The proceedings at Craigavon and at the Conference naturally created a sensation on both sides of the Channel. They brought the question of Ireland once more, for the first time since 1895, into the forefront of British politics. The House of Commons might spend the autumn ploughing its way through the intricacies of the National Insurance Bill, but everyone knew that the last and bitterest battle against Home Rule was now approaching. And, now that the Parliament Act was safely on the Statute-book, Ministers had no further interest in concealment. During the elections, from which alone they could procure authority for legislation of so fundamental a character, Mr. Asquith, as we have seen, regarded any inquiry as to his intentions as "confusing the issue." But now that he had the constituencies in his pocket for five years and nothing further was to be feared from that quarter, his cards were placed on the table. On the 3rd of October Mr. Winston Churchill told his followers at Dundee that the Government would introduce a Home Rule Bill next session "and press it forward with all their strength," and he added the characteristic injunction that "they must not take Sir Edward Carson too seriously." But that advice did not prevent Mr. Herbert Samuel, another member of the Cabinet, from putting in an appearance in Belfast four days later, where he threw himself into a ludicrously unequal combat with Carson, exerting himself to calm the fears of business men as to the effect of Home Rule on their prosperity; while, in the same week, Carson himself, at a great Unionist demonstration in Dublin, described the growth of Irish prosperity in the last twenty years as "almost a fairy tale," which would be cut short by Home Rule. On the 19th of the same month Mr. Birrell, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in a speech at Ilfracombe, gave some scraps of meagre information in regard to the provisions that would be included in the coming Home Rule Bill; and on the 21st Mr. Redmond announced that the drafting of the Bill was almost completed, and that the measure would be "satisfactory to Nationalists both in principle and detail."[13] So the autumn of 1911 wore through--Ministers doling out snippets of information; members of Parliament and the Press urging them to give more. The people of Ulster, on the other hand, were not worrying over details. They did not require to be told that the principle would be "satisfactory to Nationalists," for they knew that the Government had to "toe the line"; nor were they in doubt that what was satisfactory to Nationalists must be unsatisfactory to themselves. What they were thinking about was not what the Bill would or would not contain, but the preparations they were making to resist its operation.