So far as my judgment is able to go, the credit for making the Sixteenth Division what it was when we went to France belongs chiefly to the divisional general under whom we trained.
General Parsons had the gift, which appears to be rare in soldiers, of imparting ideas not merely about discipline but about the art of war; and he had an enthusiasm which communicated itself.

But these were the qualities of the soldier in his own sphere, with which Redmond had no contact.

What Redmond knew was the writer of letters which now lie before me.

Running through them all is the tone of a soldier in authority who accepts assistance from a friendly, influential, well-meaning but imperfectly instructed civilian.

There is no recognition of the fact that Redmond was the accepted leader of a Volunteer Force numbering over a hundred thousand men; no glimpse of any perception that morally, and almost officially, Redmond was the accredited head of the nation in whose name the division was being raised--a nation to which the statutory right of self-government had just been accorded.
The whole position was extraordinary.