f Ireland, deeply involved in Covenanting politics. My own company
commander was a very gallant little Dublin barrister, who, before the
war, had exerted on English platforms against Home Rule the gift of racy
eloquence which he now devoted to recruiting. Not half a dozen of the
subalterns would have described themselves as Nationalists.

It is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was
represented, to the outside public of Ireland. From the inside, one
thing was clear. In our battalion every man desired the success of the
Division, and more particularly of the Connaught Rangers, absolutely
with a whole heart. Anything said or done that could have offended the
men--practically all Catholic and Nationalist--would have drawn the most
condign chastisement from our commanding officer. I never heard of any
man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its
colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it. There was very little
political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question
how far Redmond might be held to speak for Ireland. So far as Redmond
himself was concerned, I think there were few, if any, who did not count
it an honour to meet him--and some who had never been won to him before
were won to him for his brother's sake.

Looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself
in that society. I do not know one survivor of those men who does not
desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom
they led. In not a few cases one might put the change higher; some
opinions as to what was good for Ireland were profoundly affected.

Yet this also is true. The atmosphere of the mess was one in which
Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger. He had lived all his
life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief. Knowing the other side
in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men
he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were
political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in
agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the
atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which
every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never
really was himself. He was only himself with the men.

In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a
counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that
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