The atmosphere of the mess was one in which Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger.

He had lived all his life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief.

Knowing the other side in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never really was himself.

He was only himself with the men.
In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that the other was Ulster.

No attempt was made to make it so, and General Parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal--though less fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man for his opinions or his creed.