great army. Under what circumstances you have to come into action, you
must leave with us. There are matters which give us grave consideration
which we cannot and ought not to talk about in public. You must trust us
that we will select the most opportune methods of, if necessary, taking
on ourselves the whole government of the community in which we live. I
know a great deal of that will involve statutory illegality, but it will
also involve much righteousness."

Some of the questions which needed grave consideration were suggested by
happenings that followed hard on this speech. Much ridicule had been
poured on the drillings with dummy muskets. Ulster evidently decided to
push the matter a step further. A consignment of one thousand rifles
with bayonets, in cases marked "electrical fittings," was seized at
Belfast on June 3, 1913. Other incidents of the same nature followed. It
was argued, by those who sought to represent the whole campaign as an
elaborate piece of bluff, that the weapons were useless and that they
were deliberately sent to be seized. A feature which scarcely bore out
this view was that one consignment was addressed to the Lord-Lieutenant
of an Ulster county who was also an officer in the Army. A justice of
the peace, or an officer, to whom a consignment of arms had been sent
for a Nationalist organization would have been ordered to clear himself
in the fullest way of complicity, and even of sympathy, or he would have
forfeited his commission. The noble-man involved, however, made no
explanation, and was probably never officially asked to do so.

It was commonly believed in the House of Commons that at some point, if
not repeatedly, Government consulted the Irish leader or his principal
advisers as to whether measures of repression should be undertaken
against Ulster. No such consultation took place. But the opinion
prevailing among the leading Nationalists was no doubt known or