But illness prevented him from attending when at last the delegates were received by the Prime Minister on February 13th.
On the 5th he had asked a question in Parliament--the last he was to ask there.

It concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of aircraft in Dublin--one of the things for which he was pressing in his ceaseless effort to bring Ireland some industrial advantage from the war.

I saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the House, and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by Sinn Feiners, in which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the aerodromes near Dublin which he had helped to establish.

But the main thing he had to say concerned the course of the Convention.

Everything, in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but ruin and chaos.
He spoke of his health.