[Footnote 2: _Manchester Guardian_, February 4, 1919]
The week which began on Monday, July 27th, was feverish and excited. Formal discussion on the occurrences at Clontarf and Bachelor's Walk was confined to the Monday; but each day had a stormy scene during question-time arising out of it. The Amending Bill from the Lords was to have been taken on Tuesday, but Mr. Asquith postponed it till Thursday, to get a calmer atmosphere. When Thursday came, it was postponed again and indefinitely. "We meet," said the Prime Minister, "under conditions of gravity which are almost unparalleled in the experience of any one of us." It was therefore necessary to "present a united front and be able to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation." To continue the Home Rule discussion must involve the House in acute controversy in regard to "domestic differences whose importance to ourselves no one in any quarter of the House is disposed to disparage or belittle."
The Leader of the Opposition assented. Two sentences in his speech have importance. The first laid it down that this postponement should not "in any way prejudice the interests of any of the parties to the controversy." The second indicated that he spoke not only for the Unionist party but for Ulster.
It is very difficult now, after all that has crowded in upon us, jading the sensitive recipient surface of memory, to reconstitute the frame of mind in which we passed those days. One thing I clearly remember, perhaps worth noting for its significance. In a division lobby, probably on the Wednesday night, I came in touch with a friend, then a subordinate member of the Government, who had been among the keenest advocates of our cause. I asked how he thought things were going. My question had reference to our affairs, which had been for so many months the dominant issue; but he answered with reference to the European situation, as if that alone existed. Looking back, it seems to me strange that one should have been so engrossed in any preoccupation as in reality to ignore the vast and imminent possibilities. Yet, after all, I believe my case was typical of many. For us Irish, this was the crucial point, the climax of a struggle which had been intense and continuous now for a period of four years--which in its wider sense had gone on, with ebb and flow, yet always in progress during the whole adult lifetime of our leader and his principal colleagues. For more than us, for scores of Labour men and Liberals, it had become almost a fixed belief that European war was only a nightmare of the imagination. War in the Balkans, war possibly in the East of Europe, we could think of; but war flinging the complex organization, so potent yet so delicate, of great and fully civilized States into the melting-pot--that we never really believed in. Prophets of finance, prophets of the labour world, had told us the thing was impossible. Even our most recent experience, the irruption of armed forces into the political arena, had contributed to fix in our minds the view that all armaments were merely _in terrorem_, part of a gigantic game of bluff.