Childers's attitude to Britain's establishment and politics had become somewhat equivocal by the start of the First World War. He had resigned his membership of the Liberal Party, and with it his hopes of a parliamentary seat, over Britain's concessions to Unionists and a further postponement of Irish self-rule; he had written works critical of British policy in Ireland and in its South African possessions; above all, in July 1914, he had smuggled guns bought in Germany to supply nationalists in Ireland (a response to the April 1914 Ulster Unionists' importation of rifles and ammunition in the Larne gun-running).