Lord Derby, who spoke at Southport last Saturday, ridiculed the
cry "The Army against the People." If he believed that the Unionist Party had deliberately gone out of its way to make the Army disobey what be called the fundamental rule of doing exactly what they were told and obeying strict discipline. he would have no hesitation in leaving it. He was certain that no question of politics came into the officers' calculations. As a general rule, officers and men would send all politicians to the devil—and here Lord Derby spoke from practical experi. ence. As regards Home Rule, he was prepared to see it granted by settlement and compromise, but not unless the compromise was satisfactory to Sir Edward Carson as leader of the Ulster Unionists. After alluding to the excellence of the Times leading articles as an antidote to the false charges lately brought against the Army, Lord Derby observed that he felt more deeply on this subject than on any other since he had been in political life, and nothing could satisfy him but a complete exposure of the plot he believed to have been in existence—a plot designed to put the Army in a false position, and from which a cowardly Government was trying to extricate itself by putting the blame on the Army.
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