with another, not helpless
but, by being armed, fully able to defend themselves.

"Finally, we want to call your most serious attention to the grave and
imminent danger of a collision between Nationalists and the police in
the effort to import arms. The police in the South and West might not be
so passive as they were in the recent affair at Larne, and there might
be serious conflicts, and even loss of life, and from this day forward
every day which the proclamation is enforced as strictly as it is now
against the Nationalists brings increased danger of disastrous collision
between the police and the people."

Within a fortnight a minor incident illustrated the "unequal working"
referred to in the first of these points. General Richardson, who
commanded the Ulster Force, had issued on July 1st an order authorizing
all Ulster Volunteers to carry arms openly and to resist any attempt at
interference. In Ulster accordingly no search was ever attempted. But on
July 15th Mr. Lawrence Kettle, brother to Professor Kettle, who had from
the first been a prominent official of the Volunteers, was returning in
his motor from the electric works at the Pigeon House; he was stopped by
the police and his car searched for arms. Such an occurrence in Ulster
would have been held to justify immediate rebellion, and would have been
carefully avoided. In Dublin there was no such avoidance of provocation.

Yet the avoidance of anything which might precipitate strife was indeed
in these days most desirable. June 28th saw the murder of the Archduke
at Sarajevo. The European sky grew rapidly overcast. Days passed, and
the possibility of civil war was exchanged for the near probability of
European war which might find the British Empire divided against itself.

It was necessary in the highest interests of State for the Government to
make an effort to compose the cause of so much violent faction, which
might at any moment assume acute form. The Amending Bill, introduced in
the House of Lords with the Government's offer embodied in it, had been
altered by the Peers in a manner which Lord Morley described as
tantamount to rejection. In this shape it was to come before the House
of Commons on July 20th. But on that Monday, when the House reassembled
after the weekly holiday, the Prime Minister rose at once and announced
in tones of no ordinary solemnity that the King had thought it right to
summon representatives of parties both British and Irish