ading article that "the crisis, the approach of which
Ministers affect to treat with unconcern, is already causing uneasiness
and apprehension in the public Services, and especially in the Army....
It is notorious that some officers have already begun to speak of
sending in their papers." Lord Roberts had uttered a significant warning
in the House of Lords not long before the incident at the Curragh.
Colonel Seely himself had been made aware of it in the previous December
when he signed a War Office Memorandum on the subject[82]; and, indeed,
no officer could fail to be aware of it who had ever been quartered in
Ireland.

Nor was it surprising that this sympathy should manifest itself. No one
is quicker to appreciate the difference between loyalty and disloyalty
than the soldier. There were few regiments in the Army that had not
learnt by experience that the King's uniform was constantly insulted in
Nationalist Ireland, and as invariably welcomed and honoured in Ulster.
In the vote of censure debate on the 19th of March Mr. Cave quoted an
Irish newspaper, which had described the British Army as "the most
immoral and degraded force in Europe," and warned Irishmen that, by
joining it, all they would get was "a red coat, a dishonoured name, a
besmirched character." On the other hand, the very troops who were sent
North from the Curragh against the advice of Sir Arthur Paget, to
provoke "the Ulsterites to shed the first blood," had, as the
Commander-in-Chief reported, "everywhere a good reception."[83]

The welcoming cheers at Holywood and Carrickfergus and Armagh were
probably a pleasant novelty to men fresh from the Curragh or Fermoy.
Even in Belfast itself the contrast was brought home to troops quartered
in Victoria Barracks, all of whom were well aware that on the death of a
comrade his coffin would have to be borne by a roundabout route to the
cemetery, to avoid the Nationalist quarter of the city where a military
funeral would be exposed to insult.

Such experiences, as they harden into traditions, sink deep into the
consciousness of an Army and breed sentiments that are not easily
eradicated. Soldiers ought, of course, to have no politics; but when it
appeared that they might be called upon to open fire on those whom they
had always counted "on our side," in order to subject them forcibly to
men who hated the sight of a British flag and were always ready to spit
upon it, human nature asserted itself. And the incid