The application to the Belfast Justices for leave to drill the Orange
Lodges was dated the 5th of January, 1912. For some months both before
and after that date the formation of new battalions proceeded rapidly,
so that by the summer of 1912 the force was of considerable strength and
decent efficiency; but already in the autumn of 1911 it soon became
apparent that the existence of such a force would give a backing to the
Craigavon policy which nothing else could provide. At Craigavon the
leader of the movement had foreshadowed the possibility of having to
take charge of the government of those districts which the Loyalists
could control. The U.V.F. made such control a practical proposition, and
the consciousness of this throughout Ulster gave a solid reality to the
movement which it must otherwise have lacked.

The special Commission of Five set to work immediately after the
Craigavon meeting to carry out the task entrusted to them by the
Council. But, as more than two years must elapse before the Home Rule
Bill could become law under the Parliament Act, there was no immediate
urgency in making arrangements for setting up the Provisional Government
resolved upon by the Council on the 25th of September, 1911, and the
outside public heard nothing about what was being done in the matter for
many months to come.

Meantime the Ulster Loyalists watched with something akin to dismay the
dissensions in the Unionist party in England over the question of Tariff
Reform, which made impossible a united front against the revived attack
on the Union, and woefully weakened the effective force of the
Opposition both in Parliament and the country. Public opinion was
diverted from the one thing that really mattered--had Englishmen been
able to realise it--from an Imperial standpoint, no less than from the
standpoint of Irish Loyalists. On the 8th of November, 1911, mainly in