For them, now as always, Home Rule was the paramount consideration, and none could deny that the prospects for Home Rule were immensely improved by Redmond's action.

In these days, when an end of the conflict was expected in three months, when every check to the Germans was magnified out of all reason, there was no sense of the relative value of issues.

Everywhere in Unionist society and in the Irish Unionist Press there was ungenerous and unfriendly criticism which did much harm.
Two things could have checked these forces for evil.

The first would have been an immediate decision to make Home Rule law.

This would have put an end to the pestilent growth of suspicion among Nationalists, and it would have enabled Redmond to launch at once his appeal for soldiers.
The other would have been a decision to make good the pledge contained in the Government's message to Lord Aberdeen and to accept in some practical way the offered service of the Volunteers.
The latter of these courses involved no controversy with Ulster, and to it Redmond first addressed himself.