The speeches delivered by their leader and others were merely a vent for that emotion. There was nothing that could be said about their cause that they did not know already; but all felt that the heart of the matter was touched--the whole situation, so far as they were concerned, summed up in a single sentence of Carson's speech: "We will take deliberately a step forward, not in defiance but in defence; and the Covenant which we will most willingly sign to-morrow will be a great step forward, in no spirit of aggression, in no spirit of ascendancy, but with a full knowledge that, if necessary, you and I--you trusting me, and I trusting you--will follow out everything that this Covenant means to the very end, whatever the consequences." Every man and woman who heard these words was filled with an exalted sense of the solemnity of the occasion. The mental atmosphere was not that of a political meeting, but of a religious service--and, in fact, the proceedings had been opened by prayer, as had become the invariable custom on such occasions in Ulster. It was felt to be a time of individual preparation for the _Sacramentum_ of the following day, which Protestant Ulster had set apart as a day of self-dedication to a cause for which they were willing to make any sacrifice.
[29] See Sir B. Carson's speech in _Belfast Newsletter_, September 24th, 1912.
[34] _The Daily Telegraph_, September 25th, 1912.
[35] _Belfast Newsletter_, September 24th, 1912.
[36] The article which appeared on the following Sunday in _The Observer_, showed how profoundly a distinguished London editor and writer had been moved by what he saw in Belfast.
Ulster Day, Saturday the 28th of September, 1912, was kept as a day of religious observance by the Northern Loyalists. So far as the Protestants of all denominations were concerned, Ulster was a province at prayer on that memorable Saturday morning. In Belfast, not only the services which had more or less of an official character--those held in the Cathedral, in the Ulster Hall, in the Assembly Hall--but those held in nearly all the places of worship in the city, were crowded with reverent worshippers. It was the same throughout the country towns and rural districts--there was hardly a village or hamlet where the parish church and the Presbyterian and Methodist meeting-houses were not attended by congregations of unwonted numbers and fervour. Not that there was any of the religious excitement such as accompanies revivalist meetings; it was simply that a population, naturally religious-minded, turned instinctively to divine worship as the fitting expression of common emotion at a moment of critical gravity in their history. "One noteworthy feature," commented upon by one of the English newspaper correspondents in a despatch telegraphed during the day, "is the silence of the great shipyards. In these vast industrial establishments on both sides of the river, 25,000 men were at work yesterday performing their task at the highest possible pressure, for the order-books of both firms are full of orders. Now there is not the sound of a hammer; all is as silent as the grave. The splendid craftsmen who build the largest ships in the world have donned their Sunday clothes, and, with Unionist buttons on the lapels of their coats, or Orange sashes on their shoulders, are about to engage on what to them is an even more important task." He also noticed that although the streets were crowded there was no excitement, for "the average Ulsterman performs his religious and political duties with calm sobriety. He has no time to-day for mirth or merriment, for every minute is devoted to proving that he is still the same man--devoted to the Empire, to the King, and Constitution."[37]