CHAPTER XVII
THE LAST CHAPTER
by
"HERSELF"
War! It was the first of August, 1914, and I almost ran home from the city to tell the news to my people.
War! It was like we'd be in it. War between England and Germany. That war we had all heard of and knew was inevitable. The war of the ages was imminent.
I had been free-lancing in Fleet Street for the past three months. Left The Daily Chronicle over the Home Rule questions, as well as other things.
I was in Ireland for the Ulster gun-running. Ireland was a seething mass of German-inspired sedition south of the Boyne. The authorities apparently would not listen to the warnings of Ulster. But Ulster was ready for anything. There were hospitals, clearing stations, bases. There were despatch riders, signalers, transport men, all in readiness, besides the ordinary infantry volunteers, who were pledged by all means in their power to keep Ireland under the flag of the Union.
I was in a little country church one Sunday morning. A roll of a drum and the skirl of a fife came wafting across the valley on the April breeze. The minister paused a moment in his sermon. Two, three, half a dozen men rose and softly left. They were going to the rendezvous in case of alarm. No one knew what might happen. A conflagration might flare out at a moment's notice.