Randolph Churchill's
exhortation must be obeyed? Or were they to be compelled, because the
Cabinet had coerced the Sovereign and tricked the people by straining
the royal prerogative in a manner described by Mr. Balfour as "a gross
violation of constitutional liberty," to submit with resignation to the
government of their country by the "rebel party "--the party controlled
by clerical influence, and boasting of the identity of its aims with
those of Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet? This was the real problem in the
minds of those who flocked to Craigavon on Saturday, the 23rd of
September, 1911, to hear what proposals Sir Edward Carson had to lay
before his followers.

Craigavon was the residence of Captain James Craig, Member of Parliament
for East Down. It is a spacious country house standing on a hill above
the road leading from Belfast to Holywood, with a fine view of Belfast
Lough and the distant Antrim coast beyond the estuary. The lawn in front
of the house, sloping steeply to the shore road, forms a sort of natural
amphitheatre offering ideal conditions for out-of-door oratory to an
unlimited audience. At the meeting on the 23rd of September the platform
was erected near the crest of the hill, enabling the vast audience to
spread out fan-wise over the lower levels, where even the most distant
had the speakers clearly in view, even if many of them, owing to the
size of the gathering, were unable to hear the spoken word.

It was on this occasion that Captain Craig, by the care with which every
minute detail of the arrangements was thought out and provided for,
first gave evidence of his remarkable gift for organisation that was to
prove so invaluable to the Ulster cause in the next few years. The
greater part of the audience arrived in procession, which, starting
from the centre of the city of Belfast, took over two hours to pass a
given point, at the quick march in fours. All the Belfast Orange Lodges,
and representative detachments from the County Grand Lodges, together
with Lord Templetown's Unionist Clubs, and other organisations,
including the Women's Association, took part in the procession. But
immense numbers of people attended the meeting independently; it was
calculated that not less than a hundred thousand were present during the
delivery of Sir Edward Carson's speech, and although there must have
been very many of them who could hear nothing, the complete silence
maintained by all was a remarkable proof--