It was on the advice of Lord Roberts, a warm advocate of Ulster's cause, that Sir Edward Carson invited General Sir George Richardson to take command of the U.V.F. Under his leadership the force was organized on a territorial basis. At the outbreak of war it contained over 80,000 men between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five, and a number of women, enrolled not only as nurses but for many of those supplementary services which were not allotted to women in the European war until a comparatively late period. The people of Ulster entered into their adventure in the same spirit that they entered into that of the war when it came, a spirit of single-minded faith in their leaders and in themselves. Admirably did Mr. Kipling sum up their attitude in the lines: Believe we dare not boast, Believe we do not fear. Probably their worst danger was over before the declaration of war. The incident at the Curragh, as well as conferences at the War Office, at Aldershot, and elsewhere, of which the general public never knew, had made it clear that the Army could not be used to enforce the legislation projected at the cost of civil war. General John Gough, V.C., then Sir Douglas Haig's Chief of Staff, visited Ulster in July, and stated that the idea of coercion was abandoned. He is known to have formed the opinion that the Ulster Volunteers could, with experienced leaders, be made a very formidable fighting force. He, as well as the Government, knew that those leaders would not have been lacking. Lord Kitchener, once at the War Office, was not long in arriving at the same opinion as General Gough. He was appointed Secretary of State for War on Wednesday the 5th of August. On Friday the 7th he sent for Colonel T. E. Hickman,[2] a Member of the House of Commons, President of the British League for the Defence of Ulster, who had acted as Inspector-General of the U.V.F., and said to him: "I want the Ulster Volunteers." Colonel Hickman replied: "You must see Carson and Craig."