XVI THE END: NOVEMBER 1918 TO JUNE 1919 294
Preparations for Christmas--The Divisional Fund--Characteristics of 36th Division--The End.
V THE POSITION BEFORE GERMAN ATTACK, MARCH 21ST, 1918 " 206
THE MEMORIAL TO THE 36TH (ULSTER) DIVISION AT THIEPVAL Frontispiece
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR C. H. POWELL, K.C.B. facing page 14
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR O. S. NUGENT, K.C.B., D.S.O. " " 36
MAJOR-GENERAL C. C. COFFIN, V.C., C.B., D.S.O. " " 244
THE RAISING AND TRAINING OF THE DIVISION: SEPTEMBER 1914 TO SEPTEMBER 1915
It is no rightful part of the historian of a Division in the Great War to embark upon preliminary sketches of the state of Europe or of the movements in international politics that preceded the catastrophe. If once he begin to seek for causes he must seek far. Three pistol shots fired in the narrow streets of Serajevo may be likened to an accidental spark that explodes a great charge. But the charge was long laid. War had been determined upon in Berlin. Without that accidental spark, there can be no doubt that it would shortly have been deliberately exploded by a detonator from that quarter. If the divisional historian cannot trace the laying of the charge, which had been accumulating, it may be a hundred, and certainly fifty, years, let him not begin by dealing with what were merely the final accretions. Let him begin with the beginning of the war. War was declared between this country and Germany on the 4th of August, 1914.
There are, however, certain local circumstances anterior to that declaration, which have an intimate connection with the particular Division that is the subject of this History, and so could not be omitted without robbing the latter of much of its significance. The Ulster Division was not created in a day. The roots from which it sprang went back into the troubled period before the war. Its life was a continuance of the life of an earlier legion, a legion of civilians banded together to protect themselves from the consequences of legislation which they believed would affect adversely their rights and privileges as citizens of the United Kingdom--the Ulster Volunteer Force.
The Ulster Volunteer Force, or U.V.F., as it soon came to be known the world around, was the creation of Sir Edward Carson.[1] He believed that if the Imperial Parliament were to persist in its declared intention of forcing the Protestant population of Ulster into an Irish Parliament, without its consent, the inevitable consequence would be civil war in Ireland. Unorganized resistance would be ineffective, and would beyond doubt lead to disorder and unnecessary bloodshed. That the attempt would be made appeared certain. The fate of the Government was bound up with its Home Rule Bill. A failure to carry it through would have involved instant defeat in the House of Commons, wherein the Irish Nationalist Party held the balance of power. All the signs pointed to a clash. It appeared to Sir Edward Carson that the surest defence of the political ideals of his followers lay in convincing the people of Great Britain that Protestant Ulster would fight for the preservation of liberties and traditions which it held dear, which, in its eyes, were now menaced. It was in this faith that he gave his approval to the formation of the U.V.F.