For the moment, however, party feeling was stilled by the imperative need of union and of greater preparation for efforts in the field. The flow of recruits, encouraged by the destruction of Louvain and the retreat from Mons, was further stimulated by the preparations in France to resist a siege of Paris, and by the specific accounts (Sept. 1) of German atrocities given by the Belgian Mission which visited London on its way to the United States, and was cordially welcomed at Buckingham Palace by the King. A Joint Parliamentary Committee of all parties was formed to promote recruiting; Sir Edward Carson advised the Ulster Unionist Council (Sept. 3) that all qualified Ulster Volunteers should at once enlist in Kitchener's Army, and, without receding from its ultimate intentions, it endorsed his recommendation; the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress issued a manifesto welcoming the response of the Labour members to the appeal to aid in recruiting, announcing that it had given assistance to the Parliamentary Committee for that end; it urged recruits to come forward to avert compulsory service and maintain democracy, and pressed the claims of their dependants on the State. In the absence of details about the military operations a strange rumour arose, which for about a fortnight seemed better attested than many accepted facts in ancient history. Towards the end of August people told each other (though the newspapers were studiously silent) that trainloads of Russian troops had been landed at Leith from Archangel, presumably to escape the German cruisers and mines in the North Sea, and were being conveyed, with the blinds of the carriages drawn, on Saturday nights and Sundays, to Dover and other south-coast ports, _en route_ for Belgium or France. Specific details gave the story verisimilitude, and independent testimony came in from all parts of the area supposed to be affected, and was accepted by people likely to be well-informed, while corroborative evidence seemed to be provided by the great number of transports taken up by the Admiralty. At last a _Daily News_ correspondent said he had seen the Russians in Belgium, and a Cardiff paper published a statement from a marine engineer that he had travelled with 2,500 of them from Archangel and in the hundred and ninety-third train of them that had passed through York. Hereupon the Press Bureau (Sept. 15) issued an absolute denial of the rumours; and this was officially confirmed in Parliament on November 18. But for a time many people persisted in believing that the troops had indeed been sent, but had gone not to France or Belgium, but to seize the Kiel Canal. How the rumour arose was a mystery.