CHAPTER XI
The 12th of July, was, of course, indicated by nature itself as a day in every way suitable for a great Unionist demonstration. Babberly and Lady Moyne were not the people to neglect an opportunity. They organized a demonstration. Then somebody—I think it must have been McNeice in the pages of The Loyalist—suggested that the thing should be called a review and not a demonstration. Malcolmson took the idea up warmly and forced Babberly’s hand. English journalists of the Conservative kind—journalists of every kind swarmed over Belfast for a week beforehand—were delighted and trumpetted the thing as a review. Liberal journalists lost their tempers—the clever ones losing theirs most hopelessly—and abused the Orangemen in finely pointed paradoxical epigrams, which I dare say excited the admiration of sentimental Nationalists in Chelsea, but had not the smallest effect of any kind on the people of Belfast. They, just then, had no leisure time to spend in reading epigrams, and never at any time appreciated paradox. An English statesman of great ability announced to the world at large that a demonstration was one thing, and a review was quite a different thing. He went no further than to point out the fact that there was a distinction between the two things; but everybody understood that a demonstration was, in his opinion, quite harmless, whereas a review might end in getting somebody into trouble.
The Nationalist leaders—“those fellows” as McNeice called them—issued a kind of manifesto. It was a document which breathed the spirit of moderate constitutionalism, and spoke the words of grave, serious patriotism. It made a strong appeal to the people of Belfast not to injure the cause of liberty, law and order by rash and ill-considered action. It said that no Nationalist wanted to see Babberly and Lord Moyne put into prison; but that most Nationalists had been made to sleep on plank beds for utterances much less seditious than this advertisement of a review. O’Donovan and McNeice tore this manifesto to pieces with jubilant scorn in the next number of The Loyalist.
A Roman Catholic bishop issued a kind of pastoral to his flock urging them to remain at home on the 12th of July, and above all things not to attempt a counter demonstration in Belfast. It was a nice pastoral, very Christian in tone, but quite unnecessary. No sane Roman Catholic, unless he wanted a martyr’s crown, would have dreamed of demonstrating anywhere north of the Boyne on that particular day.
The newspapers were very interesting at this time, and I took in so many of them that I had not time to do anything except read them. I had not even time to read them all, but Marion used to go through the ones I could not read. With a view to writing an essay—to be published in calmer times—on “Different Points of View” we cut out and pasted into a book some of the finer phrases. We put them in parallel columns. “Truculent corner boys,” for instance, faced “Grim, silent warriors.” “Men in whom the spirit of the martial psalms still survives,” stood over against “Ruffians whose sole idea of religion is to curse the Pope.” “Sons of unconquerable colonists, men of our own race and blood,” was balanced by “hooligans with a taste for rioting so long as rioting can be indulged in with no danger to their own skins.” We were interrupted in this pleasant work by the arrival of a letter from Lady Moyne. She summoned me—invited would be quite the wrong word—to Castle Affey. I went, of course.
Babberly was there. He and Lady Moyne were shut up in the library along with Lady Moyne’s exhausted secretary. They were writing letters which she typed. I saw Moyne himself before I saw them.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “I’m very much afraid that some of our people are inclined to go too far. Malcolmson, for instance. I can’t understand Malcolmson. After all the man’s a gentleman.”
“But,” I said, “Malcolmson wants to fight. He always said so.”