Before the debate was resumed two events affecting it took place outside (April 4)--the Prime Minister's speech to his constituents at Ladybank, and a great Hyde Park demonstration to protest against the coercion of Ulster. At the latter there were fourteen platforms, and the demonstrators reached the Park in twenty-two different processions; there was a large Stock Exchange and middle class contingent, and the speakers included Mr. Balfour (his first appearance at a Hyde Park demonstration), Sir E. Carson, Viscount Milner, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, and other Unionist leaders. The militant suffragists attempted a counter-demonstration, but the police prevented it and arrested Mrs. Drummond; and a Labour demonstration was meanwhile held in Trafalgar Square to protest against the different treatment by the Government of politicians and officers on the one hand and of anti-militarist strike-leaders and militant suffragettes on the other. The resolution carried here approved the conduct of the officers, and urged the rank and file to refuse to take up arms against their own class in industrial disputes. Speaking to a select audience representative of his constituency at Ladybank (April 4), the Prime Minister began by ridiculing the Unionist rumours in circulation--the story of the plot, the story that he had accepted his new office to escape for a fortnight from meeting the Unionist leaders in the House, the statement that his open journey to his constituency was provocative; and he ridiculed also the hesitation of the Unionists in opposing him. He had taken his new office in view of the grave situation that had arisen regarding the discipline of the Army and its relations to the civil power. As chairman of the Imperial Defence Committee, he knew the zeal, devotion, and settled traditions of discipline and honour pervading the military and naval forces of the Crown. The Army was not, and he prayed that it might never become, a political instrument; as an Army--and here he cited the elder William Pitt--it had no voice in the framing of policy and laws. "The Army will hear nothing of politics from me, and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the Army." The responsibility for the preservation of domestic order lay with the magistrates and police. In special emergencies the Army was called in to assist; in these it was the duty of the soldier, as of the civilians, to comply with the lawful demands of the civil power. The doctrines recently promulgated by some of the Tory leaders struck at the roots not only of Army discipline but of democratic government. As to the Home Rule Bill, he had brought the question into prominence at St. Andrews on December 7, 1910, and there was a complete justification for the application of the Parliament Act to it; but the Government were anxious to work out an agreed settlement, and hence the proposed optional exclusion of Ulster for a term of years. He should have preferred other solutions, but this one