25 OCTOBER 1935, Page 6

To every Ulsterman Lord Carson will always be ' as

great a politician as he was an advocate, which is 'saying a very great deal.. On that the dispassionate verdict 'of history must one day be rendered. It is too soon yet. Where loyalties are in conflict ultimate values are- hard to assess. Of Carson's passionate loyalty to Ulster there never has been and 'never could be queStion. Of his title to give it precedence over other and larger loyalties there is much more room for discussion... The connivance of a former Law Officer of the' Crown in a gun-running achievement designed to supply 'Ulster with arms to ' be used in a civil war was not a trifling matter. And the belief that that civil war, fomented as much by Carson as by anyone, was on the point of breaking out was notoriously a factor in Germany's decision to take the fatal plunge. All that, of course, was forgotten when the War itself broke out. Carson took office in the Lloyd George Cabinet of December, 1916; though his personality had been one of the 'chief complications in the negotiations 'that preceded• its formation, 'but executive' work was not his forte. . He will live in memory as one of the great advocateS'of 'the English Bar, and the highest testimony to his personality is the regard in which a Man so fundamentally a fighter was held by foeS as well as friends.

.ANUS..