Everybody at the time underestimated the extent and the vigour of this feeling, except those who shared it. Englishmen thought (when they heard of it) that it was all talk and that a "more reasonable view would eventually prevail": they never understood that they had rivetted upon Ireland a system which prevented its upholders from taking a "reasonable" view of anything and incapacitated them from understanding any point of view except their own. Irish Nationalists pointed to the long series of truculent threats with which Orange Ulster had greeted every measure of Irish reform. They recalled the "gun clubs" which had been the answer to the establishment of the Board of National Education: the threat to "kick the Queen's crown into the Boyne" if the Irish Church Act should be passed; and they confidently expected to see a similar luxuriance of denunciation wither before the chilling blast of an Act of Parliament. Sinn Fein and the Republican Party (though they did not grasp the fact that what the Orange Party feared was not the suppression of their religion but the loss of its political ascendancy) adopted an attitude useless to reconcile Ulster to Home Rule but admirably calculated, once Home Rule were passed in defiance of Ulster, to work upon its feeling of resentment at the "betrayal" of its interests and exploit its wounded pride in the interests of the independence of Ireland. But while Sinn Fein was making its proposals, unheeded (and indeed unheard) by those to whom they were addressed, to disarm the opposition of Ulster to the cause of Irish freedom, the Ulster leaders were taking steps to adopt a policy supposed to have been abandoned in Irish politics since the failure of the Fenian rising. The staid merchants, the prosperous professional classes, the sturdy farmers of Ulster, supported by the Belfast Protestant artizans, had begun to drill. Unionist Clubs were formed throughout the province: volunteers were enrolled in defiance of the law, under the pretext of being associations formed for the purpose of taking "physical exercise," though with a growing feeling of strength and security this pretext was abandoned. Talk of "guns" and "cold steel" replaced arguments based upon economic conditions and the stringency of the "bonds of Empire." A theory of "loyalty" was developed compatible with a chartered licence to defy the authority of King and Parliament in the affairs of the United Kingdom. As the inevitable day approached when, by the provisions of the Parliament Act, the Royal Assent to Home Rule must be given, the attitude of the Ulster leaders became more and more at variance with all loyal precedents. The Ulster Volunteer Force was organized as an army for service in the field: it was provided with signallers and despatch riders, with ambulance units and army nurses: hospitals were arranged to receive and tend the expected "casualties": plans were formed to seize strategic points in the province. A Provisional