As I gathered, the eight members sat four on each side of a long table, with the Speaker at the head. The Irish leaders were on his right and left, and the discussion was chiefly between them.
It turned mainly on the question of the area to be excluded. Enormous trouble had been taken, and Redmond told me later that a great map in relief had been constructed, showing the distribution of Protestant and Catholic population. This brought out with astonishing vividness the contrast: the Catholics were on the mountains and hill-tops, the Protestants down along the valley lands.
Nothing could be more cordial, Redmond said, than Sir Edward Carson's manner to him. They met as old friends, and I believe that when they parted, one asked the other that they should have "one good shake-hands for the sake of old times on the Munster circuit." But it was clearly recognized that there was a point beyond which neither of them could take his followers, and these points could not be brought to meet. Even if adjustment had been possible on the question of time-limit, neither would give up the debatable counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, in which the Nationalists had a clear though small majority of the population, but in which the Ulster Volunteer organization was very strong. On Friday, July 24th, Mr. Asquith announced the failure of the attempt. "The possibility of defining an area for exclusion from the operation of the Government of Ireland Bill was considered, and the Conference being unable to agree either in principle or in detail on such an area, it concluded."
An incident which did not lack significance was that on the second day of these meetings Redmond, returning with Mr. Dillon along Birdcage Walk to the House, was recognized by some Irish Guards in the barracks, who raised a cheer for the Nationalist leaders which ran all along the barrack square. The Army was not all disposed to take sides with Ulster and against the Nationalists.
But parts of it were. The collision between forces of the Crown and Irish Volunteers trying to land arms, which Redmond had foretold and deprecated in his letter of June 30th, was fated to occur.
On Saturday, July 25th, five thousand Ulster Volunteers, fully armed, with four machine guns--in short, an infantry brigade equipped for active service--marched through the streets of Belfast, no one interfering. On Sunday, the 26th, a private yacht sailed into Howth harbour with eleven hundred rifles on board and some boxes of ammunition. By preconcerted arrangement a body of some seven hundred Irish Volunteers had marched down to meet the yacht. These men took the rifles, and with them set out to march back in column of route to Dublin. Two thousand rounds of ammunition were with them in a truck-cart, but none was distributed.