ceased to be a cause of division in the Unionist Party. But, while these
matters were sharing with the Irish problem the attention of the Press
and the public, "conversations" were being held behind the scenes with a
view to averting what everyone now agreed would be a dangerous crisis if
Ulster proved implacable.

When Parliament met on the 10th of February, 1914, Mr. Asquith referred
to these conversations; but while he congratulated everyone concerned on
the fact that the Press had been successfully kept in the dark for
months regarding them, he had to admit that they had produced no result.
But there were, he said, "schemes and suggestions of settlement in the
air," among them the exclusion of Ulster from the Bill, a proposal on
which he would not at that moment "pronounce, or attempt to pronounce,
any final judgment", and he then announced that, as soon as the
financial business of the year was disposed of, he would bring forward
proposals for the purpose of arriving at an agreement "which will
consult not only the interests but the susceptibilities of all
concerned."

This appeared to be a notable change of attitude on the part of the
Government; but it was received with not a little suspicion by the
Unionist leaders. Whether or not the change was due, as Mr. William
Moore bluntly asserted, to the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force,
which had now reached its full strength of 100,000 men, the question of
interest was whether the promised proposals would render that force
unnecessary. Mr. Austen Chamberlain asked why the Government's proposals
should be kept bottled up until a date suspiciously near All Fools' Day;
and Sir Edward Carson, in one of the most impressive speeches he ever
made in Parliament, which wrung from Mr. Lloyd George the acknowledgment
that it had "entranced the House," joined Chamberlain in demanding that