The example which he set was plain to all.

He joined in singing "God save the King," in drinking the King's health, and at Aughavanagh now he flew the Union Jack beside the Green flag.

He was willing to take part in any demonstration which implied that Nationalist Ireland under its new legal status accepted its lot in the British Empire fully and without reserve.
It was superfluous for him to argue that Nationalists might consistently take the oath of allegiance when Nationalists were pledging their lives in the King's service beside every other kind of citizen in the British Empire.

Over and above his own example was the example of his brother and his son.

On November 23rd Willie Redmond addressed a great meeting in Cork and told them, "I won't say to you go, but come with me." He was then fifty-three--and for most men it would have been "too late a week." But no man was ever more instinctively a soldier, and to soldiering he had gone by instinct as a boy.