pontaneous enrollment
and organization in all parts of the country of bodies of volunteers. I
say nothing--for I wish tonight to avoid trespassing upon even a square
inch of controversial ground--I say nothing of the causes or motives
which brought them originally into existence, [laughter,] and have
fostered their growth and strength. I will only say--and this is my
nearest approach to politics tonight--that there are two things which to
my mind have become unthinkable. The first is that one section of
Irishmen are going to fight. [Loud cheers.] The second is that Great
Britain is going to fight either. [Renewed cheers.] Speaking here in
Dublin, I may perhaps address myself for a moment particularly to the
National Volunteers, and I am going to ask them all over Ireland--not
only them, but I make the appeal to them particularly--to contribute
with promptitude and enthusiasm a large and worthy contingent of
recruits to the second new army of half a million, which is growing up
as it were out of the ground. [Cheers.] I should like to see, and we all
want to see, an Irish brigade, [cheers,] or, better still, an Irish army
corps. [Loud cheers.] Do not let them be afraid that by joining the
colors they will lose their identity and become absorbed in some
invertebrate mass, or, what is perhaps equally repugnant, be
artificially redistributed in units which have no national cohesion or
character. We wish to the utmost limit that military exigencies will
allow that men who have been already associated in this or that district
in training and in common exercises should be kept together and continue
to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them. ["Hear, hear!"]
And of one thing further I am sure. We are in urgent need of competent
officers, and we think that if the officers now engaged in training
these men are proved equal to the test, there is no fear that their
services will not be gladly and gratefully retained. I repeat that the
empire needs recruits, and needs them at once, that they may be fully
trained and equipped in time to take their part in what may well be the
decisive fields of the greatest struggle in the history of the world.
That is our immediate necessity, and no Irishman in responding to it
need be afraid that he is prejudicing the future of the volunteers.
[Cheers.] I do not say, and I can not say, under what precise form or
organization, but I trust and believe, and indeed I am certain, that the
volun