| Page 199 THE ARMED FORCESIt is expected that my troops will shoot them
down. Not a single Irish officer but will throw up his commission.
There is Hamilton in my own household who has signed the Covenant
and who will leave me the moment the Bill is passed, and go to
his people in Ireland. The Government pretend not to believe these
things which are facts." They would be joined, it was equally
clear, by many English officers. Where the King's sympathies lay
was not in doubt. He carefully considered, and recapitulated to
Lord Esher, "the whole argument for exercising his veto, and
for insisting upon an appeal to the country even if it involved
the loss of his ministers." Lord Esher argued on the other
hand, although he later changed his mind, that such action would
lead every Minister to attack him in public, and that "it
was far better there should be fighting in Ireland than that they
should involve the Monarchy in this quarrel."(1) But Bonar
Law said there were "no lengths to which Ulster should go
which he would not be ready to support."(2) He sent a message
to Belfast that "whatever steps you may feel compelled to
take, whether they are constitutional, or whether in the long run
you are unconstitutional,
you have the whole Unionist Parry under my leadership behind you."(3) "I
remember this," said Mr. Bonar Law in Dublin on November 28,
1913, "that King James had behind him the letter of the law
as Mr. Asquith has now. ... In order to carry out his despotic
intention the King had the largest army that had ever been seen
in England. What happened? There was no civil war. Why? Because
his own army refused to fight for him."(4) Nor were the Conservative
leaders making |
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