There was an immediate outpouring of vituperation by the Ministerial
Press in England, as had been anticipated by the Standing Committee.
Special Correspondents trooped over to Belfast, whence they filled their
papers with telegrams, articles, and interviews, ringing the changes on
the audacity of this unwarranted interference with freedom of speech,
and speculating as to the manner in which the threat, was likely to be
carried out. Scribes of "Open Letters" had a fine opportunity to display
their gift of insolent invective. Cartoonists and caricaturists had a
time of rare enjoyment, and let their pencils run riot. Writers in the
Liberal Press for the most part assumed that Mr. Churchill would bid
defiance to the Ulster Unionist Council; others urged him to do so and
to fulfil his engagement; some, with more prudence, suggested that he
might be extricated from the difficulty without loss of dignity if the
Chief Secretary would prohibit the meeting, as likely to produce a
breach of peace, and it was pointed out that Dublin Castle would
certainly forbid a meeting in Tipperary organised by the Ulster Unionist
Council, with Sir Edward Carson as principal speaker.

However, on the 25th of January Mr. Churchill addressed a letter, dated
from the Admiralty, to Lord Londonderry at Mount Stewart, in which he
said he was prepared to give up the idea of speaking in the Ulster Hall,
and would arrange for his meeting to be held elsewhere in the city, as
"it was not a point of any importance to him where he spoke in Belfast."
He did not explain why, if that were the case, he had ever made a plan
that so obviously constituted a direct premeditated challenge to Ulster.
Lord Londonderry, in his reply, said that the Ulster Unionist Council
had no intention of interfering with any meeting Mr. Churchill might
arrange "outside the districts which passionately resent your action,"
but that, "having regard to the intense state of feeling" which had been