Such questions had, of course, to be left to be dealt with by a Home Rule Parliament; and this, when the year closed, was practically assured at the termination of the war, though the position of the Ulster Unionist constituencies and the precise extent of the Home Rule area were still undetermined. The conflict has been so fully described in previous chapters that only a summary of it is needed here. Though the Nationalists ignored Mr. O'Brien's challenge at Cork (p. 6), the tendency to compromise manifested in such suggestions as those of Mr. F. S. Oliver, Sir Horace Plunkett, and many other individual publicists (p. 18), was further emphasised by the King's Speech and the debate on the Address, and found practical expression in the promise of an Amending Bill (March 9). But the Unionist apprehensions aroused through the postponement of any statement of its details, and the expectation that force would ultimately be used to overcome the resistance of Ulster, combined with the misunderstanding of the military measures contemplated by the Government to set up a grave, though temporary, danger. The debate on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill, however, further exhibited the tendency to compromise and the acceptance by the Unionists of some form of Home Rule as inevitable. The fanatics among the Ulster Unionists, too, were warned against expecting aid from Germany (p. 75), a warning, however, afterwards discredited by the conduct of the war by the German Government. The effect of the allegations as to the plot against Ulster, which were renewed in April, was considerably weakened by the gun-running from the _Fanny_ (p. 84), which was followed by further negotiations, or approaches to negotiations, between the Unionist leaders and the Ministry with a view to the partial or total exclusion of Ulster from the operation of the Bill. Agitation, meanwhile, was continued by the Unionists--- perhaps mainly as an element in driving the bargain--and roused a counter-agitation among the Liberal rank and file. Meanwhile the Irish Volunteer force had been growing, and the capture of the control of it by the Nationalist leaders converted it into a new and unexpected obstacle to the projected resistance of the Ulster Volunteers to the realisation of the Home Rule scheme. The Amending Bill (June 23, p. 135) provided for the optional and temporary exclusion of such Ulster counties as might desire to avail themselves of its provisions; but this measure was transformed by the House of Lords so as permanently to exclude the whole of Ulster from the operation of the Home Rule Bill--a solution which admittedly satisfied nobody, and which would certainly have been rejected by the House of Commons. Hence the Conference (p. 158) ascribed, rightly or wrongly, to the intervention of the King; but, after greatly narrowing (it was believed) the margin of difference, it reached a deadlock.