This is an account of the years immediately preceding World War I. Britain faced its gravest political crisis since the days of Cromwell and Charles I. The Liberal Government was determined to grant Home Rule to Ireland, to prevent it, the Conservative opposition was willing to jeopardize the Constitution. And in the North of Ireland, a citizen army of 100,000 Ulster Protestants, led by Edward Carson and armed with smuggled German rifles, prepared to resist by force any attempt to eject them from the United Kingdom.