Nevertheless, the English disposition to compromise was already operating. Mr. Asquith was the last of mankind to make a quixotic stand for principle, and the most disposed to pride himself on a practical recognition of realities. His Government was in rough water. During the summer Mr. Lloyd George's transaction in Marconi shares had been magnified by partisan rancour into a crime. Much more serious was the split with Labour, which led to the loss of seat after seat at by-elections, when the allied forces which stood behind the Parliament Act attacked each other and let the Tories in. The Women's Franchise agitation was also coming to its stormiest point.
Redmond's part was one of extraordinary difficulty. The cause for which he stood was one affecting the interests of only a small minority of the total electorate concerned in the struggle which now spread over both islands. The Irish problem belonged in reality to the Victorian era; those in the British electorate whom it could stir to enthusiasm were stirred by a memory, not by a new gospel. Normally, but for the chance of Parnell's overthrow, it would have been solved in Gladstone's last years. For most Liberals, for all Labour men, the fact that it had passed beyond the sphere of argument meant a lack of driving force. It was a part of accepted Liberal orthodoxy; minds were centred rather on those social controversies in which Mr. Lloyd George was the dominant figure, and upon which opinion had not yet crystallized.
Further, the cry of Protestant liberties in danger, the cause of Protestants who conducted their arming to the accompaniment of hymns and prayer, made inevitably a searching appeal to the feelings of an island kingdom where the prejudice against Roman Catholics is more instinctive than anywhere else in the world. Looking back on it all, I marvel not at the difficulties we encountered, but at the success with which we surmounted them; and the great element in that success was Redmond's personality. His dignity, his noble eloquence, his sincerity, and the large, tolerant nature of the man, won upon the public imagination. His tact was unfailing. In all those years, under the most envenomed scrutiny, he never let slip a word that could be used to our disadvantage. This is merely a negative statement. It is truer to say that he never touched the question without raising it to the scope of great issues. Nothing petty, nothing personal came into his discourse; he so carried the national claim of Ireland that men saw in it at once the test and the justification of democracy.