The threat of civil conflict in Ireland in mid-1914 was defused when the unionist and nationalist leaders, Edward Carson and John Redmond, pledged their respective parties and paramilitary forces to support the Imperial war effort. Responding to Ulster Unionist pressure and urgently in need of men, the War Office created a division specifically for the Ulster Volunteer Force - the 36th Division: 30,000 of its members joined in the first wave of recruitment. However, English recruiting officers were reluctant to support the formation of Irish nationalist divisions, fearing they might return after the war, possibly in 1915, with military training and equipment. But thousands of Irish Volunteer Force members did join the predominantly catholic and nationalist 10th and 16th divisions.
The pattern of Irish recruitment was erratic. There was an initial surge but then the level declined sharply. Roughly as many enlisted in the first year of the war as in the remaining three years; just 12,000 volunteered in the eight months before the Easter Rising. The geographical distribution of enlistment and the religious make-up of the recruits were similarly uneven. Protestants came forward in greater numbers proportionately than Catholics. In Ulster, men of both faiths were more likely to join up than those from the rest of Ireland. Generally, urban areas returned more soldiers than rural.
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