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Updated: June 15, 2025
Birrell: "As the last train-load moved out of Farnborough station the senior Railway Staff Officer came up to me and said, 'Well, General, that is the soberest, quietest, most amenable and best disciplined Division that has left Aldershot, and I have seen them all go." The compliment was well paid to General Parsons, and it may have been some consolation for a sore heart: that keen spirit had to be content to be left behind.
Birrell gave stereotyped replies, much after this form, with hardly a variation: I have seen in the newspapers a report that a few shots were fired into a farmhouse in Galway. No one appears to have been seriously injured. The police are making enquiries. No arrests have been made. One instance may be given more in detail, as typical of the condition to which Ireland had been brought.
Further, Redmond would certainly not have disavowed, and might even have endorsed, such a line of criticism. The reason was that Redmond, as he had never believed in the reality of the Ulster danger, so now did not believe in this one. Later, when Mr. Birrell resigned his post after the insurrection was suppressed, Redmond chivalrously took on himself a part of the responsibility.
If the unfortunate chief's own account be true, he had more reasons than one for expecting some favour from the Earl, who had in secret advised and encouraged him to many of the desperate actions for which he was now called to so severe a reckoning. But Argyle, as old Birrell expresses himself, kept a Highlandman's promise with them, fulfilling it to the ear, and breaking it to the sense.
Birrell, the Chief Secretary, who could do nothing but resign under the circumstances; and so pained was he that he even went to the length of what was called a confession of guilt: but his weakness had really been great strength for any weakling can be strong enough to sign an order for wholesale slaughter if he "damns the consequences."
Birrell held that the Ulster case for resistance was a good and valid one as it stood. No English statesman of the last half-century has deservedly enjoyed a higher reputation for political probity, combined with sound common sense, than the eighth Duke of Devonshire.
Birrell, for example, would tell us that the Nationalist unit in Ireland is three times as large as the Unionist unit, and that therefore the smaller entity should submit, because, as he has cynically observed, "minorities must suffer, for that is the badge of their tribe."
The fact that the Attorney-General himself had been a main adviser of the Provisional Government did not make it easier to follow his advice to disarm men who professed disaffection to the existing authority. Mr. Birrell knew that if he took such action he could be attacked in the official Nationalist Press for having one law in Ulster and another in the South.
This book is not written in a spirit of controversy. Were some to see it in this light, then I would claim for the author what Birrell said of Newman: "He contrived to instil into his very controversy more of the spirit of Christ than most men can find room for in their prayers." Moreover; we are persuaded that the great war has mellowed the minds of men and made them more receptive.
The motion was carried unanimously, eight councillors being present; and at the following meeting it was ratified by eight votes to two. A question was asked about the matter in the House of Commons; and Mr. Birrell, with the figures before him, replied that Mr. Scully had never been dismissed. Two other instances of this period must be briefly referred to.
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