what was adduced by opponents as quotation from his utterances in the
United States represented simply some American journalist's impression,
perhaps less of what Redmond said than of what, in the reporter's
opinion, he should have said. Those who represented him as putting one
face on the argument in America and another in Great Britain did not
know the man. "I have made it a rule," he said to me more than once, "to
say the extremest things I had to say in the House of Commons."

However, all the machinery which was employed by the opponents of Home
Rule to prejudice Ireland's case in the British constituencies proved
very ineffectual. For one thing, the lesson of South Africa had gone
home. For another, and perhaps a greater, no cause ever had a missionary
better adapted to the temperament of the British democracy. The dignity
and beauty of Redmond's eloquence, the weight which he could give to an
argument, his extraordinary gift for simplifying an issue and grouping
thoughts in large bold masses--all these things carried audiences with
them.


III

Between 1908 and 1910 we were still, though with rapidly increasing
success, trying to get a hearing for the Irish question--trying to push
it once more to the front. The change of leadership from Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman to Mr. Asquith had damped Liberal enthusiasm. We got
solid work done for Ireland in the University Act of 1908, though
Redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like
that in which he had himself been an undergraduate. A highly contentious
measure was also carried in the Land Act of 1909. But a new power was
coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts. Mr.