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with his jacket pulled over his head like a strait-jacket. And that was that. He wasn’t thanked for this splendid bit of loyalty. Himself told him angrily to get in the motor and stop playing the fool. Himself and I were the last to climb in, watched by all the drinkers who’d come pouring out of the pub and stood watching us from the door. Himself looked back at them, you know, and just for a moment it occurred to me—there was something about the expression on his face—that he was afraid of them, and I felt a bit sorry for him. But now, Major, I’m afraid you’ll have to pardon me a for moment while I go and vomit—I should think probably into yonder pot of ferns would be the best idea. I realize it’s a rotten show, mind you (particularly to a man like yourself who’s frightfully good at holding his drink)...”

* * *

GRAFTON PICTURE HOUSE

The principal film exhibited in the Grafton Picture House was one in which Charles Ray and Frank Keenan appear, “The Coward,” a dramatic episode of the American Civil War. It is a story of a man who was a coward, but who, when the test came, proved himself as ready to fight and die for his country as the most hardened soldier, and it possessed those essentials which make a picture interesting.

* * *

At a meeting in Belfast on July 12th (the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne) Sir Edward Carson said: “And now there are only two policies before the country... One is the maintenance of the Union and loyalty to the King and the other is (God bless the mark!) an Irish Republic. An Irish Republic with your hats off to the President, Mr De Valera (laughter), who is now working against you in America, with the help of the Catholic Hierarchy in that country, backed up by the Catholic Hierarchy in this and all other countries, and who imagines, in his vanity, that one day or the other, he is going to march through Belfast and Ulster (cries of “Never!”) and you will all willingly take off your hats (“No!”) and bow the knee to the head of the organization which, in the darkest hour of the war of the world’s freedom, shot His Majesty’s soldiers in the streets of Dublin. I invite Mr De Valera to come to Ulster and I undertake that he will get a proper Ulster welcome. An Irish Republic! What is the good of the British Empire as compared with an Irish Republic? Just imagine how small the British Empire will look when the Irish Republic is established, and just imagine how the British Navy will bow their heads in shame when they see two canal boats with the Irish Sinn Fein flag (laughter) and Admiral Devlin (laughter) bringing them into action at Scapa Flow. Yes, but there is more than that. I talk of the men sleeping their last sleep on the plains of Flanders and France, in Mesopotamia and Palestine, in the Balkans and elsewhere—the men who have done their share, not for the Irish Republic, but for the great British Empire...and, forsooth, the reward we are to have is that we are to give up all that we have won, and we are to be false and untrue to all that they suffered, in order that these rebels, prompted by ambitions of trampling upon the Protestants of the North of Ireland, may have a dot on the map which might be represented by a pinprick...I tell the British people from this platform here, in your presence today—and I say it now with all solemnity—I tell them that if there is any attempt made to take away one jot or tittle of your rights as British citizens, and the advantages which have been won in this war of freedom, I tell them, at all consequences, once more I will call out the Ulster Volunteers (cheers). I call an Ulsterman, an Ulsterman. I call a Sinn Feiner, a rebel. I call Dominion Home Rule the camouflage of an Irish Republic...”

* * *

It was now the middle of July and the Major had decided to leave Kilnalough. Enough, after all, was enough. It was his intention to tell Edward that he would not be coming back, that he had been called away on some rather permanent business and would be leaving for England (if not somewhere more remote). But Edward looked so upset when he mentioned