On the 30th of July, when the Amending Bill was to be discussed, the Prime Minister said that, with the concurrence of Mr. Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson, it would be indefinitely postponed, in order that the country at this grave crisis in the history of the world "should present a united front and be able to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation." To achieve this, all domestic quarrels must be laid aside, and he promised that "no business of a controversial character" would be undertaken. Thus it happened that the Amending Bill was never seen by the House of Commons. Four days later the United Kingdom was at war with the greatest military Empire in the world. The opportunity had come for Ulster to prove whether her cherished loyalty was a reality or a sham. FOOTNOTES: [88] _Annual Register_, 1914, p. 110. [89] _Annual Register_, 1914, p. 114. CHAPTER XX ULSTER IN THE WAR More than a year before the outbreak of the Great War a writer in _The Morning Post_, describing the Ulster Volunteers who were then beginning to attract attention in England, used language which was more accurately prophetic than he can have realised in May 1913: "What these men have been preparing for in Ulster," he wrote, "may be of value as a military asset in time of national emergency. I have seen the men at drill, I have seen them on parade, and experts assure me that in the matter of discipline, physique, and all things which go to the making of a military force they are worthy to rank with our regular soldiers. It is an open secret that, once assured of the maintenance unimpaired of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland under the Imperial Parliament alone, a vast proportion of the citizen army of Ulster would cheerfully hold itself at the disposal of the Imperial Government and volunteer for service either at home or abroad!"[90] The only error in the prediction was that the writer underestimated the sacrifice Ulster would be willing to make for the Empire. When the testing time came fifteen months after this appreciation was published all hope of unimpaired maintenance of the Union had to be sorrowfully given up, and only those who were in a position to comprehend, with sympathy, the depth and intensity of the feeling in Ulster on the subject could realise all that this meant to the people there. Yet, all the same, their "citizen army" did not hesitate to "hold itself at the disposal of the Imperial Government, and volunteer for service at home or abroad."