he had specially crossed the Channel to deliver
in person.

He reminded the audience that hitherto the promise of support to Ulster
by the Unionists of Great Britain, given long before at Blenheim, had
been coupled with the condition that, if an appeal were made to the
electorate, the Unionist Party would bow to the verdict of the country.
"But now," he went on, "after the way in which advantage has been taken
of your patriotism, I say to you, and I say it with the full authority
of our party, we give the pledge without any condition."

During the two days which he spent in Belfast Mr. Bonar Law, and other
visitors from England, paid visits to the training camps at Newcastle
and Ballykinler, where the 1st Brigade of the Ulster Division was
undergoing training for the front. Both now, and for some time to come,
there was a good deal of unworthy political jealousy of the Division,
which showed itself in a tendency to belittle the recruiting figures
from Ulster, and in sneers in the Nationalist Press at the delay in
sending to the front a body of troops whose friends had advertised their
supposed efficiency before the war. These troops were themselves
fretting to get to France; and they believed, rightly or wrongly, that
political intrigue was at work to keep them ingloriously at home, while
other Divisions, lacking their preliminary training, were receiving
preference in the supply of equipment.

One small circumstance, arising out of the conditions in which
"Kitchener's Army" had to be raised, afforded genuine enjoyment in
Ulster. Men were enlisting far more rapidly than the factories could
provide arms, uniforms, and other equipment. Rifles for teaching the
recruits to drill and manoeuvre were a long way short of requirements.
It was a great joy to the Ulstermen when the War Office borrowed their
much-ridiculed "dummy rifles" and "wooden guns," and took them to
English training camps for use by the "New Army."

But this volume is not concerned with the conduct of the Great War, nor
is it necessary to enter in detail into the controversy that arose as to
the efforts of the rest of Ireland, in comparison with those of Ulster,
to serve the Empire in the hour of need. It will be sufficient to cite
the testimony of two authorities, neither of whom can be suspected of
bias on the side of Ulster. The chronicler of the _Annual Register_
records that:

"In Ulster, as in England, the flow of recruits outran the
p