They were kept inert for three or four days, and then it was found impossible to use them. They had not become Republicans in theory, but they found they could not shoot down on a Wednesday men with whom they had been chatting on the most familiar terms up till Tuesday night. A man will not consent to be a kindly, good-tempered, friendly soldier one day, and use a repeating rifle on his friends the next day with ruthless precision. We shall say no more about the difficulties of employing English and Scottish Protestant troops against the Ulster Protestants. The possibility of something in the nature of what would be a technical mutiny among officers and troops is too horrible to discuss.
Civil war is bad, but mutiny, however well-intentioned, is ten times worse.
It is difficult even to describe the prospect without appearing to give encouragement where that is the last thing we wish to give. Unfortunately, however, all the facts seem to show that there will be a large number of officers who will find it impossible to reconcile the soldier's duty with what they conceive to be the citizen's duty. It is all very well for us to say, as we should say, that in that case the soldier's duty must come first. And here it must not be supposed unwillingness to shed the blood of their fellow subjects will only be found among violent Loyalist officers and men. Even in that case the Government will have to put two hundred thousand men into Ulster, and then in order to do so will have to call out the whole of the Reserve.