I fully intended to go to church on Sunday morning. I was, in fact,
waiting for Marion at the door of the hotel, when Sir Samuel
Clithering came to see me.
"I shall be so much obliged," he said, "if you will spare me a few
minutes."
I did not want to spare any minutes to Sir Samuel Clithering. In the
first place I had promised to take Marion to the cathedral. "A Parade
Service"--I quote the official title of the function--was to be held
for the benefit of the volunteers and Marion naturally wanted to see
Bob Power at the head of his men. I wanted to hear the men singing
that hymn again, and I wanted to hear what sort of sermon the
Dean--our Dean, not the Dean of the cathedral--would preach on such an
occasion. He was advertised to preach, as "Chaplain General of the
Loyalists." These were three good reasons for not giving Sir Samuel
Clithering the few minutes he demanded. I had, also, a fourth. I had
held, as I have related, previous communications with Clithering. I
suspected him of having more peerages in his pocket for distribution,
and I did not want to undertake any further negotiations like that
with Conroy. He might even--and I particularly disliked the idea--be
empowered to offer our Dean an English bishopric.
I kept this last reason to myself, but I stated the other three fully
to Sir Samuel. He seemed dissatisfied.
"Everybody's going to church," he complained. "I can't get Lord Moyne.
I can't get Babberly. I can't get Malcolmson, and it's really most
important that I should see some one. Going to church is all very
well--"
"As a leading Nonconformist," I said.
"Free Churchman," said Sir Samuel.
"I beg your pardon, Free Churchman. You ought not to object to people
going to church. I've always understood that the Free Churchmen are
honourably distinguished from other Christians by their respect for
the practice of Sunday worship."
"Of course, I don't object to people going to church. I should be
there myself if it were not that--"
He hesitated. I thought he might be searching for an appropriate text
of Scripture so I helped him.
"Your ass," I said, "has fallen into a pit, and you want--"
This was evidently not exactly the text he wanted. He seemed
astonished when I quoted it.
"Ass!" he said. "What ass?"
"The Government," I said. "It is in rather a hole, isn't it?"
"Capital," said Clithering, laughing without the smallest appearance
of mirth, "capital! I didn't catch the point for a moment, but I do
now. My ass has fallen into a pit. You put the matter in a nutshell,
Lord Kilmore. I don't mind confessing that a pit of rather an
inconvenient size does lie in front of us. I feel sure that you, as a
humane man, won't refuse your help in the charitable work of helping
to get us out."
Marion came downstairs in her best hat. It was not for nothing that
Bob Power and I and the running volunteer had struggled with her
trunk. Her frock, also, was charming.
"Your daughter," said Clithering. "Now my dear young lady, you must
spare your father to me for an hour. Affairs of state. Affairs of
state. But you'll allow me to send you to church in my car. My private
secretary is in it, and I shall tell him to see you safely to church,
to secure a seat for you--"
"The Dean has reserved seats for us," I said.
"Capital, capital. We can regard that as settled then. My private
secretary--an excellent young fellow whom I picked up at Toynbee
Hall--a student of our social problems--a man whom I'm sure you'll
like."
He conducted Marion to the door and handed her over to the private
secretary from Toynbee Hall. I resigned myself and led Clithering to a
deserted smoking-room.
"I never saw so much church-going anywhere," he said. "It's most
remarkable. I don't think the Government quite appreciates--"
As a matter of fact the percentage of church-going men on that
particular Sunday was considerably over the average. On the other hand
there were much fewer women than usual. Every church of every
Protestant denomination was holding a "Parade Service" for volunteers,
and most of the women who tried to get in had to be turned away from
the doors. I thought it well to rub the facts in a little.
"Rack-renting landlords," I said. "Sweating capitalists, and clergymen
whose churches are empty because their congregations are tired of
hearing them curse the Pope!"
"Eh?" said Clithering, "what's that? what's that?"
"Only a quotation," I said. "I forget if it was a Cabinet Minister--"
"Not at all," said Clithering. "I recollect the words now. It was one
of the Irish Members. No Cabinet Minister would dream of saying such
things. We have a high sense of the importance of the Ulster problem.
Nothing, I assure you, is further from our minds than the desire to
minimize or treat with undue flippancy the conscientious objections,
even the somewhat unreasonable fears of men whom we recognize as--"
Clithering paused. I had not anything particular to say, so I waited
for him to begin again.
"I understand," he said, "that a meeting of the Unionist Defence
Committee is to be held this afternoon."
"Yes," I said. "I'm going to it. I'm not really a member of the
committee, at least I wasn't until yesterday; but--"
"I quite understand, quite understand. In fact--speaking now in the
strictest confidence--I may say that the suggestion to add your name
to the committee was made--well it was made to Lady Moyne by a very
important person. It was generally recognized that a man of your
well-known moderation--"
I was beginning to dislike being called a man of moderation nearly as
much as I disliked being called a Liberal.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"The situation--the very difficult and distressing situation is this,"
said Clithering, "stated roughly it is this. The Government has
proclaimed to-morrow's meeting."
"That," I said, "is the pit into which--I don't want to be
offensive--I'll say, your ox has fallen."
"And the town is full of troops and police. Any attempt to hold the
meeting can only result in bloodshed, deplorable bloodshed, the lives
of men and women, innocent women sacrificed."
"The strength of Babberly's position," I said, "is that he doesn't
think bloodshed deplorable."
"But he does. He told me so in London. He repeated the same thing this
morning."
"I don't mean Babberly personally," I said, "I mean his party;
Malcolmson, you know, and our Dean. If you'd only gone to hear the
Dean preach this morning you'd know what he thinks about blood. I've
often heard him say that the last drop of it--mind that now, Sir
Samuel--the last drop ought to be shed. That's going as far as any one
very well could, isn't it?"
"But he must," said Clithering, "he must think bloodshed deplorable."
"No, he doesn't," I said. "You mustn't think everybody is like your
Government. It's humanitarian. We're not. We're business men."
Clithering caught at the last phrase. It appealed to him. He did not
know the meaning attached to it by Cahoon.
"That's just it," he said. "We want to appeal to you as business men.
We want to suggest a reasonable compromise."
"I'm afraid," I said, "that you've come to the wrong place. I'm not
the least averse to compromises myself, in fact I love them. But the
Belfast business man--You don't quite understand him, I'm afraid, Sir
Samuel. Have you heard him singing his hymn?"
"No. What hymn? But leaving the question of hymns aside for the
moment--"
"You can't do that," I said, "the hymn is the central fact in the
situation."
Clithering thought this over and evidently failed to understand it.
"What I am empowered to suggest," he said, "is a compromise so very
favourable to the Ulster claims that I can hardly imagine your
rejecting it. The Government will allow the meeting to be held this
day week if your committee will agree to the postponement."
"If," I said, "you will also withdraw your Home Rule Bill--"
"But we can't," said Clithering. "We can't do that. We'll insert any
reasonable safeguards. We'll concede anything that Ulster likes to
ask, but we're pledged, absolutely pledged, to the Bill."
"Well," I said, "as far as pledges are concerned, we're pledged
against it."
"What we deprecate," said Sir Samuel, "is violence of any kind.
Constitutional agitation, even if carried on with great bitterness is
one thing. Violence--but I'm sure, Lord Kilmore, that we can rely on
you to use your influence at the meeting this afternoon to secure the
acceptance of the terms we offer. I'm sure we can count on you. You
can't _want_ bloodshed."
I did not want bloodshed, of course. I do not suppose that anybody
did. What Clithering could not understand was that some
people--without wanting bloodshed--might prefer it to Home Rule. He
left me, still I fancy relying on my well-known moderation. No man
ever relied on a more utterly useless crutch. Moderation has never
been of the slightest use anywhere in Ireland and was certainly a vain
thing in Belfast that day.
I walked round to the club and found nobody in it except Conroy. He
alone, among the leading supporters of the Loyalist movement, had
failed to go to church. I thought I might try how he would regard the
policy of moderation.
"I suppose," I said, "that you'll have to give up this meeting
to-morrow."
"I don't think so," said Conroy.
"I've just been talking to Sir Samuel Clithering," I said, "and he
thinks there'll be bloodshed if you don't."
"I reckon he's right there. We're kind of out for that, aren't we?"
"It won't be so pleasant," I said, "when it's your blood that's shed.
I don't mean yours personally, I mean your friends."
"The other side will do some of the bleeding," said Conroy.
"Still," I said, "in the end they'll win."
"I wouldn't bet too heavy on that," said Conroy.
"You don't mean to say that you think that a handful of north of
Ireland farmers and mechanics can stand up against the British
Empire?"
"It's fixed in my mind," said Conroy, "that the British lion will get
his tail twisted a bit before he's through with this business. I don't
say that he won't make good in the end. Nobody but God Almighty can
tell this minute whether he will or not; but he'll be considerable
less frisky when he's finished than he is to-day."
"But," I said, "even supposing you clear the streets of the soldiers
and police to-morrow--I do not see how you can; but if you do the
Government will simply anchor a battleship off Carrickfergus and shell
the whole town into a heap of ruins."
"I'm calculating on their trying that," said Conroy.
That was all I could get out of Conroy. I left him, feeling uneasily
that his vote would certainly go against Clithering's compromise. His
confidence in the fighting powers of the raw men whom Bob and others
had taken to church with them struck me as absurd. His cool assumption
of power to deal with the British fleet was arrogance run mad.
On my way back to my hotel I ran into a congregation which had just
got out of some church or other. In the first rank--they were marching
in very fair order--was Crossan. He saluted me and stopped.
"I'm thinking," he said, "that you won't have seen them."
He pointed to a small group of men who were bringing up the rear of
the congregation's march. They were dragging a heavy object along with
two large ropes. I recognized the leader of them at once. He was
Cahoon's foreman friend, McConkey. I was pleased to find that he
recognized me.
"I have her safe," he said. "Would you like to take a look at her?"
I did. She was a machine gun of a kind quite unknown to me; but her
appearance was very murderous. McConkey led me up to her. He stroked
her black side lovingly and patted her in various places.
"I was trying her yesterday," he said, "down on the slob land under
the Shore Road. Man o' man, but she shoots bonny!"
I had no doubt of it. She was likely to be accountable for a good deal
of bloodshed if there was any street fighting next day. The record of
her bag would, I should think, haunt Sir Samuel Clithering for the
rest of his life.
"I've a matter of five thousand cartridges," said McConkey in a hoarse
whisper, "and there's another five thousand ordered."