t his genuine feeling--based on knowledge--for the British democracy
at home, and still more for its offshoots overseas, was unshared by his
countrymen, still aloof, still suspicious, and daily impressed by the
spectacle of those who most paraded allegiance to British Imperialism
professing a readiness to tear up the Constitution rather than allow
freedom to Ireland. Liberal statesmen did not understand that Redmond
could only justify to Ireland the part which he was taking if he won,
and that he and not they must be the judge of what Ireland would
consider a defeat. In all probability, also, they overrated his power
and that of the party which he led. They did not guess at the potency of
new forces which only in these months began to make themselves felt, and
which in the end, breaking loose from Redmond's control, undid his work.
A new phase in Irish history had begun, of which Sir Edward Carson was
the chief responsible author.

CHAPTER IV

THE RIVAL VOLUNTEER FORCES

The first stir of a new movement in Nationalist Ireland outside the old
political lines came from Labour--from Irish Labour, as yet unorganized
and terribly in need of organization. On August 26, 1913, a strike in
Dublin began under the leadership of Mr. Larkin. It had all the violence
and disorder which is characteristic of economic struggles where Labour
has not yet learned to develop its strength; it opened new cleavages at
this moment when national union was most necessary: it was fought with
the passion of despair by workers whose scale of pay and living was a
disgrace to civilization; and after five months it was not settled but
scotched, leaving dark embers of revolutionary hate scattered through
the capital of Ireland.

One incident showed some of the consequences ready to spring, even in
England itself, from the action taken in Ulster. Mr. Larkin at the end
of October 1913 was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sedition
and inciting to disturbance. A fierce outcry ran through the Labour
world in Great Britain; by-elections were in progress, and Government
was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for
the poor, one law for Labour and another for the Unionist party. To this
pressure Government yielded, and Mr. Larkin was liberated after a few
days in jail.

But in Ireland more formidable symptoms soon made themselves manifest.
Captain J.R. White, son of Sir George White, the defender of Ladysmith,
was