The day following the adjournment more light was thrown on the Army crisis by Colonel Seely at Ilkeston. He did not propose, he said, either to pose as a penitent or to reproach others; the facts were these. He had learnt that certain hot-headed persons under no discipline might try to capture certain stores of arms and ammunition, and to remove these stores in the face of armed opposition might have precipitated bloodshed. It was decided to send small detachments to remove them. No orders were disobeyed; but the Conservative Press went mad, and thought that there was a plot to overwhelm Ulster by force of arms. So wicked a plan could not have been thought of by any Government, least of all a Liberal Government. Reports came that there had been breaches of discipline, not amongst the troops ordered to move, but amongst others. The parties concerned were sent for, and were found to have been under the complete delusion that a hypothetical question had been put to them. He had told General Gough that the Government were not contemplating unlawful action, and the General had promised to obey all lawful commands. The wild stories as to the King's interference were absolutely untrue, and the King never knew of the document (p. 60) till the next day. He himself had completed the document as he had stated it to his colleagues, so as to represent the substance of what he had said, and the last two paragraphs seemed to him to represent the true Liberal view of the duty of the Army in support of the civil power. But the Conservative Press treated the document as a trophy and a surrender. Having made the mistake of not calling his colleagues together again, he resigned, to make the task of the Government easier. Sir John French and Sir J. S. Ewart had been replaced by General Sir Charles Douglas and Lieut.-Gen. Sir H. C. Sclater; and the approach of the Easter holiday gave time for the popular excitement to abate. On Good Friday one of the most extravagant delusions of Ulster was shattered by a letter in _The Times_ from two eminent German Professors, Dr. Theodor Schiemann, whose weekly reviews of world-politics in the Berlin _Kreuz Zeitung_ were famous, and Dr. Kuno Meyer, the great Keltic scholar, to the effect that the hope of interference by Germany was a delusion. The Covenanters, the letter said, were living wholly in the ideas and sentiments of a bygone age. In the seventeenth century the cause of Protestantism was at stake. But at the present day "no civilised country, least of all Germany, could look favourably on any policy which would run counter to the spirit of religious comprehension." CHAPTER III. FROM EASTER TO WHITSUNTIDE.