A part of the compact under which Redmond was elected to the chair
limited the power of the newly chosen. He was to be Chairman, not
leader; that is to say, he was not to act except after consultation with
the party as a whole: he was not to commit them upon policy. This meant
in practice that he acted as head of a cabinet, which from 1906 onwards
consisted of Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor--the last
representing not only a great personal parliamentary experience and
ability, but also the powerful and zealous organization of Irish in
Great Britain. Redmond adhered scrupulously to the spirit of this
compact. There was only one instance in which he took action without
consultation. But that instance was the most important of all--his
speech at the outbreak of the war.

Another thing which governed his conduct in the chair of the party, as
indeed it governed that of nearly all the rank and file, was his horror
of the years which Ireland had gone through since Parnell's fall. He
loathed faction and he had struggled through murky whirlpools of it; for
the rest of his life he was determined, almost at any cost, to maintain
the greatest possible degree of unity among Irish Nationalists. Yet in
the end he unhesitatingly made a choice and took an action which risked
dividing, and in the last event actually divided, Nationalist Ireland as
it had never been divided before. There were things for which he would
face even that supreme peril. Deep in his heart there was a vision which
compelled him. It was the vision of Ireland united as a whole.

All this, however, lay far in the future when he was elected to the
chair; for the moment his task was to reunite Irish Nationalists, and it
began prosperously. From the first his position was one of growing
strength. Irishmen all the world over were heartsick of faction and