Hayden answered, "That depends on what you are going to say." Redmond
said: "I'm going to tell them they can take all their troops out of
Ireland and we will defend the country ourselves." "In that case," said
Mr. Hayden, "you should certainly speak." Redmond leant over to Mr. T.P.
O'Connor, who sat immediately below him, and consulted him also. Mr.
O'Connor was against it. Though the war had no more enthusiastic
supporter, he thought the risk too great. It was just a week and a day
since Redmond had moved an adjournment to consider the occasion when
Government forces were turned out to disarm Irish Volunteers, and when
troops fired without order on a Dublin crowd. Ireland was still given
over to a fury of resentment, issuing not alone in speeches but in
active warlike preparation. On Sunday, August 1st, memorial masses for
the victims were held up and down the country. In Belfast there was a
parade of four thousand Irish Volunteers; and finally, at a point on the
Wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in
defiance of Government and its troops. Now, forty-eight hours after
these demonstrations, would the Irish leader ask his countrymen to blot
from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a
wound? Would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation's
feeling? The boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated.
Redmond did not.

This is not to say that he spoke without full reflection. He always
thought far ahead; and in these tense days of waiting upon rumour, he
must have pondered deeply upon all the possibilities--must have had
intuition of what this opportunity, England's difficulty, might mean for
Ireland. Other minds were on the same trail. In the Dublin papers of
that morning were two letters of moment--one of them from Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle.