I have read attentively the history of the Great Home Rule Crisis of 1886; and it seems to me that much injury might have been saved the Liberal Party, if all those who viewed the Home Rule policy of Mr. Gladstone with distrust and suspicion had taken the very earliest opportunity after its inception, of protesting against it in the most emphatic manner.

It contains their most treasonable utterances during the Home Rule Crisis immediately preceding the outbreak of war.

There is cynicism among the Catholics, who rightly feel that they have been discriminated against over the years, and among the Protestants who, from the Home Rule Crisis of 1886, when they removed themselves from the main stream of British politics, to the partition of 1920, when Austin Chamberlain hoped for a union in Ireland, with their suspicions, however wrong, of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, have been worried that they will bemarginalised and nudged out of the United Kingdom.

The period in question commences with the signing of the Ulster covenant in 1912 and the Home Rule Crisis; covers the period of the first world war, from 1914 to 1918, including the battle of the Somme in 1916 and the Easter rising in the same year; and culminates in the events to which I have referred regarding the partition of Ireland.