the Army to be used
against all movements except those under the patronage of the Tory
party? If so, he would tell his four hundred thousand railway men to
equip themselves to defend their own interests.

These speeches set people thinking very gravely, but their effect was to
increase the confidence of Home Rulers--the more so as Sir Edward Grey,
in one of his rare moments of emphasis, declared his determination to go