The only party really able to turn to account the situation thus created was the Sinn Fein party. It had preached for years that the English governing classes, indeed the English nation, were not, in spite of their apparent readiness to listen to the Parliamentary Party, the friends of Irish Nationalism in any real sense: that they had no intention (and never had) of satisfying the just claims of Ireland: that the Parliamentarians were mere pawns in a party game, to be sacrificed when it suited both or either of the English parties: that the word of English statesmen could not be trusted, and that Ireland had nothing to gain from them: that self-reliance, vigilance and distrust of England were "the sinews of good sense" in Irish politics. It had hinted, not obscurely, that the opportunity of Ireland would come when England should be involved in a European war, and that Ireland must be prepared when the day came to use the opportunity. It now pointed a triumphant finger to what was going on in Ireland and asked which had been the truer prophet, itself or the Parliamentary Party. It quoted the returns of recruiting in Ulster in support of its thesis: "The fact that out of 200,000 Unionists of military age in Ireland--men who talked Empire, sang Empire and protested they would die for the British Empire--four out of every five are still at home, declaring they will not have Home Rule, is proof that the Irish Unionist knows his present business." That Irish soldiers were to be used to further English interests, and not the cause of Ireland, was (it held) proved by extracts from English newspapers, where in unguarded moments the naked truth peeped out: it gave prominence to a quotation from the _Liverpool Post_ of September 12, 1914: "His Majesty could make a triumphal tour of Ireland, North, South, East and West, and in reply to his personal appeal, there would be 300,000 Irishmen of all creeds and classes for the Front in less than a week. In England the question becomes more and more important in the interests of the efficiency of our trade, whether we can spare any more skilled mechanics for the ranks of battle. The capture of the German trade is almost as vital to the existence of the Empire as the destruction of Prussian militarism."