questionable by the Curragh Mutiny of 20 March 1914, when many British Army officers at Curragh in County Kildare, the main Army camp in Ireland, threatened to resign or accept dismissal rather than deploy against the Ulster Volunteers, forcing the government to cancel planned troop movements. Partition At the Bill's third reading in the Commons on 21 May 1914 several members asked about a proposal to exclude the whole of Ulster for six years. Asquith was seeking any solution that would avoid a civil war. During the emotional debate which lasted until 25 May 1914, Sir Edward Carson made the statement: A government amending bill was introduced in the House of Lords on 23 June 1914 (before the Lords had considered the original Home Rule bill itself) and passed there with amendments on 8 July. Carson and the Irish Unionist Party (mostly Ulster MPs) backed the amending bill, which provided for "temporary exclusion of Ulster" from the workings of the future Act. The Lords' amendments to the amending bill were unacceptable to the government. What was still to be negotiated were the number of counties excluded (four, six or nine) and whether exclusion would be temporary or permanent. The compromise proposed by Asquith was straightforward. Six counties in northeast Ulster were to be excluded "temporarily" from the territory of the new Irish parliament and government, and continue to be governed as before from Westminster and Whitehall. The length of the exclusion remained an issue of some controversy. To save prolonged debate in parliament, George V called the Buckingham Palace Conference with two MPs each from the Liberal, Conservative, IPP and Irish Unionist parties. The conference, held between 21 and 24 July 1914, achieved very little. Passing of the Bill With the beginning of World War I on 4 August 1914, Asquith decided to abandon his Amending Bill, and instead rushed through a new bill, the Suspensory Act 1914, which was presented for royal assent simultaneously with both the Government of Ireland Act 1914 and the Welsh Church Act 1914. Although the two controversial Bills had now finally become statute on 18 September 1914, the Suspensory Act ensured that Home Rule would be postponed for the duration of the conflict and would not come into operation until the end of the war. (Eventually Home Rule was considered by the Irish Convention in 1917–18, and by the cabinet from September 1919; the