the Review
wears off."

"I suppose it will be all right," said Moyne, again.

It was all right. An announcement was made in all the leading papers
that no one had ever intended to hold a Review on the 12th of July,
but that the Unionist leaders had expressed their unalterable
determination to have a March Past. The Liberal papers said that this
abandonment of the principal item on their programme showed more
distinctly than ever that the Ulster Unionists were merely swaggering
cowards who retreated before the firm front showed by the Government
in face of their arrogant claims. The Unionist papers said that
Belfast by insisting on the essential thing while displaying a
magnanimous disregard for the accidental nomenclature, had
demonstrated once and for ever the impossibility of passing the Home
Rule Bill.

A few days later my name appeared amongst those of other gentlemen who
intended to take seats on the platform in Belfast. The Unionist papers
welcomed the entry into public life of a peer of my well-known
intellectual powers and widely recognized moderation. The Liberal
papers said that the emptiness of Ulster's opposition to Home Rule
might be gauged by the fact that it had welcomed the support of a
dilettante lordling.

CHAPTER XII

Our meeting on the 12th of July was held in the Botanic Gardens, and
nobody marched past anything. A platform, not unlike the Grand Stand
at a country race meeting, was built on the top of a long slope of
grass. At the bottom of the slope was a level space, devoted at
ordinary times to tennis-courts. Beyond that the ground sloped up
again. The botanists who owned the gardens must, I imagine, have
regretted that our meeting was a splendid success. I did not see their
grounds afterwards, but there cannot possibly have been much grass
left. The poor tennis-players must have been cut off from their game
for the rest of the summer. The space in front of the platform was
packed with men, and the air was heavy with the peculiarly pungent
smell of orange peel. I cannot imagine how any one in the crowd
managed to peel an orange. The men seemed to be so tightly packed as
to make the smallest movement impossible. Possibly the oranges were
deliberately peeled beforehand by the organizers of the meeting with a
view to creating the proper atmosphere for the meeting. There
certainly is a connection between the smell of oranges and political
enthusiasm. I felt a wave of strong feeling co