Then McNeice got us all back to practical business in a way that would have delighted Cahoon. McNeice, though he does live in Dublin, has good Belfast blood in his veins. He likes his heroics to be put on a business basis. The immediate and most pressing problem, he reminded us, was to secure as large a circulation as possible for _The Loyalist_.
"You get the paper into the people's hands," he said to Malcolmson, "and we'll get the ideas into their heads."
Malcolmson, who is certainly prepared to make sacrifices in a good cause, offered to hire a man with a motorcycle to distribute the paper from house to house over a wide district.
"I know the exact man we want," he said. "He knows every house in County Antrim, and the people like him. He's been distributing Bibles and selling illuminated texts among the farmers and labourers for years. He's what's called a colporteur. That," he turned to O'Donovan with his explanation, "is a kind of Scripture reader, you know."
If any one in the world except Malcolmson had suggested the employment of a Scripture reader for the distribution of _The Loyalist_, I should have applauded a remarkable piece of cynicism. But Malcolmson was in simple earnest.
"Will you be able to get him?" I said. "The society which employs him may perhaps--"
"Oh, that will be all right," said Malcolmson. "There can't be any objection. But if there is--I happen to be a member of the committee of the society. I'm one"--he sunk his voice modestly--"of the largest subscribers."
I am inclined to forget sometimes that Malcolmson takes a leading part in Church affairs. At the last meeting of the General Synod of the Church of Ireland he said that the distribution of the Bible among the people of Ireland was the surest means of quenching the desire for Home Rule. Free copies of _The Loyalist_ for the people who already have Bibles and a force of artillery are, so to speak, his reserves.
The 12th of July, was, of course, indicated by nature itself as a day in every way suitable for a great Unionist demonstration. Babberly and Lady Moyne were not the people to neglect an opportunity. They organized a demonstration. Then somebody--I think it must have been McNeice in the pages of _The Loyalist_--suggested that the thing should be called a review and not a demonstration. Malcolmson took the idea up warmly and forced Babberly's hand. English journalists of the Conservative kind--journalists of every kind swarmed over Belfast for a week beforehand--were delighted and trumpetted the thing as a review. Liberal journalists lost their tempers--the clever ones losing theirs most hopelessly--and abused the Orangemen in finely pointed paradoxical epigrams, which I dare say excited the admiration of sentimental Nationalists in Chelsea, but had not the smallest effect of any kind on the people of Belfast. They, just then, had no leisure time to spend in reading epigrams, and never at any time appreciated paradox. An English statesman of great ability announced to the world at large that a demonstration was one thing, and a review was quite a different thing. He went no further than to point out the fact that there was a distinction between the two things; but everybody understood that a demonstration was, in his opinion, quite harmless, whereas a review might end in getting somebody into trouble.