here are a number of contributory causes, which lately have created
antipathy to constitutional methods and tended to increase in numbers.
First--growing doubts about the actual advent of Home Rule. If the Home
Rule Bill had not been placed on the Statute Book there must have been
in Ireland and the United States a great and dangerous explosion of
rage and disappointment, which when the war broke out would have assumed
the most alarming proportions in Ireland. All (outside parts of Ulster)
would have joined hands, whilst our reports from Washington tell us what
the effect in America would have been. Still, even with Home Rule on the
Statute Book, the chance of its ever becoming a fact was so uncertain,
the outstanding difficulty about Ulster was so obvious, and the details
of the measure itself were so unattractive and difficult to transmute
into telling platform phrases, that Home Rule as an emotional flag fell
out of daily use in current Irish life. People left off talking about it
or waving it in the air.

"Second, in Ireland, whenever Constitutional and Parliamentary procedure
cease to be of absorbing influence, other men, other methods, other
thoughts, before somewhat harshly snubbed, come rapidly to the surface,
and secure attention, sympathy, and support. The sneers of the
O'Brienites, the daily naggings in the Dublin _Irish Independent_, also
contributed to the partial eclipse of Home Rule, and this eclipse
foretold danger."

Another point is worth noting in this connection, and that was the
growing power, first of the Coalition and then of the Unionist clique
who were capturing it. Thus says Mr. Birrell:--

"The Coalition Government, with Sir Edward Carson in it--it is
impossible to describe or overestimate the effect of this in Ireland.
The fact that Mr. Redmond could, had he chosen to do so, have sat in the
same Cabinet with Sir Edward Carson had no mollifying influence. If Mr.
Redmond had consented, he would, on the instant, have ceased to be an
Irish leader. This step seemed to make an end of Home Rule, and
strengthened the Sinn Feiners enormously all over the country."

A general desire for peace and a sort of Socialistic feeling of
brotherhood, I should say, were two further contributory causes.

"The prolongation of the war and its dubious end," as Mr. Birrell
observed, "turned many heads. Criticism was not of the optimistic type
prevalent in Britain, and consequently, when every event had been
thor