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DEMOCRACY 
 
DEMOCRACY 
 
 BY 
 
 SHAW DESMOND 
 
 1! 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1919 
 
Copyright, 1919, bt 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published. May. 1919 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I. The Red Seed 1 
 
 II. Taking Up the Gauntlet . . . , 18 
 
 III. The Chillington House Reunion . 27 
 
 IV. Trafalgar Square .48 
 
 V. On the Waters of Fleet Street . . 72 
 
 VI. Manicured Revolution 85 
 
 VII. The Right to Get Drunk .... 104 
 
 VIII. Masters and Men 115 
 
 IX. Iron and Velvet 140 
 
 X. The Parliament of Labour . . .159 
 
 XI. The Right to Live 182 
 
 XII. The Age of Nerves . . . . . .187 
 
 XIII. The Big Drum 196 
 
 XIV. The Divine Right .216 
 
 XV. "Paddy Mac" 233 
 
 XVI. The Grand International .... 243 
 
 XVII. The Appeal to Force 250 
 
 XVIII. The Green-Eyed Girl 257 
 
 V 
 
 8569- 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIX. The City that Rose in the Night . 265 
 
 XX. Power 271 
 
 XXI. Damascene's Last Appearance on any 
 
 Stage 279 
 
 XXII. The Blinded Giant 285 
 
 XXIII. The Big Stick 303 
 
 XXIV. The Bursting of the Bubble . . .312 
 XXV. Demos , . 319 
 
DEMOCRACY 
 
DEMOCRACY 
 
 THE RED SEED 
 
 "That, ladies and gentlemen, I take to be our reply- 
 to Socialist insolence. They have thrown down the 
 red gauntlet to organised society . . . we, have 
 taken it up/' 
 
 The words came in florid periods, which rolled 
 fluently from the loose-lipped mouth of the speaker. 
 The good-humoured face, with the jaw of an East- 
 End coster; short, pugnacious nose; the shrewd, lu- 
 minous-grey eyes, which flickered athwart the packed 
 rows like summer lightning; the burly frankness of 
 the giant of a man in his loosely-caught frock coat — 
 all went to make up the genial Buster Bull, financier, 
 newspaper proprietor, sportsman, and People's Cham- 
 pion. 
 
 Denis Destin had seen him a score of times in the 
 same Magog hall, dominating crowds of frightened, 
 angry shareholders even as now he dominated the 
 mass of city men, clerks, little tradesmen, and strug- 
 gling professional men, ranged before him, hanging 
 on each period. From where he sat near the plat- 
 form, he caught the whitey-pallor and staring eye- 
 balls of the faces that resurrected themselves at the 
 trumpet blast of the chairman, feeling that the Judg- 
 ment had come, their minds tense with battle. 
 
 I 
 
2 DEMOCRACY 
 
 It was after the General Election. Democracy, 
 insistent, blatant, had asserted itself at the polls, 
 labour sat b: .^orce in sacred Westminster. It was 
 the beginning of the end. 
 
 DesJ;in sensed in the faces before him what was 
 called at the time "the Bitter Cry of the Middle 
 Classes." Here, in the front, gnawing his nails, 
 crouched a stock-broker, flirting daily with bank- 
 ruptcy upon a couple of thousand a year, strained on 
 the rack of an iniquitous tax. Cheek by jowl with 
 him sat a little, stolid, ready-made-suited oilman, his 
 heart aflame with the wrongs of a time where the 
 oilman had to sell to a voracious public everything 
 from strawberry jam to firewood in order to snatch 
 a living from the wolves of .the Chancellor. Twenty 
 yards away, a City doctor, sprucely dressed in morn- 
 ing coat and "wing" collaf, pondered the exorbitant 
 rent of his city consulting rooms and nursed ven- 
 geance -on the despoiler. Row upon row of city clerks 
 •^pale-faced, hard-working, and groomed to the last 
 frayed thread of their .shirt cuffs — thirty-shilling and 
 two pound a week men — who, with their wives and 
 little ones, hid their poverty behind the stuccoes of 
 Finsbury Park or Forest Gate, felt the acid of fright- 
 ened hate work its way in their pinched faces and 
 bodies as they saw, standing out in concrete form be- 
 fore them, implacable Demos, corduroyed, hob-booted, 
 reeking of sweat and envy. 
 
 Destin, himself one of the black-coated brigade, 
 looked on in strange detachment. Indeed, as he hung 
 there over the back of his chair, scanning the faces 
 behind and around him, he seemed, despite his dark 
 grey, precise clothes, identical with a hundred others, 
 a curious incursion, with his strong nose, jutting from 
 
THE RED SEED 3 
 
 the heavily-boned brows, the square, rather small jaw, 
 and great, loose shoulders. 
 
 Those were the men by whose side he worked day 
 by day. He knew, none better, the dead grind of 
 their lives, their little hopes and fears, but he felt him- 
 self cut off from them as effectively as though he 
 lived on Saturn. More than that, he hated them — 
 hated them with a blind, tense hate which often puz- 
 zled him — ^hated them, not as individuals, but as the 
 concrete manifestation of something behind them. 
 Even as he looked, his hazel eyes greened as they 
 narrowed — his rather sensuous mouth hung loosely 
 open, the slaver of invisible froth running from it. 
 
 Destin, in the slang of the city, was "a queer fel- 
 low*' — that epitaph of the middle classes, which puts 
 a man outside the pale of Jungle Freedom in the City 
 of Averages. 
 
 He swung round to the platform again, with its 
 phalanx of respectable citizens, frock-coated and 
 striped in the lower extremities with the insignia of 
 success. 
 
 The new voice came to him thinly from the spare 
 figure which ran up above him — sl figure which, with 
 its hollow asceticism and doleful moustaches, almost 
 brushing either shoulder, was that of Don Quixote 
 reincarnate. 
 
 That was Brink, the Lombard Street banker, whom 
 Destin remembered very well indeed. The last time 
 he had seen him was in the same hall, upon the Torrey- 
 Alexander revivalist platform, when those two modern 
 evangelists were, in their own language, picturesque 
 and unrestrained as the country that gave them birth, 
 "raising hell" in the City. Then, he had sung the 
 "Glory Song** with a fine fervour, with a wrenching 
 
4 DEMOCRACY 
 
 of spirit which brought the tears welling to his dim 
 blue eyes, as he led the singing of a regenerated city. 
 
 You could not mistake those eyes. They swam 
 unsteadily in twin pools of limpid white, each eye 
 with a tiny black iris that looked into the distances of 
 the spirit. Now, bedewed with emotion, he made his 
 appeal thinly: 
 
 "... the voiceless chorus of the great Middle 
 Classes of England goes up to Heaven, day and night. 
 Ground out by the modem inquisitors, who pry not 
 only into our purses, but into the sacredness of the 
 home — ^urged on by a Government which, under the 
 whip of the revolutionist, has long since lost all sense 
 of proportion and of that sanity which, with the Bible, 
 is the supreme heritage of the English people — these 
 licensed pickpockets seek to rob us of our religion and 
 our hard-earned savings at one and the same time." 
 
 There could be no mistaking the honesty of the man 
 — ^his fanatical virtue — that fanaticism which Destin 
 had first noticed at the Torrey-Alexander meeting. 
 It was all very well for Bull to let a little smile run 
 across his blunt, honest-looking jowl, as he nosed 
 towards the speaker when he, the man of millions, 
 had referred to "hard-earned savings" to a meeting 
 which he could buy up, body and blood and bank 
 balance, but Destin knew a sincere man when he saw 
 him, and there was no mistaking Brink's sincerity. 
 It was the deep-souled conviction of the "Glory Song" 
 carried into the realms of £ s. d. 
 
 The meeting was silent. As he looked at them, 
 Destin thought of hounds on an invisij^le trail. There 
 was something lean and hungry and implacable about 
 it — 3, sureness of the end of the tracking that irri- 
 tated and frightened him. Anyhow, what business 
 
THE RED SEED 5 
 
 was it of his? Why did his heart beat faster? He 
 was not a Socialist. He was a Democrat, and in his 
 mind there was a nice difference. In his mind there 
 were always nice differences. Yet that sureness irri- 
 tated him. Brink irritated him — though he liked him 
 too. The respectable men on the platform irritated 
 him. But above all, Bull, with his eternal honesty- of 
 line, placarded on a thousand hoardings and mirrored 
 in the halfpenny illustrateds, irritated him. 
 
 Destin felt that on him lay the dead mass of this 
 respectability. The pressure was intolerable — the 
 more intolerable that within him he felt that strange 
 stirring — that restlessness of spirit which a doctor had 
 once told him was a tendency to hysteria . . . "the 
 neurasthenia of the age." But was it? 
 
 " . . . I am sure we are heartily indebted to Sir 
 James Brink for championing the cause of us strug- 
 gling tradesmen. I'm sure I speak from my 'art and 
 from the 'art of thousands and thousands of others, 
 when I say to him — Thank you, Sir James, you have 
 this day lighted a lamp in Hengland which the Red 
 Flood shall not hextinguish. . . .' " 
 
 Destin looked at the little shrunken grey-bearded 
 man in the shiny frock-coat, who in simple words 
 tried to express the thanks of his heart. It was the 
 voice of the little tradesman making itself heard as 
 one of the non-coms, in the battle-front that was pre- 
 paring. Bull's clarion call rang out in contrast. 
 Brink's phrases had been those of the chaplain of 
 the new army — the splendid flame of religious fanati- 
 cism which lifted the fight from the sordidness of 
 self and pelf to the rarer strata of a Holy War — 3. 
 Jehad that should be preached throughout the lands 
 of the white peoples. And now there was another. 
 
6 DEMOCRACY 
 
 He had never heard that voice before, but he knew 
 that never again would he forget it. It was beauti- 
 fully modulated, with something of the hiss of the 
 rapier underneath. Gentle as the waters of Lethe, it 
 fathomed in its depths an undercurrent of acid dis- 
 dain that held the ear enthralled. The word ran 
 sibilant around the meeting — "Courcy — Courcy.** 
 
 The name hissed itself from lip to lip, as the play 
 of words sprayed gently upon the awakening ears. 
 Men had craned forward, listening with eye as well 
 as ear, Destin amongst the others.' He felt that each 
 syllable was of import — that nothing must be lost. 
 "Courcy . . . Courcy." 
 
 Courcy — deadly, sweet-mouthed, vitriolic Courcy. 
 Courcy — leader of the Opposition in the House. 
 Courcy, that gentle-mannered Prince of Politics, 
 whose phrases crept like snakes through the chancel- 
 leries of Europe. Courcy — philosopher and mystic. 
 Courcy — Abated, loved, Courcy. 
 
 How sweetly he spoke now. "My friends, these 
 are not the times, these dangerous, razor-edged times, 
 for blind anger, for hasty words and hastier action. 
 These are the times when above all others the states- 
 man must be a philosopher, a man with a brain of 
 ice and a heart of gold — yes, and I will say it — 2l man 
 who carries in that heart the dread of interference 
 with Destiny, implanted by the Divine Principle in 
 Man, by whatever name we call it. 
 
 "Excellent as were the speeches to which I have 
 just listened — sound and sane in tone and temper — 
 there was, if I may be permitted to say so, one little 
 thing lacking. The little thing that is known as the 
 milk of human kindness. 
 
 "Let us say once and for all, at this, the beginning 
 
THE RED SEED 7 
 
 of what I conceive to be a Holy Crusade against the 
 enemy of society, that some of our opponents at least 
 are honest. Honesty is not the perquisite of any po- 
 litical party in the State. They, like us, are human 
 beings of a common Creator. Blinded as they are — 
 distorted as are their views — ^nay, even blasphemous 
 and brutal as they are- — let us never forget that they 
 are human beings like ourselves, children of the Com- 
 mon Purpose they have distorted — wilful, erring chil- 
 dren, whom, whilst we chastise, and chastise with the 
 mercy of merciless justice, we shall remember may 
 yet be brought to the ways of sanity and the pleasant 
 paths of peace in the State. 
 
 "And when I say *we,* I mean every loyal citizen, 
 whether Liberal or Conservative. This is no time for 
 academic distinctions of party — ^no time for a nice 
 appraisement of the political and ethical values of the 
 historic parties of the State. It is enough to know 
 that each honest man amongst us has to make his 
 choice which he this day will serve — *God or Mam- 
 mon' — the Principle of Righteousness, or that of envy, 
 greed, and class hate. For, as my friend. Sir James 
 Brink, has said — The fight before us is something 
 more than a fight for wealth and power — it is a fight 
 for the Eternal Verities — it is the fight of a spiritual 
 principle against the sordid materialism of our times.' 
 We, at least, are on the side of the angels." 
 
 There was a spiritual uplifting in the face of the 
 speaker, a tenseness of soul, moving loftily in the 
 rarified strata of intellect, which made the men and 
 women before him forget his well-known agnosticism, 
 his gospel of philosophic negation — an uplifting which 
 filled each heart there with a confused but none the 
 less potent sureness that this war against the Red 
 
8 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Peril was a Holy War, which barbed the shaft of 
 smooth, formless hate with the hold-fast of religion. 
 The first silence had passed into mutterings and thence 
 had frothed itself into a flying spume of cheers which 
 ended in a reverberation that shook the hall as the 
 speaker threw out the phrase — "the side of the angels," 
 a pledge of triumphant assurance in the battle to 
 come. 
 
 Yet, Courcy's next words came chillingly. It was 
 Courcy's way — a fatal way — the way of agnostic 
 omniscience, which always ended on a note of pessi- 
 mism. 
 
 "It IS my duty to warn you, however, that the battle 
 which is opening will be no affair of months or even 
 a handspan of years. It is an Armageddon, which 
 may outlast our time and the time of our children, or 
 even of our children's children. The Red Seed has 
 been sown unsparingly. It has been scattered by the 
 sowers of blood into our newspapers, our homes, our 
 ordinary social lives. It has fallen in dark, uncon- 
 sidered places as well as in the light of day. It has 
 been sown not only here in Britain but amongst the 
 Latin and Teutonic millions. It has been flung wide 
 across the Atlantic to our kith and kin — to the Antip- 
 odes — ^yes, and even a sprinkling has fallen on the 
 Yellow and Brown races — a sowing of dragon's teeth 
 to bring up soldiers out of the ground, one day, per- 
 haps, to challenge the supremacy of the White 
 Race. 
 
 "It has fallen into the bowels of the mine, as on 
 the desks of our city offices — it has run, like the evil 
 bindweed it is, underground through our Trade 
 Unions — it has even found a roothold about the triple 
 pillars of the State — the army, the navy, and the po- 
 
THE RED SEED 9 
 
 lice. No man can say where next the red seed will 
 be sown and the red harvest spring up. 
 
 "Yet, I believe that the resolution I am supporting 
 here to-day, a resolution which has for its object the 
 unification into an anti-Socialist federation of the 
 forces of Liberalism and Conservatism, will, in these 
 islands, be the nucleus of a burning, purifying nebula, 
 which, in the political and social heavens, shall burn 
 up and purify our country from the Red Seed and the 
 Red Peril." 
 
 It was the speech known in the days to follow as 
 the "Red Seed" speech. 
 
 The coldness that had fallen with Courcy's warn- 
 ing of the immensity of the issues opening out had 
 once more given way to the thunderous cheers of a 
 fanatical audience, sure in the righteousness and ulti- 
 mate triumph of its cause. 
 
 "Will you take an amendment to the resolution, 
 Mr. Chairman?" 
 
 The raucous voice cut like a buzz-saw across the 
 stillness that had followed the cheers. It was Destines. 
 
 Denis Destin had sat there speech after speech, all 
 the neurasthenia of his soul rising like a miasma, his 
 mind a hive of singing nerves. That splenetic irrita- 
 tion which was ever with him — that useless desire to 
 action from which he was ever held in frozen im- 
 potence — all these things were with him now. His 
 irritation at the chairman, at Brink, at the little trades- 
 man, had culminated in a sort of frenzy as Courcy 
 finished his speech. 
 
 Thus it was that, for the first time in his life, he 
 found himself on his feet as a speaker, scarcely con- 
 scious that he had risen, ignorant of what he was go- 
 ing to do now that he had got there, calling with a 
 
10 DEMOCRACY 
 
 larynx that suffocated under the beatings of his heart 
 — "Will you take an amendment to the resolution, 
 Mr. Chairman?" 
 
 In his back he felt the thousands of eyes that fo- 
 cussed themselves upon him. Before him, he caught 
 the amazement of the platform, the quick bending 
 forward of the dapper little Secretary who whispered 
 into the unheeding ears of Bull. 
 
 Bull at least was not startled. Bull knew every turn 
 of the game of public meeting. Nothing could sur- 
 prise the man who had weathered the storms of 
 twenty-five years of hostile meetings. 
 
 For he knew that Destin was hostile. Every man 
 and woman there knew he was hostile. The tall, 
 threatening form — the forward-thrusting jaw — the 
 inexorable nose — the bony forehead — the eyes that 
 contracted as they gazed — the rebellion of straight 
 dark brown hair that ran backwards over the square 
 head — all proclaimed him an enemy within the gate. 
 
 Perhaps — and the consciousness of it burst upon 
 the meeting simultaneously — he was a Socialist enemy. 
 A low hiss came from the back of the hall — then an- 
 other, until the place was sibilant, with an undertone 
 of groaning derision. The storm broke about his 
 head. 
 
 But this boy-man in the early twenties had the 
 quality of all demagogues — the capacity to lose fear 
 in opposition. Formidable, brutal, as he looked, there 
 was something almost nervously helpless, something 
 unconscious, about him, as though he were an autom- 
 aton pulled by invisible strings. 
 
 Again the great voice, now not so raucous, boomed 
 across the room— "Will you take an amendment?" 
 
 Bull had risen to his feet with a smile. A lift of 
 
THE RED SEED 11 
 
 his smooth, rather small hand, and the audience was 
 stilled. 
 
 "My friends, let us not forget *the milk of human 
 kindness* of which Mr. Courcy has spoken." There 
 was a twinkle in the eye — it might have been the 
 twinkle of malevolence or of humour. 
 
 His voice changed dourly, as he looked at Destin. 
 "What is your amendment?" 
 
 "It is an amendment against the resolution," blun- 
 dered Destin, who, indeed, had no particular amend- 
 ment in his mind — only the overmastering drive of 
 irritation and opposition. 
 
 "What is it?" went on the chairman, implacably. 
 
 "It is an amendment against forming the new Fed- 
 eration." 
 
 "That is not an amendment but a fresh resolution," 
 retorted the chairman with bland brutality. "It is a 
 pity that some of our Socialist friends have the same 
 vast ignorance of the rules of public meeting that they 
 have of society. 
 
 "I am not a Socialist," said Destin simply. 
 
 "In that case," said the chairman suavely, "there 
 can be no object in your moving an amendment to a 
 resolution which has for its aim the destruction of 
 Socialism." 
 
 "Sit down ! Shut up ! Chuck him out !" came from 
 the benches around him. 
 
 Destin found his brain and his voice together. The 
 opposition had done what nothing else could do — it 
 had steeled him. 
 
 "Well, then, I wish to speak against the resolu- 
 tion, and as a citizen and one of the 'human beings' 
 referred to by Mr. Courcy, who happens not to agree 
 with you, I claim the right of free speech at a public 
 
12 DEMOCRACY 
 
 meeting. You do not, I suppose, Mr. Chairman, wish 
 it to go out to the world that at your initial meeting 
 you forbade the right of free speech?" 
 
 It was a hit. Courcy was speaking to the chairman. 
 
 Again Bull had quieted the rising anger of the 
 meeting. 
 
 "I will give you five minutes to speak, and you will 
 kindly come up to the platform. Nobody shall say 
 that the anti-Socialist Federation stifled free speech. 
 Socialist or no Socialist, you are free of the platform, 
 Mr. ?" 
 
 "Destin." 
 
 "Mr. Destin — ^an un-English name, if the gentle- 
 man will let me say so. Perhaps he is a German?" 
 
 Bull's careful insolence completed Destines coolness. 
 
 As in his impetuousness he tried to clamber up the 
 front of the low platform, instead of taking the stairs 
 at the side, his foot slipped, his knee striking the edge 
 and jarring him. 
 
 It was an angry Destin that found himself facing 
 an already hostile and disdainful audience. He looked 
 a little ridiculous as he stood there, his trousers cov- 
 ered with the dust of his fall, his face pale, his stub- 
 born, rather long hair and strongly-marked features 
 in almost grotesque contrast to the people at whom 
 he was looking. The meeting was still laughing at 
 his fall. 
 
 "Now, Mr.— er — Destin," came from the chairman 
 behind him. 
 
 From the corner of his eye he caught the six feet 
 odd of Courcy, coiled into negligent and blank in- 
 difference, the arms folded, the head coming forward 
 a little, the eyes peering blindly through the pince-nez, 
 
 "I am not a German and I am not a Socialist," be- 
 
THE RED SEED 13 
 
 gan Destin. "I am the child of an English mother 
 and an Irish father, and in politics I am what I sup- 
 pose you would call a Democrat. The same as Mr. 
 Bull," he said whimsically. 
 
 The audience were obviously bored by this personal 
 recital, and did not hesitate to show it, though in 
 well-bred fashion. "Go on ! Go on ! Let's hear what 
 youVe got to say!" whilst from the back, in leaden 
 humour, smacked a voice — "Cut the cackle and come 
 to the 'osses !" punctuated by a crackle of laughter. 
 
 "The reason I oppose the resolution," went on 
 Destin, "is because it is a resolution of blind negation. 
 It ignores everything that cannot, must not, be ignored. 
 It speaks of destruction — ^not construction, of destroy- 
 ing the new force in society, whether we like that 
 force or not, without putting an)rthing in its place." 
 
 The meeting listened in stolid silence. It faced him 
 like a wall reared there blankly against him. He could 
 feel it, as he often felt it afterwards, as an impenetra- 
 ble mass, formidable with a dead life. It blanketed 
 his soul, hobbled his tongue, stopped him as no active 
 opposition could do. 
 
 For a moment his thoughts left him. He faltered. 
 The meeting felt it, and sat there gloating in trium- 
 phant stolidity. His mind turned in a squirrel cage. 
 Vainly he cast back to pick up the lost trail of his 
 thoughts. What was it he had meant to say? What 
 was the phrase he had to remember? 
 
 In fine carelessness, he had disdained notes. What 
 was it? 
 
 "Get off ! Get off !" called one or two voices from 
 the back. "Come off if youVe nothing to say." And 
 then in strident derision — "Democrat !" 
 
 Behind him he felt Bull smiling at his discomfiture. 
 
14 DEMOCRACY 
 
 At his side, Courcy*s blank indifference. Brink's in- 
 dignant fanaticism. The platform of little tradesmen, 
 fussing and fuming at such shocking waste of time, 
 as business men who knew that time was money — the 
 impatience of reality with its arch-foe — idealism. 
 
 Again and again his brain cast back for the lost 
 trail. The more he tried to visualise it, the more it 
 eluded him. What was the phrase ? The loom of his 
 mind was twirling inside his skull, spell-binding his 
 thoughts in a woolly tangle. He could see it churning 
 now in a tangle of red. "Red." "Red." What was 
 it that was red? Then, as he passed into blank un- 
 consciousness, the phrase came to him. "The Red 
 Seed." He found himself speaking — speaking like an 
 automaton, the phrases pouring out torrentially as 
 though a familiar were speaking through the gullet of 
 his throat. 
 
 The cries had died away. The men and women 
 there were listening — contracted with hate, but listen- 
 ing. 
 
 "Mr. Courcy has spoken of the Red Seed. Well, I 
 ask you who are the sowers ? Who shall be the reap- 
 ers? What is the Seed? 
 
 "If it be the seed of bloody, revengeful revolution 
 — if it be the seed of envious impotence — if it be the 
 blind seed of class hate — then it does not need anti- 
 Socialist Federations to stamp it out — it will choke 
 itself as it comes up — choke itself with the weeds of 
 the evil thoughts sown with it. 
 
 "If it be the seed of death — ^then it will be barren 
 with the sterility of death. If it be the seed of de- 
 struction — then it will destroy itself. 
 
 "But, supposing it be another kind of seed? Sup- 
 posing it be the seed of new thoughts — of new desires 
 
THE RED SEED IS 
 
 — of new developments — the seed of a newer civilisa- 
 tion to rear itself out of the decay of our sick civili- 
 sation of to-day? Supposing it be the seed set in the 
 cries of our starving millions — in our unsatisfied and 
 brutalised working classes — seed set in the body of 
 the harlot on our pavements — in the mind of the scien- 
 tist in the laboratory — yes, even in the impotent ideal- 
 ism of our churches and chapels? 
 
 "Supposing it be the seed of the Eternal Impulse 
 with its age-long drive ? 
 
 "The earth to-day trembles with the event of the 
 seed. It feels in its age-old womb the throbbings and 
 the wrenchings which have ever heralded in the past 
 the working of the blind foetus of men's thoughts 
 towards the light. Who can stop that miraculous birth 
 — can strangle the spirit of youth? 
 
 "Can the Anti-Socialist Federation stop it? Can 
 Mr. Courcy or Mr. Bull stop it? Can they force back 
 into abortion the insistent, pulsating thing that is 
 waiting to be born? 
 
 "Will they — will you — will I — ^be the midwives»or 
 the abortionists of the new society? Nay, can we be 
 the abortionists even if we will ? 
 
 "Can we view with calmness the terrific engine you 
 and I and all of us have created in the earth — the en- 
 gine of a competitive Juggernaut in which all that is 
 best, all that is helpless, all that is other than brutal 
 and rampant is crushed? Can we see unmoved the 
 enslavement of the majority by the minority — the 
 howling wilderness of hunger in our cities — ^the never- 
 ceasing grind of those mills in which the minds and 
 bodies of women, children, and youth are ground — 
 ground as the mills of God grind? 
 
 "Can we see Europe an armed camp, a-bristle with 
 
16 DEMOCRACY 
 
 bayonets — ^hear the earth shake to the tramp of Teu- 
 ton and Latin — of American and Mongolian — see Eu- 
 rope a powder magazine into which at any moment a 
 spark may be thrown to blow back into the time-abyss 
 anything of civilisation we have been able to rear? 
 
 **The Red Seed! Supposing it is we who are sow- 
 ing the Red Seed — the Seed which shall spring out of 
 the sodden ground to drench it anew with blood? Sup- 
 posing we are the Red Sowers? 
 
 "Supposing that other Seed which it is here our 
 sworn purpose to blast in the ground be the Seed of a 
 newer and better Society — of a Society where cooper- 
 ation rather than competition shall be the order of the 
 day? Supposing it be the Seed of God Himself?*' 
 
 Destin got no further. In a moment, the combusti- 
 ble materials which had piled themselves up before 
 him under the silence of the meeting had exploded. 
 
 "Blasphemy ! Blasphemy !" 
 
 The word ran round the hall, curling into a great 
 wave of hate that met and smashed upwards in the 
 centre. 
 
 He felt himself caught up in the whirlpool. Swung 
 round, now off his feet, now touching ground for a 
 moment. A swirling, maddened movement of which 
 he was the nucleus. 
 
 There was a swaying — an unbearable pressure — ^an 
 opening out — the cool air on his face — ^and he found 
 himself on the city pavement, his coat hanging from 
 him, the trickle of something warm on his cheek. 
 
 It was the beginning of the new challenge. The 
 Magog meeting had shown that even in the sacred 
 City itself the Red Seed had been sown, for black- 
 coated men and unimportant women had risen in all 
 parts of the hall when the cry of blasphemy had 
 
THE RED SEED 17 
 
 circled, to raise their voices with the man on the plat- 
 form. 
 
 The new Democracy had thrown down the gauntlet 
 to organised Society as Buster Bull had said, and 
 organised Society had taken it up. It was but the 
 prelude of the final victory over the Red Peril. 
 
II 
 
 TAKING UP THE GAUNTLET 
 
 Destin found himself a Socialist the next morning. 
 The Daily Meteor, which always knew everything, 
 said so, and even the Liberal organs agreed. Destin 
 had discovered it himself the day before on the pave- 
 ment outside the Magog. 
 
 The "Magog" had hammered him out. Had welded 
 the largeness of his "democracy" into the deiiniteness 
 of Socialism. Had shocked him into a new and harder 
 consciousness. And it was a shock. 
 
 For Destin had always revolted from the Socialist 
 dogma: from what he conceived to be a soulless ma- 
 terialism — a movement without a religion — without a 
 God, if you wish. "The material conception of his- 
 tory" left his Celtic heart unmoved. Now, in spite of 
 himself, he had been driven into the sinister, doubtful 
 thing — had been forced to take sides in the struggle 
 that was preparing. He was "a Socialist," but with 
 reservations and under protest. 
 
 He soon found that in the society of the future 
 there would be no reservations. He found it the next 
 morning at Messrs. Peabody and Parsons, where he 
 earned his living as Secretary-Manager. 
 
 In the interview which followed with his chiefs he 
 made one or two curious discoveries, which left him 
 astonished. The!3e things were always astonishing 
 him. 
 
TAKING UP THE GAUNTLET 19 
 
 He discovered that "democracy" held many things 
 besides the quaHties usually associated with it. Here 
 was little Mr. Parsons, an extreme Radical, who posi- 
 tively gloried in his "democracy," which he spouted 
 picturesquely through a cloud of moustache in season 
 and out of season, with a shaking of the mane of black 
 hair and punctuated by the twinkle of two eyes of 
 brilliant black, now telling him with the same shake 
 of mane, through the same moustache, that "really, 
 Destin, though, as a Democrat, I believe in Free 
 Speech and all that sort of thing, there are limits." 
 And when Mr. Parsons said "limits," he snapped his 
 strong white teeth behind the veil of moustache and 
 flashed his eyes in much the same manner as a wire- 
 haired terrier might do when dealing with cats, or 
 rats, or other vermin. 
 
 What made it all the more incomprehensible was 
 that this same Mr. Parsons had had frequent and 
 rather acrimonious discussions with his partner, Mr. 
 Peabody, who was a Tory of the old school as he was 
 always pridefully declaring. They had raged in gen- 
 tlemanly irritation and with due regard for the par- 
 liamentary amenities, interspersing their arguments 
 with protesting — "my dear fellows," and "really. P., 
 old boy, you must know," and so on over the topical 
 question of Free Trade or Protection. 
 
 Parsons in these discussions had snapped himself 
 into a fury of Free Trade individualism, whilst Mr. 
 Peabody, bland and dignified in his Dundreary whis- 
 kers, with pinched, aristocratic nose, set whitely upon 
 a scorbutic countenance, though, it seemed, an Indi- 
 vidualist, found his Individualism so strongly striped 
 with Protection that it cut him off from that of his 
 partner. 
 
20 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Now, It seemed, these two gentlemen had quite 
 settled their differences, and, sitting entrenched behind 
 the board room table, dealt unitedly with the common 
 enemy — dealt firmly, but with tactful blandness on 
 Mr. Peabody's part and with protesting though 
 friendly argument upon that of Mr. Parsons, which 
 mostly took the interrogative form. 
 
 Destin could not understand it. Fanatical though 
 he himself was — impatient of contradiction in the 
 faith that was in him — ^yet he had with it in the ab- 
 stract a fine tolerance for discussion; for everything 
 with him was a matter for discussion, to be talked 
 over, churned into mental chile, and assimilated or re- 
 jected. He would have all men to be saved. 
 
 He would even have Peabody and Parsons to be 
 saved, which he tried to make clear to those grace- 
 fully indignant gentlemen. And here were those ar- 
 gumentative individuals refusing even to discuss the 
 matter with him, flinging away their chances of sal- 
 vation with both tongues. 
 
 It seemed they both had been at the Magog meet- 
 ing. They had both been witnesses of "the disgrace- 
 ful exhibition" (to quote Mr. Peabody) of their 
 Secretary. They both wanted explanations. 
 
 Denis Destin was quite prepared to give them "ex- 
 planations." As many as they wanted — perhaps more 
 than they wanted. But he found they did not want 
 argument. Destines form of explanation was always 
 an argument. 
 
 He tried to put his views before the implacable 
 pair, but found his ideas losing themselves in Mr. 
 Peabody's whiskers and in Mr. Parsons' moustache. 
 What he resented more than anything else was the 
 obvious sincerity of both men. If he could have felt 
 
TAKING UP THE GAUNTLET 21 
 
 that they were "crooked," it would have been easier 
 to understand and to bear. But they were each as 
 genuine and as fanatical as himself. Destines fanati- 
 cism never blinded him on these points, though he 
 didn't like fanaticism in other people. 
 
 Finding them impervious to reason, and discover- 
 ing new hates for both these gentlemen, he burned 
 his boats, leaving his employers blandly uncomforta- 
 ble though outwardly unmoved at his frank and fluent 
 expressions of opinion. They discovered a hitherto 
 entirely unsuspected Destin — a fierce, rather coarse 
 animal, with a voice that from the flageolet of civili- 
 sation had become a trumpet blast. 
 
 Destin on his part found that the walls of Jericho 
 did not subside at the blast of any trumpet, which 
 rather surprised him. Messrs. Peabody and Parsons 
 had no use for explanations which were really argu- 
 ments and finished with criticisms. 
 
 Not that Destin minded going. In fact, he had in- 
 tended to go, but in his own good time. As a tri- 
 umphant demagogue, he would have liked to march 
 away from Jericho with drums beating and a flutter 
 of scarlet at the head. But the event had forced his 
 hand. 
 
 Democracy was throwing down the gauntlet and 
 Society was taking it up cheerfully. 
 
 For the first time in his life he was being brought 
 nose round to reality. Hitherto he had lived in a 
 dream-world — now that world was melting thinly 
 away, leaving Society entrenched behind the towers 
 and escarpments of fact. 
 
 It was an angry but triumphant Destin that walked 
 out of Messrs. Peabody and Parsons' offices with a 
 month's wages in his pocket. He felt he had scored. 
 
22 DEMOCRACY 
 
 He did not know exactly how, but he felt it. He had 
 finished with "the City." That he knew inevitably. 
 
 He summed up his resources. A few pounds in 
 the Savings Bank. A cheque for twelve pounds ten 
 shillings in his pocket. Board and lodging with his 
 mother and father until he could see what could be 
 done as a journalist. 
 
 For Destin had been "writing for the papers." A 
 lean, secretive kind of writing. But, yet, a commence- 
 ment. He could not help writing any more than talk- 
 ing. He was a writing, talking animal. 
 
 His mind cast back in comfort to the four-storeyed 
 house in the Beech Road, one of the roads running 
 back to the river at Hammersmith, where the Destins, 
 father, mother, and son, kept up appearances in the 
 face of a hostile world with the aid of a little servant, 
 five feet nothing, and an income of the irreducible 
 minimum. 
 
 The Destins had all the Irish passion for a big 
 house. In a neighbourhood where an older respecta- 
 bility struggled vainly against the fever of sub-letting, 
 they had found the big house at the low price. No. 9 
 at least had resisted the tendency of time and place, 
 though there had been a talk of "paying guests" soon 
 after Mr. Destin, the retired Government official, had 
 decided with his English wife that the merciful im- 
 mensity of London was better than a little Irish town 
 upon an income reduced to one-half. 
 
 Destin felt that in the Beech Road he had a resting- 
 place for the soles of his feet — a taking off place for 
 his flight into Fleet Street. His father and mother 
 at least would help and understand his new situation. 
 
 But would they? 
 
 It came upon him like a cloud that perhaps they 
 
TAKING UP THE GAUNTLET 23 
 
 would not. An only child, they had loved him after 
 their own fashion; his soft-hearted, grey-eyed father 
 with all the affectionate impulse of the Irishman — his 
 mother, with a harder, dourer, more chastened love. 
 But had they understood him? Would they under- 
 stand him now? Would they understand the Magog 
 meeting? 
 
 It was with these thoughts that he turned his key 
 in the Yale lock of "The Elms," and entered the room 
 on the right, a sparely furnished sitting room. 
 
 He found his father, big-shouldered and hunched, 
 his hands sunk in the crosspockets of his Donegal 
 tweed, gazing the length of his nose — a. longer, weaker 
 edition of his son*s — at the houses opposite. His 
 iron-grey hair, parted stiffly, tufted here and there on 
 the rather small, round head. His eyebrows overhung 
 bushily the grey, limpid eyes. The clean, humorous, 
 rather weak-looking mouth hunched itself, like the 
 shoulders, largely over the chin, a thought too finely 
 moulded. He looked, as Destin sometimes thought, 
 like a tombstone — ^monumental, with the long, slender 
 limbs, small hips, and expanse of flat back. 
 
 In the woman who sat stiffly by the empty fireplace, 
 one saw where Denis Destin got his strength of line. 
 In the straight lips and tightened jaw, with the un- 
 quenchable eyes, black as the brows above them, lay 
 the strength of the Destins. The mass of white hair 
 brushed smoothly off the high, masculine forehead; 
 the fineness of line of feature and skin ; the blue-veined 
 tenseness of the hands that lay along the arms of her 
 chair — ^all showed the fine, high strength of an im- 
 conquerable spirit. 
 
 The whiteness of hair and skin came in dead, ar- 
 resting contrast to the eyes, full of fire. 
 
24 DEMOCRACY 
 
 On the table lay the Meteor, which, with the Bible, 
 was the chief literature of "The Elms." From where 
 he stood, he could see the sub-heading — "A Socialist 
 Fracas." 
 
 Destin waited for his father to speak. It was an 
 unaccustomed silence that met him. It was the Magog 
 silence again. 
 
 He felt he must explain himself. A passion for 
 self -justification rose within him. But he felt also 
 that explanation was useless. He knew it when he 
 entered the room. 
 
 He broke off in the middle. "Have you nothing 
 to say to me?" he asked. 
 
 The great shoulders swung round. He hardly 
 knew the eyes that contracted on him — those eyes that 
 could be so tender. He had seen his father like that 
 before, at a meeting of the Church Missionary So- 
 ciety. The eyes were those of Brink. Those of the 
 little tradesman. He began to know them. 
 
 All at once his father erupted. Harsh, almost brutal 
 in his indictment as he opened, his voice broke after 
 one unusual, abrupt sentence. He put his hands to 
 his face. 
 
 Then he went on. *We always said you would 
 change. When you were a little boy at home long 
 ago, we saw the taint in you. You asked questions 
 about your church, your school — ^about everything. 
 We thought it would pass. We forgot it. When 
 you were twenty, you brought home that horrible 
 Rationalist Press Association literature to challenge 
 and frighten us anew. You queried everything. (You 
 once said as a boy that you would query God Him- 
 self.) You even queried your own atheist literature. 
 
TAKING UP THE GAUNTLET 25 
 
 You doubted everything. You doubted everything the 
 wisest minds of all time had known. 
 
 "But we did not expect this. We did not think 
 that a son of ours could be a Socialist. A heralder of 
 revolution. A degrader of morals. This is too much." 
 He turned away. 
 
 Denis Destin turned to his mother, who sat stiffly 
 upright. 
 
 "Will you hear me, mother?" 
 
 He started once more into torrential explanation 
 and self-justification. As he spoke, his mother's 
 mouth began to twitch in that dead, even palpitation 
 like the beat of a heart — ^the twitch that had stayed 
 after her paralysis of five years before. 
 
 The dauntless eyes filled with tears. Destin went 
 over to her impulsively, and putting his arms around 
 her neck, a rare thing with him, kissed her. He knelt 
 at her feet, and felt the trembling hand that placed 
 itself on his head, heard the gentle voice that thrilled, 
 now with passion, now with exasperation, as it recited 
 the /hopes, the dreads, of the past He felt his spirit 
 moved as it passed from recitation into pleading — ^an 
 appeal in which religion and love and convention and 
 fear all blended. 
 
 His father waited by the window. The voice ceased. 
 They were silent for his answer. 
 
 Denis Destin heard the call of blood. He had often 
 ridiculed the idea of the blood-tie — had said sometimes 
 in his bitterness that anybody or everybody under- 
 stood something of him rather than his nearest. But 
 underneath, he knew the 'blood-tie perhaps the strong- 
 est, subtlest, of tall ties. Knew in this moment that the 
 first things of life can never be entirely sloughed — 
 that they cling and bind long after — ^nay, even that 
 
26 DEMOCRACY 
 
 they wrap themselves more closely in the long after- 
 wards. 
 
 His heart cried out to his mother. His mind ran the 
 thread of memory. Found the loom of memory spin- 
 ning around heart and brain. In the throb of his 
 heart, he felt the engine that drove the loom. But 
 even as it spun itself to suffocate him, he felt some- 
 thing else beat — something deeper, more insistent — 
 something that would make itself heard. 
 
 It was with a fine impersonality, a detachment that 
 was new to him, that he told them he could not turn 
 back — that the Magog had put the handle in his hands 
 and he had to plough his furrow to the end. 
 
 He found himself alone, looking out into the watery 
 rays of an April sun. Society was taking up the 
 gauntlet — ^not cheerfully, but in tears and tribulation 
 — with searchings of heart and wrenchings of spirit. 
 Its child was being born in travail. 
 
L 
 
 III 
 THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 
 
 As he stood there, a double-knock came on the street 
 door. 
 
 The little servant came in, holding gingerly with the 
 edge of her sack apron an enormous square envelope. 
 
 Destin stared at the bold, rather scrawling writing 
 on the front, "Denis Destin, Esq." It looked formid- 
 able. 
 
 He turned it over and looked at the back. A coronet. 
 This was something beyond his ken. 
 
 He opened it as though it contained a bomb. And 
 it did. 
 
 He read upon a thick, plain card: 
 
 Chillington House, 
 Park Lane, W., 
 
 April 25, 19 
 
 Dear Mr. Destin — 
 
 I have heard about the "Magog" meeting and 
 shall be so glad if you can find time to come here to- 
 morrow at 4 to meet a few Socialist friends. 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 Anna Chillington. 
 
 "Chillington." Where had he heard that name? 
 Then he remembered. 
 
 At this time he knew nothing of the Socialist move- 
 ment, but like most of the other fifty millions of the 
 
 27 
 
28 DEMOCRACY 
 
 British people, he had heard of the Duchess of Chil- 
 lington — of the eccentric Duchess — or "the Demo- 
 cratic Duchess" as she was known. But how did she 
 know of him ? He found out later that the Duchess of 
 Chillington made it her business to know everything 
 and everybody. 
 
 He had always felt vaguely that there must be some- 
 thing inspiring in a real live duchess becoming a 
 Socialist. Especially a full-blooded human specimen 
 like Her Grace of Chillington, whose portrait when 
 she made her rare appearances at Court to present one 
 of her numerous daughters, of whom she looked a 
 splendid elder sister, appeared in all the sixpennies and 
 even in that picture gallery of fame and fashion and 
 crime, the halfpenny "Looking Glass," which never 
 tired of "featuring" her. 
 
 One day she was shown driving her famous flying 
 mare "Starlight" against the watch on the* Carelands 
 course. Another, riding some raking fence in the 
 Quorn country and keeping up her reputation as the 
 most daring horsewoman in England. Or it might be 
 a picture of the Duchess nursing a sick child in a 
 Whitechapel slum — ^and not made for the occasion 
 either, for her heart was as big as her body. 
 
 Then Society would shiver in its strawberry leaves 
 at the report that its erring sister had danced with an 
 Eastend docker at a Shoreditch Socialist reunion, or 
 have its conscience seared by the story that she had 
 snubbed a bishop. 
 
 And now he was to meet her in the flesh. 
 
 Denis Destines democratic soul sometimes had lapses 
 into snobbishness. It may have been his early train- 
 ing, or something innate, but he often found himself 
 to his own indignant astonishment paying involuntary 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 29 
 
 tribute to rank or fashion or wealth. He hated it. But 
 there it was. 
 
 Perhaps that was why his heart beat so strongly on 
 the Friday afternoon as he ascended the steps of Chil- 
 lington House. He was not eased by the calf and 
 plush of the footman who opened the door. His hat 
 and stick and gloves were however carefully removed 
 from his person as he moved up the broad stairway 
 of the home of the Chillingtons. 
 
 As the doors were thrown open, he heard his name 
 called with shocking distinctness by the disdainful 
 servant, to whom he had imparted it confidentially and 
 with considerable diffidence — "Mr. Destin." He had 
 never before really understood that he was a "Mr. 
 Destin" — it quite staggered him. 
 
 Destin found himself enveloped in a roar of sound 
 which poured on him from the four quarters of the 
 spacious Louis Quinze drawing-room with one great 
 voice that boomed itself out over the others. He could 
 see nothing. Everything was revolving around him, 
 until he was brought to his wits by a beautiful voice 
 with a contralto glug-glug in the heart of it and found 
 himself gazing on the original of the "Looking Glass" 
 pictures. 
 
 In a moment he felt that he had known this woman 
 from childhood. He could almost recall the stranded 
 hair of dusky red carelessly knotted behind in the 
 classical coil of Greece. He knew her. There could be 
 no question of that. Everybody upon first meeting 
 her thought they had known the Duchess somewhere 
 in time or space. 
 
 There was a delicious though undemocratic odour 
 of attar of roses — the only scent the Duchess used. It 
 was faint and mingled with the democratic scent of 
 
30 DEMOCRACY 
 
 perspiration — a. sort of .corduroy scent, which impreg- 
 nated the place. 
 
 He heard the rich, deep voice congratulating him 
 upon "the fine revolutionary speech you made at the 
 Magog, Mr. Destin. Was delighted to find that our 
 younger blood is being true to its destiny." Felt him- 
 self wafted away on the silken gown of the Duchess 
 from person to person. "This is Mr. Destin, the hero 
 of the 'Magog.' " Shook hands with men and women 
 of all sorts and sizes, until he found himself stung to 
 sudden coldness by a voice with something hissing in 
 it — the voice he had heard at the Magog. 
 
 This, it seemed, was one of Her Grace's periodical 
 "notions." The notion of making the hostile sections 
 of the Socialist movement known to one another and 
 even of bringing its natural foes into contact with the 
 redcaps of revolution — "so as to understand one an- 
 other a little better, Mr. Courcy." 
 
 For it was Courcy who stood slenderly before him, 
 bowing with grave irony. "Now I will leave you two 
 enemies to settle matters between you," said the 
 Duchess, who disappeared, delighted with her success 
 in bringing about one of her impossible situations. 
 
 At least Destin thought it impossible. That the one- 
 time Conservative Prime Minister should condescend 
 to speak to a rebel who had attacked Society at his own 
 meeting seemed, to put it mildly, an impossible situa- 
 tion. Then Courcy began to speak. 
 
 In a sentence he had put the boy at his ease. It was 
 the fatal facility which he had seen in the Duchess and 
 which in the long afterwards he learnt to know and 
 fear. "You know, Mr. Destin, though we may be po- 
 litical opponents" (here was the famous Courcy put- 
 ting him on a level with himself), "still we can differ 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 31 
 
 I hope as gentlemen. Indeed I listened with much in- 
 terest to your Magog speech — z. very happy effort 
 under difficult conditions if I may say so — ^and I felt 
 that there was a good deal lying underneath it. No- 
 body more than I regretted the violence used at the 
 meeting." (Courcy was quite genuine in this as 
 Destin saw at once.) "Arguments of that sort ad- 
 vance nothing. But you and I cannot expect all men 
 to have the same philosophical detachment, which is 
 so essential where questions affecting the stability of 
 Society are concerned, and more particularly now with 
 the strike threats in the air. I wish we had more of 
 the enthusiasm of youth on our side — ^more young men 
 like yourself." 
 
 Courcy looked at him keenly — ^fleetingly. The blue 
 eyes that peered blandly at him through the delicately 
 balanced pince-nez, looked innocent. They might be. 
 But Destin was conscious of a searching out— of an 
 analysis — of a weighing in the balance of thought, 
 which left him uncomfortable — "as though he had 
 been vivisected," he said afterwards. 
 
 Destin felt the impulse to respond to so friendly an 
 overture. To be grateful for so much understanding 
 — for so much that convinced and flattered him — for 
 the subtlest flattery in the world — that of the man of" 
 the world for the young man. In a moment he would 
 have broken into one of his customary floods of elo- 
 quence, like the talker he was, in which he would have 
 poured out his heart to the man before him, when he 
 caught that look. It was only momentary. But it 
 chilled him as though a finger of ice had sealed his lips. 
 
 That voice like the lowing of bulls was still sound- 
 ing through the room. It never ceased. 
 
 It was coming nearer. Now it was close behind him. 
 
32 DEMOCRACY 
 
 when it seemed to strike him between the shoulders. 
 It was the hand of the speaker. 
 
 He found himself half turned round. "I am going 
 to deprive you of the company of Mr. Destin, Courcy," 
 boomed the voice. 
 
 Courcy had never been spoken to like that before. 
 But everyone knew that, in his own words, John Belch, 
 plain honest John Belch, talked to the swells "like God 
 Almighty talks to a blackbeetle." Yet even Belch, 
 with all the assurance that was already making him 
 stand out, hesitated a little before the bland smile of 
 the man he addressed. 
 
 Even whilst he wrung his hand, Destin felt that 
 Belch was thinking all the time of Courcy. "My boy, 
 you must be a chip of the old block. I believe you are 
 a bit of myself. It is just what I would have done had 
 I been in your place. I'm glad you made Courcy and 
 Brink and all that lot sit up." 
 
 He was speaking at Courcy, who however by now 
 was loping his way through the crowd, his hands 
 folded behind his back, peering from face to face, see- 
 ing nothing and everything. 
 
 "Now that we've got a party in Parliament, I'll 
 show 'em what's what. We want more scenes — more 
 beardings of the capitalist monster in the den where 
 he has wallowed, warped and wiped out" (Belch was 
 famous for his trilogies) "all that is best in human 
 nature." 
 
 Destin was looking into a short, square face with 
 short, square, pugnacious beard that curled itself 
 around and up to the clear blue eyes which faced 
 everything with assuredness. But it was the mouth 
 with its gleaming rows of teeth, "and every one my 
 own, my boy," as their owner said, which held him. 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 33 
 
 It was a mouth which yawned four-square like a kit 
 bag at a world waiting to be enveloped. The voice 
 matched it. It came booming to the ear. It hazed the 
 mind behind. It hazed the audience. The Voice was 
 the man. 
 
 Destin was impressed. Impressed by the tremen- 
 dous earnestness of the man ; by his voice ; by the hon- 
 est cut of him from the square jowl to the square, 
 short jacket. The demagogic instinct in him awak- 
 ened responsively to that of Belch. 
 
 He was being hypnotised, when a little, petulant 
 voice near him intruded itself. 
 
 "But, my dear Sir, the emotional appeal is useless — 
 it is the intellectual appeal we need. Even the coming 
 strike will be useless without the force of intellectual 
 conviction behind it. Let us teach the proletariat what 
 the materialist conception of history means." 
 
 "The materialist conception of history be damned V 
 eructated Belch, facing round to the frock-coated fig- 
 ure that jerked its arms convulsively like a jumping- 
 jack. 
 
 The little eyes of the man glittered aqueously like a 
 rain cloud when the sun is sitting behind it. Bowcher, 
 for all his respectability, which enveloped him like a 
 garment, his mannequinish legs and arms and tubby 
 body, was not the man "to take it lying down," not 
 even from John Belch. The lion head, with its over- 
 mastering forehead, cut off at the top into a plateau of 
 materialism, fringed incongruously with its mutton- 
 chop whiskers, all showed Bowcher the intellectual 
 force he was in the movement; the man, as Destin 
 knew later, who had refused a seat in the cabinet and 
 sacrificed two fortunes for the sake of his Socialist 
 principles, but who had an incurable weakness for the 
 
34 DEMOCRACY 
 
 aristocracy. Bowcher, "the old Guard," as he was 
 known, who saw a menace to the integrity of the move- 
 ment in every critic with whom he did not agree. 
 Bowcher — witchfinder and impossibiHst. 
 
 "The materiahst conception of history be damned !'* 
 repeated Belch in a voice that swept the room in a 
 Jovian blast. 
 
 "Damn it by all means," interjected a young man in 
 a chessboard suit, who had been passing from group 
 to group in the room, injecting a word here and there, 
 exasperating virility into imbecility. When he hovered 
 on the fringe of a group, there were sudden silences, 
 followed by little bursts of strained laughter. 
 
 No gathering of revolution was complete without 
 Sydney Damascene, leader of the Platonists, an ex- 
 clusive union of exotic Socialists, whose hair of shin- 
 ing black, parted whitely in the centre, pale fleshy face, 
 and rainbow suits, spread themselves over the illus- 
 trateds and plastered the imagination of the man-in- 
 the-street. 
 
 "But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, what can your read- 
 ing of the history of the proletariat of the last half 
 century have been ?" expostulated Bowcher, still striv- 
 ing after politeness and addressing himself to Belch. 
 **you must know the emotional appeal has never 
 lasted. It is the head to which we have to appeal — 
 not the heart." 
 
 "What's the matter with the eye?" said Damascene. 
 
 "I appeal to what I understand best," retorted Belch, 
 who had no use for niceties of argument and ignoring 
 Damascene, whom he obviously detested. "I appeal 
 to a man's feelings. You can work on his head if you 
 like. I will work on his heart. Economics are all very 
 well in their place ; that is, in the armchair. When you 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 35 
 
 have to deal with human beings with red blood in 
 them, you'll find your economics of precious little use. 
 You can't demonstrate a man's feelings by the 
 higher mathematics, even though you've written a 
 text-book on the differential calculus or whatever you 
 call it." 
 
 Belch stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket 
 in downright fashion, jutting his beard pugnaciously 
 at his enemy. 
 
 This reference to Bowcher's more or less forgotten 
 mathematical work, written soon after he had passed 
 out brilliantly from Oxford, irritated its author be- 
 yond the resources of civilisation. 
 
 "I don't want an ex-dock labourer to teach me his- 
 tory at any rate," he replied tartly, the veins that inter- 
 laced his temples swelling. 
 
 Destin was astonished to see that the famous middle- 
 class revolutionist had sloughed his revolutionary gar- 
 ment and relapsed into bourgeoiserie. Hitherto he had 
 regarded Democracy as something ideally complete in 
 theory and practice. Here was another side to it, so 
 far unsuspected. He began to find that Democracy 
 came in many guises. 
 
 "You blether about your materialist conception. 
 What does it mean anyhow?" bellowed Belch, his eyes 
 full of angry lights. 
 
 *Tt means that a man is made by his physical envi- 
 ronment — take yourself, for instance," said Bowcher 
 with an irony that was lost on the other. 
 
 "But doesn't man in his turn make his environment? 
 tell me that," said Belch argumentatively. 
 
 "Which came first — the hen or the tgg?** cackled 
 Damascene behind Belch's shoulder. 
 
 Whilst democratic autocracy was fighting its battle 
 
36 DEMOCRACY 
 
 in a babel of sound, in which Destin caught . . . 
 "lack of comprehension" . . . "the heart of the 
 people," and, regrettable to say . . . "damned Uni- 
 versity professor;" a saurian of a man, whose bent 
 head and shoulders carried on long, corkscrew legs, 
 towered over everybody else in the room, like a per- 
 ambulating brain, approached the group, tap-tapping 
 his way along the floor with his stick, leaning on the 
 arm of a little nondescript woman, who led him much 
 as a blind man is led by his dog. 
 
 "Pity the blind !" wailed Damascene under his breath 
 as they drew near. 
 
 "Put it to Mathman," shouted Belch. 
 
 The loose, shambling figure came tapping across the 
 polished floor, the head, furrowed into grey hollows 
 like that of some antedeluvian animal, sunk massily 
 between the hooped shoulders, one sunken eye showing 
 itself, set back in the side of the slab of head. 
 
 "What is it? what is it?" said a high voice queru- 
 lously. 
 
 "Bowcher here says the way to get at the people is 
 to appeal to their heads. I believe in going for a man's 
 heart. Bowcher says the heart appeal is all very well 
 for women, but not for men. Which do you believe 
 in, Mathman?" 
 
 The little woman pulled over a chair, upon which 
 the newcomer subsided in sections like a camel. 
 
 "I don't believe in emotions . . . that is, in women," 
 said the great man, who had carved for himself a niche 
 of his own amongst Europe's metaphysicians. 
 
 "The emotional appeal is perhaps the most direct, 
 where Man is concerned. So far as woman is con- 
 cerned," said Mathman, leaning his ponderous head 
 upon the hands clasped over the handle of his stick, as 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 37 
 
 though it were too heavy for him, "I have proved in 
 my last book — Woman as an Animal/ and proved 
 conclusively, that, as a human being, she has no exist- 
 ence — therefore for us she has no concern in this 
 question. 
 
 "As I said, so far as Man, that is the Male, is con- 
 cerned, the emotional appeal is perhaps the most direct, 
 but for purposes of conviction is useless. Man is an 
 Intellectual Animal in which alone amongst all ani- 
 mals, the functions of brain control those of Mere 
 Feeling" (there was supreme contempt in his voice) — 
 "therefore the intellectual appeal must of necessity be 
 the only one where Man, the Human Being, is con- 
 cerned." 
 
 All this the great man spoke in a querulous dogma, 
 quite indifferent to the feelings of "his wife, who 
 listened with an impassive face, whilst the Duchess 
 smiled behind her, beaming indulgently upon omnis- 
 cience, delighted with the situation that was creating 
 itself. She at least had no doubts about the position 
 of woman. 
 
 "There you go, Mathman, off at a tangent as usual. 
 Why can't you give a plain answer to a plain ques- 
 tion?" snorted Belch. "Anyhow, confound it! aren't 
 women human beings?" he added, ignoring the pre- 
 vious argument, his feelings getting the better of him 
 and ever ready for what he called "a scrap." 
 
 "Woman is merely an animal, useful only for re- 
 productive purposes," replied Mathman gravely. "I 
 have proved that she is a creature controlled only by 
 her emotions. That places her outside the pale of 
 humanity, save as an accessory — a useful accessory if 
 you will" — ^he added magnanimously, "to Man — the 
 Creator," When he used the words "Man" and 
 
38 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "Male," he spoke in capitals, and was, as always, scien- 
 tifically blasphemous. 
 
 The Duchess smiled, for she, like the rest, knew that 
 the little woman who stood by his side with her small 
 hand on the jutting "kngle of shoulder, ruled the gr^at 
 man in the tiniest acts of his life, without his knowing 
 it — a tyranny from which he only escaped on those 
 occasions, not infrequent, when she was laid tempo- 
 rarily hors de combat by additions to an already ab- 
 normal family, when he had his bag packed by her and 
 went to his club for a few days, only returning after 
 the event. They never quarrelled. I'hese excursions 
 from the feminist rule were perfectly understood 
 between them. 
 
 "But, dash it all ! Mathman, that is not good Social- 
 ism, and you are a member of the party," said the 
 exasperated Belch, shaking a fist under the indifferent 
 nose of the 'anti-feminist. "Socialism means the 
 equality of the sexes. If it doesn't — what in thunder 
 does it mean ?" Belch by this time had quite forgotten 
 the original argument. 
 
 "Anyhow you had a mother yourself," he added as 
 an after-thought. 
 
 "The word 'mother' is much misused," said Math- 
 man calmly, who appeared to object to motherhood on 
 principle. "Motherhood is merely a natural function: 
 there is no sentiment attaching to it. Woman is the 
 reproducing animal — man the creative." 
 
 Destin, looking up from a battle in which his ideas 
 of democracy were changing with kaleidoscopic rapid- 
 ity, saw a man standing on the outskirts of a triangular 
 duel in which by now Belcher was trying to bring the 
 argument back to the original subject, Mathman, now 
 mounted upon his favourite hobby, actually destroyed 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 39 
 
 woman as an entity, and Belch, booming through the 
 riot, rode headlong, exasperated and puzzled, at both 
 the others. 
 
 The man on the edge of the crowd was an ordinary 
 enough London labourer, whose sallow cheeks and 
 broken hands showed the unskilled man, with slack 
 time and hard rations. He had been clean-shaved and 
 washed, his .celluloid collar clasping his neck poorly. 
 His black moustache, streaked with grey, drooped dis- 
 consolately over the broken mouth. His hair, streaked 
 like his moustache, was plastered into shining neatness 
 on his shrunken, rhomboidal head. 
 
 Destines eye was held by him — ^held by the hard 
 contempt — the dumb fierceness of his look. It seemed 
 that then and only then had he seen a working man for 
 the first time. The puzzled eyes. The hands hanging 
 awkwardly at the sides. The powerful bobbed boots. 
 The snowy corduroys. But above all, the air of reality 
 and horse-sense of the man. 
 
 The others seemed like playing children — their 
 polemical subtlety faded out in that atmosphere of 
 reality. 
 
 The most insignificant figure in 'the room, uneasy 
 and fearful in his surroundings, he had a curious sig- 
 nificance of liis own — 3, general fundamental signifi- 
 cance which pervaded the place. 
 
 Whilst he was looking at him and forgetting the 
 battle about him, he felt a touch on his shoulder and 
 found the Duchess behind him. His nostril caught a 
 confusion of scents. 
 
 *T want to introduce you to Miss Vesta Craven, who 
 is simply dying to know you." 
 
 She moved a little to one side, a hymeneal smile on 
 her face, and discovered a young lady. The Duchess 
 
40 DEMOCRACY 
 
 was an inveterate match-maker, who was always man- 
 ufacturing alliances between the wonderful young men 
 and women whom she called her "discoveries/* 
 
 Indications that she was "simply dying to know 
 him" were not very apparent, for Miss Craven was 
 singularly collected. There was something cool and 
 virginal about her, from the virginal coolness of the 
 nape of her neck to the simple clinging gown of poppy 
 grey. 
 
 Despite her reserve, she seemed to discharge an inti- 
 mate and electrical atmosphere which permeated him 
 with the "White Rose" which breathed from her as she 
 moved. His eyes passed from the mass of light brown 
 hair caught up carelessly behind the shapely, rather 
 small head, to the eyes of clear blue which looked with 
 such frankness into his, but above all to that virginal 
 neck, so irritatingly cool, as it ran downwards into the 
 mystery of the girl-body. He found something of the 
 vestal virgin in her. 
 
 Destin found in the corner where the Duchess had 
 piloted them, that Miss Craven could be quite human. 
 He was always making little discoveries as she talked. 
 It seemed she was a young woman of independent 
 means who lived in a Hampstead flat, in her own 
 words, as "a bachelor-girl." As their conversation 
 passed from anarchy to vegetarianism and even "free- 
 love," it was obvious that she had read widely. 
 
 She had broken out of what she called "an upper 
 middle-class home" and "broken into" the Socialist 
 movement, which as an enthusiastic convert with 
 Syndicalist leanings she was studying, as she said 
 herself, from the inside, "not from an armchair," and 
 was looking to the coming strike to complete her 
 education. 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 41 
 
 Destin found her finely unconventional, and was 
 glad to accept her invitation to have a comradely chat 
 and a cup of tea at the Hampstead flat. 
 
 The voice was still booming through the room like 
 a discharge of heavy artillery, punctuated now by a 
 shrill staccato of Maxim-fire. 
 
 "That Mr. Belch— I think he is delightful," said 
 Miss Craven, for a moment, enthusiastic. . . . "But 
 there is that MacClusky woman — 'The Stormy Pe- 
 trel,' you know. How I hate her!" She shuddered 
 slightly. 
 
 The staccato was that of "The MacClusky," as she 
 was known in the movement — a full-fleshed woman 
 with a Swami aspect, whose grizzled curls covered a 
 solid-looking head like that of a benevolent ram. 
 
 "The children," she was saying piercingly. "The 
 children — what are you going to do with them ?" Of 
 course Professor Mathman doesn't believe I am a 
 human being, having no feelings and no brain, being 
 merely a reproductive animal, and therefore my ques- 
 tion, like myself, has no existence." Her voice rose 
 into unbelievable shrillness as she looked upon that 
 magnificent male, who wilted slightly in his seat. 
 
 The original battle had resolved itself into one be- 
 tween Belch's bass and Mrs. MacClusky's treble, which 
 shrilled itself above the diapason of sound with which 
 the room hummed, checkered by the clatter of the tea 
 cups. "What about the children? What about the 
 Mothers?" 
 
 Mrs. MacClusky never forgot that she had managed 
 to produce a boy, who had weighed two and a half 
 pounds at birth and had never grown up. In the whole 
 Socialist movement there was not a woman more 
 fanatical and honest where the children were con- 
 
42 DEMOCRACY 
 
 cerned, or more unscrupulous in getting her way about 
 them. There was no trickery or cajolery to which she 
 would not unselfishly descend for their sakes, whilst 
 she had a Celtic exuberance which did not admit oppo- 
 sition. 
 
 Her hobby was education, in which she had made 
 herself a holy terror to School Boards and to wardens 
 of colleges, doctors, school teachers, heads of govern- 
 mental departments and the various pastors and mas- 
 ters of young England, not even excepting the Oxford 
 and Cambridge seigniors, over whose heads she held a 
 Damoclean threat of getting back their fat endow- 
 ments for the poor scholars for whom they were orig- 
 inally intended, shocking them at her dishonesty. Her 
 natural enemy was Bowcher, whose views upon woman 
 she regarded as those of incipient blackguardism and 
 brain-softening. She preferred, she said, in bland in- 
 sult, "an honest fool like Mathman, who said what he 
 meant." 
 
 Bowcher in the discussion had had his face bitten 
 pretty severely by this terrible woman before he was 
 taken off the field by his wife, who, it was reputed, 
 had been originally a cook, and who led him by his 
 cup of coffee. 
 
 "Oh ! burst all metaphysics," said Belch in an uncon- 
 trollable fit of anger. "Let's get to business. Ask 
 Graney here what he thinks about the way to appeal to 
 the working-man. He ought to know." He pointed 
 to the man in the white corduroys at whom Destin had 
 been looking. 
 
 Graney flushed sullenly across his sallow face, look- 
 ing more incongruous than ever in his surroundings. 
 He mumbled something about "not knowing anything 
 abaht it — spouting wasn't his business anyhow." 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 43 
 
 A man with a formidable spread of shoulder who 
 had been steadily sucking at a briar, the heavy bowl of 
 which nestled somewhere within his short grey beard, 
 and who had been peering shaggily out from a welter 
 of wire hair at Mathman and the rest during the alter- 
 cation, took his pipe out of his mouth and said quietly 
 to Graney with a strong Scottish accent — "Tell them 
 what ye ken, Joe, from the men's side." 
 
 Graney looked into the cairngorm eyes of the 
 speaker. It was as though a message had passed be- 
 tween them from which he took confidence. The other 
 had put his pipe back and was puffing steadily away. 
 
 "Orl right, Jim. If you says it — it's orl right I 
 suppose. What Jim McGraw says, goes," he added 
 with a half apologetic smile, turning to the others. 
 "Though mind you, Jim and I though we belong to the 
 same party, don't hexactly see heye to heye halways 
 on tactics. Some of us want to get on a bit fawster/' 
 
 "McGraw." So that was McGraw — the McGraw. 
 Destin knew all about him — ^he was the best known of 
 the Socialist chiefs to the-man-in-the-street, who was 
 only just beginning to get some idea of the gods behind 
 the labour machine. That was McGraw, super-dema- 
 gogue, chairman of the Independent Socialist Party, 
 forming the left wing of the National Workers' Party, 
 which now had its representatives at Westminster; 
 the man who had pushed trucks as a boy in a Scottish 
 coal mine — who, a self-educated man, had left a trail 
 of rebellion wherever he went — in India, Egypt, South 
 Africa. As Graney said — "What McGraw said — 
 went." 
 
 "Well, you see it's like this 'ere. In a manner of 
 speaking you gents are orl right and orl wrong. You 
 don't know what you're a torkin' abaht ... no, I 
 
44 DEMOCRACY 
 
 don't mean that." He stuttered and stumbled, finding 
 articulation as he went on. 
 
 "You come and live dahn Mile End wye and you'll 
 see that it isn't to a man's 'art nor likewise to his 'ed 
 you *ave to appeal, but to his stummick. Mile End is 
 one big stummick, saving her Ladyship's presence. All 
 questions dahn our wye are stummick questions. There 
 ain't no other. Gor' love yer innercence ! Me and my 
 mates 'ave listened many and many a time to you arm- 
 chair gents — good comrades all — a givin' of it aht and 
 tying yerselves into knots about us working men and 
 the wye to do it. 
 
 "There's only one wye to appeal to the hanimile 
 known as the working-man, and that's through his 
 stummick. When you've filled that, then you can go 
 a step 'igher to his 'art, and when you've torked to 
 wot you might call his bloomin' emotions, then you can 
 come the intellectual over 'im. But the stummick's 
 first. A man thinks through his stummick when you 
 come to look at it. 
 
 "It ain't very elegant or clawssy maybe, but there's 
 no good trying to fill an empty 'ed before you fill the 
 empty stummick underneath it. It's a sort of boiler, 
 you know. You stoke the stummick and get steam up 
 to help the brain turn rahnd. 
 
 "And then some of you gents, with your eddication, 
 and meaning well I know, imagine that Bill Smith, 
 working-man, muck shifter and beer walloper, is wor- 
 rying his napper abaht wot you calls problems. I don't 
 suppose as 'ow I'm any worse than the next — ^but it 
 took me ten years to know what I wanted and to join 
 my first Socialist branch. Ten years, gents. When 
 you've got a donah wot 'as sold you up thirteen times 
 in ten years, putting it all dahn 'er f roat into 'er stum- 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 45 
 
 mick — I told you it was all a stummick problem dahn 
 our wye — leavin' 'er old man to do his day's work 
 when he can get it, and wash and dress the kids before 
 he goes aht on the prowl, it isn't 'eds and 'arts that will 
 be troubling him, but filling his stummick and the stum- 
 micks of the kids. 
 
 "And that's me. I've 'ad to pull a hole in my belt 
 donkey's years to get the threehalf pence a week for 
 my Independent Socialist branch — ^and there are oth- 
 ers like me. 
 
 "You know it's easy to keep going in the limelight. 
 Give a man a bellyful of handclapping, a big meeting, 
 and the band playing The Red Flag,' and it's easy 
 to be a Socialist — but dahn in Mile End it's not all beer 
 and skittles you can take mine, potterin' arahnd from 
 dye to dye expecting every moment to be your next." 
 
 The man had broken off once or twice as though 
 unused to so much talking, but something that drove 
 him from the inside, which might have been eagerness 
 to make the thing plain, and might have been exasper- 
 ation, sent him on again. Now he had stopped once 
 more for a moment, but as though something else had 
 occurred to him which had to be said, he began again : 
 
 "Look 'ere — do you fink the thahsands in my union 
 would be coming aht on the cold streets in a week or so 
 for a question of 'art or brain? Do ye fink the millions 
 in the railway unions and the others would be a-taking 
 of their lives in their 'ands for a question of hettiquette 
 — or the miners ? No fear. They want more for their 
 stummicks. They want better conditions for their 
 wives and kiddies. And yet, and yet . . ." he broke off 
 in wistful doubt, "there's sentiment in it too — senti- 
 ment underneath it all. 
 
 "If our men come aht and the strike tikes plice, every 
 
46 DEMOCRACY 
 
 branch leader — every local Secretary — will have senti- 
 ment pulling at 'im as well as stummick — and maybe a 
 bit of ambition too. But for the rank and file, it will 
 be a stummick question, with a dash of sentiment. All 
 sentiment comes from the stummick. Some day the 
 working-man will let 'is 'art rule his stummick and 
 some day perhaps 'is 'ed 'is 'art — then let the employers 
 look aht. But it all starts from the stummick. 
 
 "Gor' lumme ! when I 'ear you gents a torkin' I fink 
 I'll go off my rocker — ^but you mean it well — ^you mean 
 it well. Any'ow, I mean it well, too, but don't forget 
 gents, all the labour question is a stummick question in 
 the first plice — and arter that the 'art and 'ed if you 
 like. Ask Jim McGraw there — ^he can say better than 
 me, but 'e'U tell you the sime." 
 
 The man stood there defiant, but abashed at his own 
 eloquence. His jaws rasped as though they wanted 
 oiling — were not used to doing much more than work- 
 ing over food or a plug. 
 
 Destin's heart went out to the man, who however, 
 staggered him a little too. He had always thought of 
 the soul when speaking of Democracy. Now he found 
 it also had a stomach. It was a cold douche. 
 
 Even Belch was quiet when Graney had finished. 
 Mathman crouched over his stick, sunk in the fogs of 
 intellect, pondering over God knows what intellec- 
 tual problems Graney had raised in the hypertrophy 
 of his mind. Some yards away, Bowcher was com- 
 plaining to two or three friends about "that man 
 Belch." 
 
 "The Strike." The words had come again and again 
 to Destin as he moved about the room, leaving an 
 impression of something imminent and overwhelming. 
 "The Strike." 
 
THE CHILLINGTON HOUSE REUNION 47 
 
 Of course he had seen in the papers and skimmed 
 over retiring paragraphs about trouble brewing 
 amongst the Transport Workers. The papers were 
 always full of that kind of talk. But everyone knew 
 that strikes were as common as beer bottles and broken 
 as easily. To the-man-in-the-street the word signified 
 nothing beyond "labour agitators/' "enemies of soci- 
 ety," and, occasionally, higher prices for coal or food. 
 Sectional strikes were the ordinary phenomena of 
 everyday life — a. nuisance, transient, something that 
 led to nothing. Of no moment to the middle-class 
 man anyhow. 
 
 But this time Destin caught something from Graney 
 and McGraw as they spoke together. The Scotsman 
 talked of "two and a half millions of men involved." 
 '^Paralyse the transport of the country . . ." "the 
 meeting in the Square . . ." "the use of troops . . ." 
 "this is the end of sectionalism . . ." and other things 
 came more or less significantly to his ears. The Strike 
 was in the air. 
 
 As Her Grace's guests passed down the broad stair- 
 way, he heard in rumbling basses, punctuated by 
 shriller treble — "The Strike." Down into the broad 
 sunlight of the street and there on a poster of the 
 Evening Owl flamed: 
 
 McGRAW'S 
 
 LAST 
 
 WORD. 
 
IV 
 
 TRAFALGAR SQUARE 
 
 From where he stood on the plinth of the Nelson Mon- 
 ument, facing the National Gallery, Destin's eye drank 
 itself full of colour — his ear of sound. 
 
 The blare of brass sprayed itself against the walls 
 of the Northumberland Avenue hotels, clumped by the 
 detonations of the big drums which beat themselves 
 frantically through the ruck of the banners. Blotches 
 of crimson scattered themselves to the airs of the June 
 afternoon. Masses of blue and green, ornate with 
 gold, burst against the eye above the sweating, heaving* 
 mass of men and women that shuffled along under 
 them. A maelstrom of humanity surged around three 
 sides of the platform, the bronze lions of another age 
 crouching grimly as they watched the new eruption. 
 
 This surging, panting mob that struggled to find its 
 place, nebulous as it was, yet had its individualities and 
 its currents. The brilliant blue and gold banner of the 
 Electricians, with the lightning playing upon the silken 
 sheet, headed a small, compact body of men, whose 
 tense faces and air of power showed the concentrated 
 alertness of the players with death. Behind, flaunted 
 the blood-red banners of the Anarchist-Communists of 
 the East End, headed by a black banner with the 
 death's head and crossbones in white which jerked 
 itself drunkenly out of a nondescript welter of pale- 
 faced Slavs and Latins. Here, where Pole and Rus- 
 sian Jew fraternised with the Montmartre worker, the 
 
 48 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 49 
 
 European continent seemed to have poured itself out 
 from its back-blocks. There in front, holding a paste- 
 board skeleton, with the words "I am King Capital !" 
 raised above it, strode a fury of the new revolution, 
 her great horse-tail of hair knotted loosely behind her, 
 her blouse open at the bosom. Behind her, hobbled 
 or pushed or danced, as fancy and the crowd permitted, 
 half a hundred Jewesses — tailoresses — those workers 
 in the city of dreadful night with their sixteen-hour 
 day and the "team" system marked on their eaten 
 faces and anatomised bosoms. Even the graves of the 
 city were giving up their dead to the Square on this 
 afternoon of June. 
 
 Here, coming in from the Strand to the "Tykes o' 
 the Barn" north-country band, walking soberly, shoul- 
 dering their way easily through the undersized men 
 about them, as a tramp-steamer shoulders her way 
 through Channel waters, came a mass of clean-shaven 
 giants, crooked and twisted as became delvers in earth, 
 their backs hunched from the coal seam — their faces 
 washed pink, save for the furrows where the under- 
 ground had struck itself. Hefty Novocastrian and 
 Lancashire lad marched side by side with the Yorkshire 
 Tyke. These, the children of the underworld, with 
 the awe of the darkness upon them and a great faith 
 in their eyes. 
 
 A fury of drum-beating, and up Northumberland 
 Avenue from the Embankment poured butcher, baker, 
 and candlestick-maker. Lean, shrewd tailor; match- 
 box maker ; and the flotsam and jetsam of the sweated, 
 clattered along, their tail intermingled with the crest 
 of a horde of London dockers, that broke itself into 
 them as a following wave breaks into the backwash 
 of another. 
 
50 DEMOCRACY 
 
 These last caught the eye of Destin. Desperation 
 lurked there — a hollowed-cheek look which showed the 
 unskilled worker with the long night shift, the odd- job 
 look of the hunger-line man outside the London docks 
 in the keenness of the early morning — the men who 
 daily bedded with starvation. There was no mistaking 
 them. 
 
 At the head of them as they swept around the base 
 of the plinth, staggering under the motto "United we 
 Stand," he saw Graney, his face shrunk on the task of 
 keeping his banner aloft amongst its peers. He saw his 
 hips contracted under the weight and noticed, despite 
 all his starved look, the sinewy shoulders that crouched 
 themselves effectively to their work as a man who is 
 used to swinging sacks of corn and coal from hold to 
 shore — to relieve the laden bellies of the argosies of 
 the ocean. 
 
 As the banners revolved before him in the lens of a 
 gigantic prism ; as band succeeded band and the shrill 
 of fife cut across the undercurrent of brass — the eye 
 and ear tired. The space around the plinth was now 
 packed to the low walls, the banners ranging themselves 
 in a mosaic of crimson and gold against the wall under 
 the railings before the National Gallery. At the back 
 of the last Union had poured a rag, tag and bobtail of 
 human refuse scoured from the streets of the East 
 End and from the Embankment by the brush of the 
 marchers, who poured in a disorderly mass that filled 
 the square space, overflowing on to the stone railings 
 and the steps of the Gallery itself. It was chaos in- 
 carnate. 
 
 Ajid then as his eye ran, tremulous with that strange 
 enthusiasm for massed humanity which makes the 
 demagogue what he is — as his heart contracted to the 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 51 
 
 "Marseillaise" and "The Red Flag" and the tears 
 welled to his eyes in unreasoning pity and love for 
 these men and women with their poor clothes and 
 poorer discipline, but in whom he felt the overmaster- 
 ing of destiny — he passed to those clean, well 
 groomed, well-caparisoned men in blue cloth who had 
 ridden at the head of each block of the procession, had 
 marshalled them along the sides, had cajoled and 
 pushed and held them along the courses of the streets 
 like channels that are the guides for sewer water. 
 
 From his place he saw the tops of the helmeted 
 giants, who, in deadly even positions, had bulwarked 
 the base of the column. He saw, a few hand spans out, 
 a line that divided the crowd into its regulated parts, 
 and then another and yet another, as lines of rocks in 
 a breaking sea. He saw behind the stone rails the 
 horsemen, batoned, booted and spurred, waiting for 
 their work, and knew from Belch who stood next to 
 him, that every alley- way about held its bellyful of 
 bluecoated men ready at the moment to be vomited 
 over and into the mass about him. 
 
 Hearing Belch's voice, his eye had run to those on 
 the plinth. 
 
 Standing easily near him, his checked suit tightly 
 buttoned down the front, was Damascene, his monocle 
 stuck inexorably in an eye which gleamed like a light- 
 house as he focussed the crowd in humorous disdain. 
 On his head, a broad Italian hat of black velvet, 
 straight-brimmed and sunken crowned, whilst thrown 
 gracefully back from his podgy shoulders sprang a 
 cloak of some black silken material, lined in crimson, 
 that came to the hollow of his knee, splashing the 
 plinth. The platform was a furnace blast, but he wore 
 his cloak as though it were a November day. 
 
52 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "They smell damn dirty," he said to anybody who 
 cared to listen, and threw up his well-cut nose as he 
 sniffed the tainted airs. *Thew! it's devilish hard 
 work being a democrat." 
 
 Bowcher was there, looking, as Damascene said, 
 "like a trout in a lime basket," his little bourgeois fig- 
 ure, top-hatted, the most incongruous thing in the 
 square on that Sunday afternoon. The Duchess was 
 there in a hat from Paris, which set off the dusky red 
 of her hair to a miracle, very much the grande dame 
 despite her democracy, but quite at her ease and smiling 
 in friendly response to the cries, which, were they not 
 so friendly, might have been ironical, that greeted her 
 from the larynx of the mob. McGraw, behind the 
 others, looked shaggily at a notebook, ignoring the 
 shouts of "Good old Jim!" "McGraw for ever!" that 
 came up to him. There was a sprinkling of hard- 
 headed hard-handed Union leaders, workmanlike, and 
 heavy with responsibility. 
 
 It was to these last that Destin felt himself drawn. 
 He was looking at them and thinking how ridiculous 
 and amateurish the middle-class revolutionists looked 
 by the side of them, when a gentle voice greeted him. 
 
 "Mr. Destin. I thought it was." And he found 
 himself looking into the face of Miss Craven, who in 
 some way of her own had managed to climb the plinth 
 and edge her way through the crowd without showing 
 a crease in her white muslin costume. She looked 
 more virginal than ever. With a splash of red ribbon 
 over the heart, she reminded him of the virgin mar- 
 tyrs. 
 
 Her smooth, musical speech rippled itself indifferent 
 to the scene about them, but he forgot her quickly as 
 his eye ran backwards and forwards from Disorder to 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 53 
 
 Order — from the inchoate heaving mob-mass to those 
 blue lines that dotted themselves in inexorable geom- 
 etry across the ruck. From the sweaty, grimed faces 
 and shrunken bodies to the well-cared, well-set-up men 
 who, with its crushing deadweight, had developed out 
 of the collective soul the thing known as discipline — 
 Discipline, the blinded giant. 
 
 As he looked, he wondered why the authorities let 
 them demonstrate. He wondered, knowing that behind 
 these blue coats was the red of the forces of the higher 
 discipline, why rebellion was allowed to foment itself 
 on that Sabbath afternoon. The contrast was terrific. 
 
 On the one hand, age-worn, well-ordered society, 
 moving smoothly in the grooves of tradition, with its 
 customs, privileges, and bulwarks — on the other, the 
 heaving, squattering mass of democracy, stretching 
 itself on its belly like an animal rising from the gutter 
 — rising from nothing ... to what? 
 
 A voice was reaching out in even insistent tones from 
 the plinth — a voice with a timbre that percolated 
 through the blank wall of bodies and made it heard 
 above the miasma of sound that rose like a cloud of 
 flies over the swarming crowd. 
 
 "The spark that fired the train ... we are meeting 
 here to protest against the dismissal of Joe Lanthorne 
 whilst off duty . . . railway tyranny . . . other engine- 
 drivers came out . . . men of all grades . . . blackleg 
 labour . . . dockers refuse to handle blackleg goods 
 . . . miners have shown splendid solidarity . . . refuse 
 to mine steam coal . . . will raise the question of rates 
 for 'difficult places. . . .' " 
 
 The sentences came disjointedly to Destin, who 
 found his attention rivetted by the wiry, fine-fibered 
 figure, diminutive and concentrated — by the face, 
 
54 DEMOCRACY 
 
 ivory-pallid — ^the short, strong nose — the dark eye- 
 brows meeting in a double arch over the dark, deep- 
 set eyes — the compact head with its smooth, well- 
 brushed black hair — the boniness of cheekbone and jaw 
 — ^and a terrible mouth that met like the jaws of a trap. 
 
 He had reason to look at Jacob Steltham. Steltham 
 was "the man with the policy" — something that he 
 pursued, as he pursued everything — with resistless, 
 tireless assiduity. This dour Novocastrian who had 
 drifted into the labour movement nobody knew exactly 
 how — about whose head were already gathering the 
 fires of faction; acclaimed by the older rebels as a 
 traitor — ^by the nebulous mass of Radical-Trades 
 Unionists, only weaned the day before yesterday from 
 their Liberal mother, as "a sane man," "an intellectual 
 force," as "the coming man," but above all as the 
 Strong Man of the movement. Through praise and 
 blame, Steltham held evenly on his way, shearing 
 through everything with that nose and jaw under the 
 drive of ambition he had got from his Scottish mother. 
 A formidable little man, Destin thought. But he was 
 speaking. . . . 
 
 "Now, above all times, we want strong men at the 
 helm of the Unions. With the new Triple Alliance of 
 the Railwaymen, Miners, and Dockers, my friends, we 
 are playing with a powerful machine — ^but a machine 
 of extreme delicacy, which needs the nicest handling." 
 He paused as though to feel out what lay behind the 
 silence down there, licking his lips the while. 
 
 Destin felt that silence. It was not the impassive 
 silence of the Magog meeting, but a vibrant, expectant 
 silence, as of an animal about to spring. He at least 
 could not read it. 
 
 Apparently satisfied, the speaker went on with a sug- 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 55 
 
 gestion of superiority in his voice. . . . "Those of us 
 who are in a position to judge have reached the con- 
 clusion that we must exhaust every method of negotia- 
 tion with the Government, my friends, before we fall 
 back on the double-edged sword of the strike. , . .'* 
 
 "Humbug!" 
 
 The single word cut like the swing of a sword across 
 the silence of the meeting. It did not come from the 
 crowd, but from the plinth itself. 
 
 Destin saw for the first time in his life a face that 
 stamped itself for ever on the retina of his mind. 
 Never again did he forget those steely eyes, fierce and 
 fanatic, that burned in cold fire on the speaker. 
 
 The great slant of man half sat, half leant, against 
 one of the corner lions — 3. pillar of fire and whipcord. 
 
 "Humbug!" 
 
 In a moment the crowd had found voice. It came 
 huskily at first, in a hoarse rumble like the grind of 
 water on a shallow beach, then lifted, until ten thou- 
 sand throats were screaming incoherently in one vast 
 larynx. A faint murmur of protest was cut down and 
 trampled out. The cries came from the dockers and 
 the unskilled sections, the Miners, for the most part, 
 holding themselves silent, whilst the battalions of the 
 railwaymen stood stolidly like soldiers under discipline. 
 
 The chairman knitted his brows slightly, smiled a 
 queer little smile, and finished quickly. 
 
 "Creegan means business," said Belch in a hoarse 
 whisper to the man next him. "He's going . . ." but 
 the rest of his words were lost in a whirlwind of cheer- 
 ing that whipped upwards in screaming spirals to 
 frighten the pigeons on St. Martin's Church. 
 
 Destin could not understand it. Standing in the 
 clear space on the sloping plinth was a boy — ^he might 
 
56 DEMOCRACY 
 
 have been seventeen, or he might have been twenty- 
 five. The sun shone upon a pale, rather freckled face, 
 the chief features in which were a snub cherubic nose 
 and a big, good-humoured, rather loose mouth which 
 expanded in an appreciative grin as the cheers met him. 
 
 "Give it 'em, Wildish ! Good old Hectoi ! Bravo 
 boy !" The cries rose here and there from the crowd, 
 and it was noticeable that all sections joined in. Even 
 the stolid railwaymen were shouting. 
 
 "Gag the Boy, for God's sake !" said Damascene in 
 a whisper of tragedy. "He never opens his mouth 
 but he puts his foot in it — and there's plenty of room 
 for it too !" 
 
 The tweeded figure was jerking itself about on the 
 platform, exchanging friendly badinage with this man, 
 telling a story, calling out to some interrupter by his 
 Christian name, throwing a word over his shoulder to 
 those behind him on the plinth ; and all this in a mega- 
 phone of a voice which rivalled Belch's own. 
 
 There was a boyish grin on his face as he trounced 
 with all the splendid irresponsibility of youth the 
 Government, from the Prime Minister downwards. 
 The reporters on the plinth were busy scribbling, for 
 young Hector Wildish, the enfant terrible of the 
 movement, was known in Fleet Street as "good copy," 
 from the time when twelve months before he had set 
 Britain agog by defeating a Cabinet Minister in his 
 own pet constituency as Labour candidate, winning the 
 seat. He was known to his fellow M.P.'s in the Na- 
 tional Workers' Party as "the young man in a hurry." 
 
 Every hit was punctuated by a roar of approval. 
 Laughter, jeers, howls, swept across the face of the 
 audience which was now galvanised into life. He was 
 for hard-hitting and no quarter. Time enough to talk 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 57 
 
 about negotiations when the other fellows came to 
 their senses. Sober men wedded to political action 
 found themselves against their will cheering the florid 
 periods of the speaker, who had the resistlessness of 
 youth itself. His fair brown hair. His square freckled 
 face. His slender boyish figure. Everyone loved 
 Hector Wildish. Even Steltham could not help smil- 
 ing a little behind the mask of his face every now and 
 then at some pungent sally. 
 
 He finished as he had begun, in a storm of applause, 
 whilst the crowd struck up — "For he's a jolly good 
 fellow \" singing it like a dirge. 
 
 "Look at Steltham's face," said Damascene. "He's 
 like a cobra with the fangs out." 
 
 The square was sonorous. The cheers had died 
 away into jeers which rose and enveloped the thin 
 stereotyped applause that greeted the heavy jowled, 
 be-whiskered man who stood there blinking owlishly 
 in the sunshine, his hands sunk deep in his crosspockets. 
 
 There was a vast self-satisfaction about Tom 
 Manby. He was satisfied with the crowd, with him- 
 self, with the Government. The hoots, which Destin 
 noticed came only from a small section of the crowd, 
 afifected him no more than the one-eyed Nelson which 
 stood high above him. He took them, Destin heard 
 him say to Steltham, "as the crackling of thorns under 
 a pot." 
 
 Steltham eyed him unpleasantly. There was an air 
 of Sabbath calm about him which was exasperating — 
 the air of the conventicle clung to him. 
 
 He talked on in a broad voice, steady and even. "My 
 friends, I was a-thinking as I came here this Sabbath 
 afternoon, that on this day of rest we should think of 
 the counsels of peace. As a Liberal of thirty years' 
 
58 DEMOCRACY 
 
 standing — same as me feyther afore me — I believe 
 t'Liberal Government stands for righteousness if we 
 will but give 'em time." ("Give 'em ten years in 
 chokey !" came a bass from the crowd, with a ripple of 
 laughter. "That's wot they want.") 
 
 "The gentleman *oo 'as just spoken seems to know 
 all about it," said Manby, who had a certain stolid 
 humour of his own. 
 
 "As I was a sayin', give 'em time. As a Yorkshire 
 miner, 'oo 'as worked his way oop from t'pit, I know, 
 same as my fellow miners, that we have got much 
 from Liberal Governments." ("What's the matter 
 with Independent Labour Representation? Why 
 aren't you man enough to resign your seat? Go back 
 to your friends the Liberals !" said a little man imme- 
 diately under him. ) 
 
 "That's all right, my lad. Let us be peaceful in our 
 strength. What does t'owd Book say?" ("Never 
 mind the old Book, let's have the revised version!" 
 came the ironic bass again.) 
 
 "T'owd Book is t'owd Book," said Manby, in the 
 manner of a man stating an unanswerable proposition, 
 and showing a tendency to wander from the subject. 
 "It isn't because we sit outside the Government ranks 
 that we're alius to be finding fault " 
 
 The rest of Manby 's speech was inaudible, the jeer- 
 ing being incessant and suffocating. But through it 
 all, he held his way, his mouth opening and closing 
 like an automaton. Damascene was viewing him de- 
 lightedly as though he were a prehistoric animal. 
 
 Speaker succeeded speaker, but what Destin noticed 
 was a steadily rising stream of criticism directed at the 
 Parliamentary Party, dammed back only here and 
 there by a pro-Parliamentarian, who was almost in- 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 59 
 
 variably one of the older men. The great mass of the 
 people, however, stood there stolidly enough, not ac- 
 tively resenting the critics, but occasionally raising a 
 low growl of protest and an appeal for fair play. 
 
 To add to the confusion, there were cheers and 
 counter-cheers coming from the other sides of the 
 plinth, and in an excursion round the column he no- 
 ticed that the blocks of speakers collected there were 
 of the younger Wildish type. Even in Trafalgar 
 Square Democracy showed a tendency to divide itself 
 into camps. It hurt him vaguely, taking the sunlight 
 from the square and fading the colours on the banners. 
 
 It was after one of these excursions that Destin got 
 his chance. Steltham and Damascene were talking 
 closely, Steltham looking from his watch to the clock 
 on St. Martin's Church and back. "But whom can I 
 put on ?" he heard him say to the other. "Jones hasn't 
 turned up, and there are only Quest and Creegan — 
 and we don*t want the Syndicalist to have the platform 
 for the rest of the afternoon. His men have had a 
 pretty good innings on the other two platforms. As it 
 is, he said he would speak last or nowhere. I was 
 counting on you to keep them amused for twenty min- 
 utes at least. Are you certain you can*t raise a 
 canter ?" 
 
 "I'm as dry as Manby's theology," Damascene said. 
 "My voice is like that of conscience — still and small. 
 And you don't know the sort of direct action devil you 
 might raise if you put me on. None of you will take 
 my Syndicalism any more seriously than my Platonics. 
 I'm' worse than Creegan if you and he would only be- 
 lieve it." He searched the plinth until his eye met 
 Destin. 
 
 "There's your man," he said. "He can talk like the 
 
60 DEMOCRACY 
 
 archangel Gabriel in the 'D.T's/ He's safe enough, if 
 that's what you want — doesn't know a political from a 
 direct actionist, or the devil from either. He's the man 
 that raised hell at the 'Magog,' and he's been spouting 
 a lot since. Besides there's nobody else — there's not a 
 ^ood political left on either of the other two platforms. 
 Ask him." 
 
 "But he's not on the list of speakers," protested 
 Steltham. 
 
 "Oh ! that doesn't matter — ^you can say he took my 
 place to represent the Platonists. I'll enroll him after 
 the meeting." He waved his hand airily. 
 
 Destin felt the blood rush to his head. He tried to 
 look indifferent as Steltham came to him. 
 
 "Could you go on after the present speaker — say 
 for ten minutes or so?" 
 
 Destin heard himself say — "Yes, he thought he 
 could." 
 
 He looked around him for inspiration, and as his 
 eye ran to the upturned faces, like the faces of de- 
 votees at a sacrifice, he felt afraid. What could he 
 say? It was the Magog over again — ^but worse. He 
 had a wild idea of borrowing a pencil and jotting 
 down a few notes. But he knew that was too late, 
 and he couldn't speak from notes anyhow. This was 
 his chance to make good! 
 
 Supposing he blundered. After all, he knew there 
 were a dozen shoals which might wreck him in the 
 complexity of the movement. Manby's speech had 
 shown him that, apart from the little he had learnt 
 himself in a few weeks. What could he say? It 
 seemed that the speakers who had gone before had 
 covered the ground. 
 
 He watched the shadows creep downwards on the 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 61 
 
 face of St. Martin's Church, like giant fingers. "The 
 writing on the walL" It. rushed to him. This was 
 the writing on the wall — like the writing in the book 
 of Daniel which Nebuchadnezzar saw. This was the 
 sign of the times. "The writing on the wall." 
 
 His brain began to work. Tumultuously it ran un- 
 til the dynamos of his mind were stored. "The writ- 
 ing on the wall." 
 
 But how should he finish? In his speeches of the 
 previous months, he had learned the value of a perora- 
 tion. What should his peroration be? 
 
 In the effort to work this out, he saw that the man 
 before him had stopped to a splutter of applause. He 
 saw Steltham walk to the front, and a pressure lay 
 on his heart. He could hear the voice — "Mr. Destin, 
 the man who threw down the gauntlet at the Magog 
 meeting." 
 
 The voice was coming remotely. He moved for- 
 ward a step or two on the sloping plinth and feared 
 that he would slip down on to the spiked helmets of 
 the policemen below. He stood there for a moment 
 in silence. Not a cry came to him. His thoughts 
 had taken wing. He was spellbound. 
 
 He hung there swaying slightly, when a voice came 
 from underneath — a Cockney voice — "Good old Des- 
 tin!" It was Graney. 
 
 There was a spatter of cries, then it gathered into 
 a flying spume, and then came the surge, a crash, and 
 the silence had fallen again. 
 
 He was still standing there trying to think. His 
 heart was beating ^to choke him. There was some- 
 thing surging — ^boiling within him. 
 
 "Friends and Comrades . . . " he hung in the eye 
 of the crowd for a moment. "Friends and Com- 
 
62 DEMOCRACY 
 
 rades . . ." the words were coming from someone 
 else's lips. A sentence . . . then a stop . . . an- 
 other ... he was trying to think — of what was it 
 he was trying to think? This was his chance — this 
 was his chance. 
 
 And then, as at the Magog, it came from him. 
 First a bubble or two — then a splutter — then a full- 
 throated emission. 
 
 "The writing on the wall." His voice was gather- 
 ing weight and volume. It was rising. He forgot to 
 think, and thought came unbidden — tumultuous, preg- 
 nant, fruitful thought. 
 
 "The writing on the wall." This meeting, like that 
 other at the Magog, was the writing on the wall. The 
 moving finger of God Almighty. The Hand that 
 showed the way to the new Democracy. The uprising 
 of the proletariat — the doom of capitalism. The 
 resurrection of the dead. The men, the women and 
 the children, murdered and crippled on the battlefields 
 of labour in the past, were pouring from their graves 
 whilst the Hand wrote above them. In the Hand they 
 saw the sign of the times to come — of the resistless 
 march of those who had been dead — who were stag- 
 gering from the graves of Capitalism to the brighter 
 light of the kingdom of Socialism above them. 
 
 He could not remember afterwards what he said. 
 He was only conscious that from the mass before him 
 there came the answering rumble of interjection. It 
 was like the prayer meetings in the old Methodist 
 church in Ireland. It was the awakening of the spirit 
 — 3. revival. 
 
 And when he finished, the rumble had risen to a 
 great volume of sound which ran from the base of 
 the plinth outwards to the furthest edge of the sea 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 63 
 
 of faces. It gathered again on the outside and swept 
 inwards to him — and he felt stealing through him the 
 message of mind to mind — these men and women be- 
 low him who poured into him the message of hope 
 and love and prophecy he had given out — gave it back 
 ten thousand fold, and when he had stepped to his 
 place behind, he knew, despite all his altruism — all his 
 love for those people below — ^that he, Denis Destin, 
 had made good. He put the thought from him as 
 unworthy, but still it came back at him again and 
 again. The thunder of the cheers was the chant of 
 his success. He was a leader of Democracy. 
 
 Bringing his mind back, Destin heard the strong 
 even tones of a short, massive-looking man, who, had 
 he not spoken good English, might have been a Ger- 
 man. 
 
 He was pouring a stream of derision upon Manby 
 and what he called his "Lib-Labism." In particular, 
 he sneered at his teetotal chapelism, saying that "the 
 workers had had enough of the pulpit in the past," 
 something that the miners and the railwaymen re- 
 ceived silently. "When the Workers' Party took over 
 the miners it hardly bargained to take over the relics 
 of Liberalism and its economics too," he went on. 
 
 All this left Destin puzzled. Why should the 
 Workers' Party be attacked at what was a joint dem- 
 onstration of all Socialist and Labour bodies? He 
 thought that Labour was a solid whole. But the audi- 
 ence seemed to understand it, and already recrimina- 
 tions were being exchanged in the heart of the crowd, 
 whilst the police grinned stolidly. 
 
 Now, as though something fermented in him, he 
 was urging the workers to become something he called 
 "class-conscious," and to join the Social Democratic 
 
64 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Union, which it seemed was the original and only 
 genuine class-conscious party. He spoke much of the 
 "class war," and every now and then plunged into a 
 churn of economics, which Destin could see left the 
 crowd puzzled and a little irritated. 
 
 This man, Quest, Destin found afterwards, had been 
 a porter in a London jute warehouse, and had taught 
 himself German and French in his spare time. He 
 was one of the pioneers of English Socialism and was 
 a fervent Marxian, seeing in Karl Marx the new gos- 
 pel which, through the intellectual process, should save 
 the workers of the world. With his brown, doggy 
 eyes and heavy, drooping moustache, Destin thought 
 of him as a faithful mastiff, but a mastiff that had 
 learned its first lessons so well that it found itself un- 
 able to learn others. A brilliant intellectual, the one- 
 time porter had so grown away from his fellows of an 
 earlier day that be failed to understand them, and 
 they him, though they loved him too in a curious 
 puzzled fashion as Destin saw. 
 
 Steltham's face had been growing heavier as he 
 glanced from face to face on the platform searching 
 for something. His own men had failed badly. But 
 Quest's speech, which had begun so well and had 
 ended in such an intellectual fog, appeared to reassure 
 him. However, as his eye caught Creegan, who was 
 to be the last speaker, his brow fell again. The minute 
 hand of the clock on the church was climbing up 
 towards the XII, whilst the hour hand almost rested 
 on the V, the time of grace allowed by the police for 
 the meeting. 
 
 He stepped forward and touched another speaker 
 on the shoulder, one of the miners' leaders, and mo- 
 tioned him to the centre of the plinth. In a moment, 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 65 
 
 "Creegan ! Creegan !" was being cried from the people. 
 It grew as the man stepped forward, vainly trying to 
 make himself heard. Steltham looked about him, then 
 at the crowd, and then at the man. He stepped to 
 his side and said something in his ear. The man threw 
 up his hand in a gesture of acquiescence and went 
 back. 
 
 Creegan was moving nervously from foot to foot. 
 His eyes ranged the crowd ceaselessly. The strong, 
 straight nose, pointed now here, now there, as though 
 feeling for something. The steel-grey hair was parted 
 straightly and starkly over the hard, clean freshness 
 of his face. But the face, though that of a young 
 man, was heavily furrowed, whilst a scar ran lividly 
 from ear to cheekbone. 
 
 As his name was called by the chairman, who, Des- 
 tin thought, waved to him peremptorily, the tall figure 
 lurched forward to the centre of the sloping stone. 
 He stood there for a moment, one hand straddling his 
 hip, his feet close together, his frame drawn tautly up. 
 The nervousness of the instant before had gone. The 
 man was to Destin a finely tempered piece of steel — 
 grey-blue and keen — a sort of lightning conductor. 
 
 For all his furrows, Brian Creegan looked more of 
 the boy even than Wildish. But he might as easily 
 have been thirty or forty. 
 
 There was an air of intensity — something brooding 
 and eroding about him. Destin thought he looked the 
 most formidable object on the plinth, where every eye 
 was watching him. Damascene alone keeping his ha- 
 bitual grin. 
 
 The confusion of sound that had followed the last 
 speaker dropped at once as he stood there starkly, 
 brooding like a Titan over the crowd. 
 
66 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Then he spoke. Destin was disappointed, for the 
 voice was harsh. It grated to the mind. 
 
 "What are we here for?" he opened uncompromis- 
 ingly. "Are we here to discuss the merits of the 
 Workers' Party, or are we here to do something? 
 Which is it V* He folded his arms as he looked hardly, 
 almost disdainfully, at the crowd beneath, which now 
 had strained itself into a hard attention. 
 
 "Put it to yourselves as human beings. Never mind 
 the labour leaders. Don't mind me, Brian Creegan. 
 Use your own brains, if you've got any. 
 
 "Listen." The roll of the brogue came into the 
 voice as it went on. "When I was a little gossoon 
 running about the streets of Dublin, I hadn't a shoe 
 to me foot. I often wanted a meal. Many's the time 
 I saw me mother cry in' for the want of a bit to put 
 in our mouths. That was more years ago than I care 
 to think. Last week I went to Dublin. In the streets 
 of the city I saw other little Brian Creegans, running 
 about barefoot and hungry. What has changed? 
 
 "Listen again. Is there a city in the kingdom which 
 hasn't its thousands out of work? Is there a pave- 
 ment without a poor lost girl? Is there a city in 
 Christendom where the voiceless cry of the starving 
 doesn't go up day and night to the throne of God 
 asking blindly — *why is it ?' " 
 
 His voice took a fuller, deeper tone. 
 
 "One hundred years ago ye formed your Unions. 
 You've been working and agitating and organising 
 ever since. You've spent millions of pounds, each 
 pound drawn from the sighs of the worker — sweated 
 blood-money. You've voted backwards and forwards 
 until you are crosseyed. You've sent back Parliament 
 after Parliament, and you've thrown your ear wide 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 67 
 
 to the spell-binding at the General Elections, until 
 they put the comether on ye. 
 
 "You've gone cap in hand to the master — ^and what 
 have ye got? You asked for bread and he gev ye a 
 stone. 
 
 "In God's name, what does it mean? You asked 
 for bread and you got bullets. You asked for warm 
 mercy and ye got the cold steel." 
 
 The crowd seemed to Destin to be swaying in the 
 sunlight He saw a red-headed police inspector with 
 albino eyes draw a notebook from his pocket and 
 watched his pencil point scribble rapidly. In that at- 
 mosphere everything was as clearly delineated as 
 though he were looking down from an aeroplane. All 
 things seemed minute and magnified and unreal. 
 
 As he went on speaking, Destin noticed how full 
 and resonant his voice had become. But at the back, 
 men were straining to hear and turning to one another 
 to ask — "What is he saying? What is he saying?*' 
 He could read the movement of their lips. 
 
 "Now," went on Creegan, "after one hundred years 
 at the political game — ^the game of 'heads I win tails 
 you lose' — you've started another red herring." 
 (Somebody laughed, and it sounded blasphemous.) 
 "You've started a new phase in the game of blind 
 man's buff — the game of Independent Labour Repre- 
 sentation. Who was it that put that on ye?" 
 
 There was a groan that died away quickly as it had 
 arisen. 
 
 "Do ye think for a single moment that the fellows 
 that own everything are going to let ye ballot your- 
 selves into power? Do ye think that all you have to 
 do is to go into the division lobby and register your 
 vote? That everything will pass on from stage to 
 
68 DEMOCRACY 
 
 stage without the other fellows taking a hand in the 
 game ?" 
 
 ("No fear, blast 'em!" growled the bass. A man 
 laughed harshly.) 
 
 "What do ye think those jokers in blue are down 
 there for? What do ye think they've got thousands 
 of men around here in the alleyways and tens of 
 thousands of men in red below there in the Welling- 
 ton and Knightsbridge barracks for ? Tell me that. 
 
 "Ye fools! Can*t ye see as plain as the noses on 
 your faces that when yeVe played yourselves out at 
 the game of independent labour representation, which 
 may keep you going for a few years longer, the signal 
 will be given and the boys in red and blue set to work ? 
 Can't ye see it?" 
 
 Away at the back of the people, there was a con- 
 fused movement, a swaying of heads. Half a dozen 
 uniformed men ran down quickly, like so many pig- 
 mies, from the stairs at the far corner of the square 
 and plunged head first into the crowd. The move- 
 ment increased, then centred into a whirlpool, from 
 which broke another movement that wriggled itself 
 towards the back of the crowd. Then the knot of 
 men appeared, with something in the middle of them 
 that struggled vainly. They ran up the steps leading 
 out of the square on the left. More than ever, Destin 
 felt everything unreal. 
 
 The minute hand was steadily climbing to the quar- 
 ter. Creegan threw his eye up for a moment and went 
 on. . . . 
 
 "This matter of Joe Lanthome is a matter for every 
 working-man and woman in Britain and Ireland. Lan- 
 thorne's fight is not only a national fight — it is an 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 69. 
 
 International. The question is — what are you going 
 to do about it?" 
 
 "Fight !'* screamed a voice from the left. 
 
 " Tight/ ye say. Well how are ye going to fight ? 
 Whether ye believe in the vote or believe in the strike, 
 you can't fight the attack on Lanthorne with the vote. 
 This is something that has got to be settled now. If I 
 put one of ye into the ring against a man armed with 
 a knuckle-duster — what's that going to be? a fight or 
 a massacre? 
 
 "Yet that is what you've been doing. Fighting 
 with the vote is fighting with the bare fist — fighting 
 against an adversary who has his hand weighted with 
 the gold of Mammon — who has the guns of the army, 
 navy, and police behind him if the weighted hand 
 doesn't do the trick. Do you understand that? 
 
 "Do you understand that?" he asked once more 
 and stopped. 
 
 A stream of sound gathered in volume until it ran 
 through and around the square. It rose in higher 
 intensity until it was heard like the sound of distant 
 musketry down on Westminster Bridge. The railway- 
 men were shouting now. The miners had broken loose 
 and were sending out their full-throated cries at the 
 plinth. From where Destin looked at them, he could 
 feel the full beat of one great pulse — could see one 
 yawning mouth — a, collective mouth, that cried out — 
 with vengeance and triumph and joy in the heart of 
 it. Destin felt every throb of that heart in his own 
 as it drove the blood through the arteries of Democ- 
 racy. Each cry came from him and to him. He was 
 the crowd. 
 
 Creegan had raised his hand. Quickly, the angry 
 
70 DEMOCRACY 
 
 animal before him had simk again, growling but acqui- 
 escent. 
 
 "Boys, keep quiet and keep cool — ^now, and in the 
 fight that is coming. Remember that the fight of the 
 future will be the fight of the barricade and the strike. 
 Remember that this will be settled, not with votes and 
 pretty speeches, not with silk hats and silkier voices, 
 not across the floor of the House of Commons, but 
 on the floor of the People's House — the streets. The 
 hard grey streets ye know so well. 
 
 "And if they bring out the soldiers — are they not 
 your brothers and mine? If they bring out the boys 
 in blue — don't they spring from the people? Are not 
 the very warships that rule the seas for a handful of 
 aristocrats manned with our flesh and blood? They 
 may shoot us down to-day at the bidding of Mammon. 
 Will they shoot us down to-morrow? 
 
 "If we speak, shall they not listen? If we give the 
 message, will they not hear?" 
 
 Steltham had made half a step forward as though 
 to stop the speaker, who, with a fine sweep of the 
 hand, went on without heeding him. By this time the 
 crowd was in the hollow of his voice — and he knew 
 it. A masterly figure of a man he looked, with some- 
 thing brutal in the face — a. man of destiny. 
 
 "Then what is our answer to be?" he asked in the 
 silence. "Is it to be more bargaining — more dickering 
 — or is it to be the answer of the strike? Which is it 
 to be?" 
 
 "Strike! Strike! Strike!" 
 
 The sound rose in ever-widening circles, turning in 
 a vortex of rage. 
 
 "Strike! Strike! Strike!" 
 
 The blue lines were broken now. They were swept 
 
TRAFALGAR SQUARE 71 
 
 into the maw of the mob. The square was a seething 
 maelstrom of madness. 
 
 "Strike! Strike! Strike!" 
 
 The sound rose and circled overhead — passed up- 
 wards and outwards to the millions of the city, to 
 whom the cry came as the cry of men breaking from 
 the tomb. The dumb, dead mob had found voice. 
 
 "Strike! Strike! Strike!" 
 
 Denis Destin found his mouth open, whilst from his 
 cracked throat came the sound: 
 
 "Strike! Strike! Strike!" 
 
ON THE WATERS OF FLEET STREET 
 
 Denis Destin had lowered his pen at Fleet Street. 
 Fleet Street didn't trouble. One "free-lance" more or 
 less didn't matter. In Fleet Street nothing matters. 
 
 But it mattered to Destin. 
 
 His failure ate into him in a vital, disagreeable 
 manner, turning the secretions of his body acid. At 
 least, he always felt it that way. 
 
 For he hated failure. Hated it not only as a fight- 
 ing, competitive animal, with the lust "to make good," 
 but also in a rather fine, impersonal way. Hated it 
 because to him it spelled incompetence. But above 
 and beyond all because it stifled something in him that 
 would not be stifled. 
 
 For Destin felt that he could write. Felt that within 
 him there was something which he must express. 
 Something that was too un-flexible and involved to 
 pass the point of his pen. Something that pulsated 
 like an angry tooth. 
 
 But to drag this thing from him needed something 
 he had not got. He didn't know how to begin. He 
 didn't even know what he wanted to write. His mind 
 was cosmic. The variety of the Universe appalled 
 him — and he wanted to write on the Universe! He 
 had the Universal Mind. 
 
 Day by day he was frozen into the nightmare of 
 impotence he knew so well. The feel underneath of 
 
 72 
 
ON THE WATERS OF FLEET STREET 73 
 
 fresh, strong life that was waiting to find expression 
 — that he could not express. The f eeHng that he was 
 walking upon the edge of circumstance — that the 
 world of which he was the axis was turning faster 
 and faster, setting up a vibration that appalled. 
 
 Now he had been three months at home, and had 
 not placed a single manuscript. 
 
 And whilst this was going on inside him, from the 
 outside was another stress. 
 
 His mother had wept silently each time she heard 
 the click-click of the second-hand typewriter he had 
 bought. She did not speak. Only sat there with the 
 same hard, proud face, and the old pulsation coming 
 and going in the mouth like an accusing signal. 
 
 His father, volcanic, bombarded him from all angles 
 and at all times. "See what your Socialism has 
 brought you to." "Throwing up an assured position." 
 "Steady, even progress to an honoured place." "The 
 godlessness of the age." And then, to cajolery — "Be 
 a sensible man and go back to the City." 
 
 "Go back to the City." He said it, and meant it, 
 that rather than sit in the sheltered meanness of an 
 office, he would go as a navvy on the streets. 
 
 Then came another stroke of fate, to prise him loose 
 from all holds. His mother had a second seizure, 
 which left her paralysed from the waist downwards. 
 It seemed she had been worrying, and the fine, delicate 
 brain, overwrought, had worn too thin. 
 
 Then his father had said the things which could not 
 be unsaid, and so, one evening, when the road was 
 dancing under the fierce rays of the July sun, he had 
 helped a man to carry his one trunk to a mean street 
 not far from the Beech Road, where he found him- 
 self in the poor, little room in the fourth floor back. 
 
74 DEMOCRACY 
 
 When the man left him standing there in the mid- 
 dle of the room, the great shoulders came forward, 
 the strong head sunk in the hands, and Denis Destin 
 cried. 
 
 Nine pounds and some shillings in his pocket. His 
 typewriter and his brains. Nothing else. 
 
 His mind piled up the terrors of his position. Be- 
 hind him, four or five months of unbroken failure — 
 not a line printed. In front — what? 
 
 Should he go back to Peabody and Parsons? Al- 
 ready they had written offering him his old place "if 
 he would be more reasonable in the future." The 
 man who succeeded him had not been a success it 
 seemed. 
 
 "More reasonable." Again he felt everything with- 
 in him rise up against "reasonableness," against that 
 dead, orderly progression of commercial life — against 
 the whole condition of "things as they are." In an 
 instant, his nerves had tautened. His heart beat 
 strongly once more. He would take his life and his 
 chances in his hands. It was the old unconquerable- 
 ness rising, geyser-like, inside him. 
 
 Step by step he ran his mind back over his failures. 
 Why had he failed? 
 
 When he was still in the city he had written in- 
 frequently — just as the fit seized him. And he had 
 placed a couple of insignificant MSS. 
 
 True, they had been badly mutilated before print- 
 ing. True, that every strong passage — everything 
 which had something of himself in it— had been as 
 ruthlessly cut out as though it had been a cancer. 
 Only the dry bones of "facts" had been left. But still 
 they had passed from the dead MSS. into the life of 
 the printed page. 
 
ON THE WATERS OF FLEET STREET 75 
 
 Fleet Street was not cosmic. It was local — ^and con- 
 centrated. Fleet Street wanted facts. 
 
 It burst upon him in that moment that above and 
 beyond all other things, editors wanted "facts." He 
 had always understood they dealt in fictions. It had 
 been drummed into him that newspapers dealt in lies, 
 that the public paid for them. 
 
 Then another flash, and he knew that he was living 
 in a time when the appetite for facts, facts, facts, was 
 voracious and insistent. His Daily Meteor streamed 
 with facts. The popular weeklies corruscated with 
 facts. The people to whom he spoke at the street 
 corner night after night demanded facts. The Trafal- 
 gar Square and Hyde Park meetings bristled with 
 facts. Facts poured out from platform, from pulpit, 
 from press. It was the Age of Facts. 
 
 Very well. If the public wanted facts — then he 
 would give them facts. 
 
 Another flash. Why not find out exactly what 
 editors wanted. He had heard young Wildish say 
 one night that "there was no good writing on spec. — 
 always go and see the old man, my boy." 
 
 But how to see "the old man?" 
 
 He thought of editors as fierce animals. He didn't 
 mind fighting a crowd with all the inspiration that a 
 crowd could give. He was a demagogic animal. But 
 fighting an editor — a shadowy monster who saw no- 
 body, but crouched in his den, shunning the light of 
 day, was another matter. 
 
 He could debate and had debated on the platform 
 within the past few months, and that with some dis- 
 tinction. But to be shut up alone with a man in his 
 sanctum — that was something other. And then there 
 
76 DEMOCRACY 
 
 was the very good chance that no editor would see 
 him. 
 
 But it had to be done. He sat down and wrote two 
 or three letters to the editors of the big dailies, asking 
 them to see him, and awaited the reply, without any 
 hope of receiving one. 
 
 He was considerably gratified, however, to learn 
 from the Literary Editor of the Evening Owl that he 
 would be delighted to consider anything he sent in: 
 from a nebulous "we" of the Incubator that nothing 
 could give them greater pleasure than to look at his 
 work: whilst the Mocking Bird even sent him a printed 
 list of "What we don*t want." They all seemed to 
 have overlooked his request for an interview. But 
 surely the promise of consideration was better than 
 any interview. 
 
 Success at last had opened her arms. He sent in 
 his manuscripts. As regularly, they returned with the 
 slip — "The Editor regrets ..." He tried the ma- 
 jority of the weeklies with the same result. 
 
 Matters were getting serious, even though he only 
 had to pay eight shillings a week for his room and 
 had become an expert in the art of buying food, for 
 no Hammersmith housewife could tell him anything 
 about the places which specialised in cheap bacon, 
 cheap fruit, cheap vegetables. He had under five 
 pounds in his pocket. 
 
 In his extremity he thought of the Duchess of Chil- 
 lington. He wrote and asked her for a letter of in- 
 troduction to any editor, for the newspaper world and 
 the Duchess were on more than speaking terms. It 
 was said, indeed, that she lived always with a tele- 
 phone to her ear. The Duchess was "good copy." 
 
 The kindhearted Duchess promptly sent him an 
 
ON THE WATERS OF FLEET STREET 17 
 
 inflated, gilt-edged, faintly scented letter (her note- 
 paper was one of her ways of defying organised soci- 
 ety), introducing him to the editor of the Daily Me- 
 teor, which left him blushing and grateful and rather 
 surprised at her close knowledge of his powers. Yet 
 it left him a little uncomfortable too. 
 
 A terrible anti-Socialist paper, the Meteor. Meteoric 
 in name and nature. Went in for "the largest circula- 
 tion," making its appeal equally to duke or dustman. 
 Even had an old crusted port country squire circula- 
 tion to give it tone. Always had the earliest, and 
 despite its critics, the most accurate telegrams, and for 
 its pains was called a liar by its less effective competi- 
 tors, which weekly saw large bites taken out of their 
 circulations. Seemed to have a telephone to the South 
 Pole and the infernal regions, not to mention the 
 Higher Powers, for the Meteor could be celestial at 
 times. 
 
 The Meteor was a microphonous ear which caught 
 every whisper of the world, and a megaphonic mouth 
 which could trumpet its news to eager millions, or shut 
 itself up as close as a Bank of England vault. 
 
 Destin was in the roar of Fleet Street, with his 
 golden envelope in his pocket. His confidence was 
 complete when he felt it between his fingers. 
 
 He saw pallid, over-driven men running up and 
 down the narrow street like lines of ants. Saw long- 
 haired young men, their hats dinted ingeniously, who 
 walked uncertainly, carrying large pasteboard covers 
 under their arms. Each unit of the crowd seemed to 
 know its business and the shortest way to it — ^all ex- 
 cept the young men with the pasteboards. 
 
 He felt happy to be part of this hurrying, buzzing 
 thoroughfare, with his work to do like the others and 
 
78 DEMOCRACY 
 
 his foot on the first round of the spiral of success. He 
 felt the social sense grow largely within him. His 
 heart beat faster and his brain grew giddy as he passed 
 down one of the side streets to Bethlehem House. 
 
 Then he caught the hum — or was it the growl?— of 
 something. As he walked along, it grew to a roar — 9. 
 steadfast, insistent roar with a pulsation in the heart 
 of it. Then, and he scarcely knew why, he was 
 afraid. 
 
 Down there through the windows that ran below 
 the level of the pavement, he caught the gleam of steel, 
 like the gleam of teeth. Shadows moved dimly 
 amongst those whirling arms and voracious cylinders 
 that vomited out the white sheets faster than the eye 
 could follow. 
 
 Into the building, and there the roar and thud shook 
 the floor on which he stood. Muffled, it held the great 
 building upright in its vortex. 
 
 The roar made everything unreal. In a dream he 
 felt himself mounting to the stars, always followed by 
 that roar. In a dream he passed down a long corridor 
 and through a room, at the table of which twenty or 
 thirty men were scribbling hurriedly. 
 
 Then he found himself in a spacious, unobtrusive 
 room, standing on a soft pile carpet — ^with the roar 
 cut off on the other side of the door as if he were in a 
 safe. Yet he could hear it, stifled, trying to creep in 
 under the door. 
 
 At the square mahogany table sat a young-looking 
 man, with steel-grey eyes, and a big, compressed 
 mouth. His hair was grey, but he might have been 
 Destines own age. 
 
 In his hand he held the Duchess's letter. 
 
 He did not speak, but looked squarely at Destin, 
 
ON THE WATERS OF FLEET STREET 79 
 
 who stood there, tonguebound. There was something 
 about this man that made him helpless. 
 
 "Well ?" The word was cut off at the lips as though 
 by a scissors. 
 
 Destin stood there in ungainly silence, his shoulders 
 hunched, his long arms hanging at his sides, like a 
 boxer waiting for the gong. There was a cold quick 
 air about the man that angered him. Some under- 
 strapper he supposed. 
 
 "I wanted to see the editor," he said awkwardly. 
 
 "I am the editor," said the man in the chair. 
 
 Destin didn't know that he was looking at one of 
 Bethlehem House's wonderful young men — that House 
 where it was said that every office boy had an editor's 
 contract in his pocket. 
 
 "Oh !" was all Destin could say. 
 
 "Please say what you want," said the man at the 
 table curtly. 
 
 In a moment Destin had flamed into self-control. 
 He resented the tone. For that matter, he resented the 
 whole place. 
 
 The man did not ask him to take a chair, so he took 
 one. 
 
 The big mouth relaxed a little. A gleam shot 
 through the eyes. 
 
 "Please tell me what you want me to do for you," 
 he said more kindly. 
 
 "You have seen the Duchess of Chillington's letter?" 
 said Destin. 
 
 "Yes, I've seen it all right," said the great man. "If 
 you take my advice you won't throw those letters 
 around too much." 
 
 Destin was again combative. 
 
 ^I want to write for you," he blurted out. 
 
80 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "What can you write ?" 
 
 What could he write? Why, he could write any- 
 thing, and he said so. 
 
 " 'Anything' in Fleet Street is 'nothing,' Mr. Destin. 
 I want to know what you know ?" 
 
 What did he know? Here again was that demand 
 for facts. What did he know ? 
 
 Not getting an answer, the man at the table went 
 on — "Fleet Street knows only two sorts of men : those 
 who know what the others don't, and . . . the others. 
 Are you one of 'the others'?" 
 
 "I know the labour movement," said Destin, with a 
 fine flash of inspiration and lying. He had been exactly 
 four months and a half in it. 
 
 "Look through there," said the man at the table, 
 pointing across an angle of the building to the room 
 he had passed through on his way in, where the men 
 were still writing without cessation. "There are half a 
 dozen of those men who know the labour movement 
 backwards, and there isn't a single one of them who 
 isn't holding down his job by the skin of his teeth. If 
 I lift a hand, I can get a hundred like them, who also 
 know the labour movement and who will write on it 
 from now till the crack of doom or the sack." And 
 he smiled quite nicely. 
 
 "But they don't know it," challenged Destin. "Your 
 labour articles show that," he said daringly. "They 
 don't give the facts." 
 
 The man smiled at him amusedly. 
 
 "Do you know what a modern newspaper is?" he 
 said. This man had one weakness. He had to talk 
 about the passion of his life — the newspaper. 
 
 "The modern newspaper is an ear and a mouth — a. 
 great ear that scoops everything and a discreet mouth 
 
\ 
 
 ON THE WATERS OF FLEET STREET 81 
 
 that only speaks sometimes of what the ear has 
 gathered. There are ^facts' and 'facts/ 
 
 "The newspaper is out to give the facts — some- 
 times. But 'facts' are the things that move the minds 
 of men, and therefore have to be given with discretion. 
 
 "For we are the masters of mankind. The spoken 
 word is often forgotten the moment it is uttered — the 
 power of print to fix the written word has an uncanny 
 property — that of swaying men's minds, forming their 
 poHtical, and, what is to-day much the same thing, their 
 religious opinions. 
 
 "That is the miracle known as 'what the public 
 want,' or what it thinks it wants. 'What the public 
 want' means circulation, and circulation means power. 
 Democracy is a dangerous animal — it needs tickling. 
 It is our business — yours and mine — ^to tickle it. It 
 can be led on a thread, but not driven by whips of 
 steel." 
 
 The man was pacing up and down the room, talking 
 frantically, but as though he were speaking to someone 
 else — to something inside him. 
 
 "The public to-day demand facts. We give it facts. 
 But it wants the facts it likes. We give it the facts it 
 likes, or thinks it likes. 
 
 "It is our business to get those facts. We spare 
 nothing — in face of the fiercest of competitions we 
 dare spare nothing — to get them — ^neither money, nor 
 (Conscience, nor even life itself. The paper with the 
 facts of the right sort is the paper with the power. 
 
 "Think of our power. A man sits here with a tele- 
 phone to his ear. From that 'phone runs a maze of 
 wires which film like spider webs across the world, 
 girding it in a net. Everywhere we have our 'cloud of 
 silent witnesses,' listening and recording. It gives to 
 
82 DEMOCRACY 
 
 the writer a power never before wielded by a single 
 man — even a Buonaparte— over the thoughts and 
 therefore over the destinies of millions. 
 
 "A hundred years ago the newspaper was nothing. 
 At the time of Waterloo, it took half a week to get the 
 news to the London Stock Exchange — to-day it 
 wouldn't take half an hour — even the fluctuating for- 
 tunes of the battle, each cavalry charge, could be fol- 
 lowed moment by moment throughout Europe. And 
 strange as it is, it is the fact that we can give the-man- 
 in-the-street the news of a cavalry charge or an aero- 
 plane flight immediately it has happened, which gives 
 us our power over him. 
 
 "That is the power of 'the topical.* Man has be- 
 come a listening animal the curiosity of which is 
 unappeasable — which lives on facts. He comes to the 
 hand that feeds him. But his food must be fresh. 
 
 "Democracy to-day through its curiosity is the will- 
 ing victim of suggestion. It is on this that wars are 
 made ; loans are granted ; cabinets rise and fall. It is 
 a human being sitting in some obscure room in Fleet 
 Street, who, sending the inspired word to waiting De- 
 mocracy, moulds the minds of men, making or marring 
 national destinies. 
 
 "The newspaper builds up barriers, but it is also 
 breaking them down. We are the masters of men, as I 
 said, but they, in the long run, are ours. 
 
 "We shall always go on mastering and being 
 mastered, and when we have run an etheric 'wireless' 
 throughout the star systems, we shall rule the Uni- 
 verse." 
 
 This was a man after Destin's own heart. He didn't 
 think there was such a human being in Fleet Street. ^ 
 
 The editor pulled himself up in his stride, and like a 
 
ON THE WATERS OF FLEET STREET 83 
 
 man coming out of a dream turned to Destin. "But 
 you haven't come to hear that. Now you know how- 
 ever the kind of job you're tackling. Have you any 
 other reason why I should let you write for us ?" 
 
 "But," said Destin despairingly as he saw his chance 
 slipping from him, "your public want labour facts." 
 
 "Do they?" He smiled whimsically. "Are you 
 sure?" 
 
 "At any rate the masses of working people who read 
 your paper want the facts about the progress of the 
 labour movement put before them by an expert?" 
 
 "Do they?" said the editor again, a little wearily. 
 "Do you know what's troubling the factory girl? not 
 the price of factory labour or the eight hour day, but 
 what the Duke said to the Duchess in the conservatory 
 after dinner." 
 
 In a last despairing plunge, Destin put in — "But why 
 not make a new experiment in the Meteor? why not 
 have a regular labour article written by a man in the 
 labour movement? I am a Socialist." 
 
 "So am I," said the amazing young man before him, 
 "and you won't have to go through Fleet Street with a 
 fine tooth-comb to find a hundred or two more, editors 
 and otherwise. And when 'the largest circulation* 
 is a Socialist circulation, the Daily Meteor will be 
 Socialist. They say that 'trade follows the flag,' but 
 in Fleet Street 'the flag follows trade.' " 
 
 Destin stood with his mouth open. 
 
 "And what is more," said the great man, "if you 
 like to go into Fleet Street and proclaim it, I shall not 
 mind. We don't ask what a man's politics are in Fleet 
 Street." 
 
 He walked to the door and opened it. Destin had 
 failed. As he passed out the voice behind said: 
 
84 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "All the same, If you care to send me an odd article, 
 I will have a look at it, but send it to me personally. 
 There's my card. But, mind, I promise nothing." 
 
 Destin was caught up in the roar. It came through 
 the building after him — it came behind him as he went 
 out into the street — and even in the distance he could 
 hear the thing muttering after him. 
 
VI 
 
 MANICURED REVOLUTION 
 
 Then began a hand to hand struggle with fortune in 
 Cross Street, where he had his room. Four weeks went 
 by after his Daily Meteor interview, but no sign came 
 from the editor. He had sent in two articles, in which 
 he had set out pretty fully his views upon current 
 labour questions. The first had come back within three 
 days with the usual printed slip; the second had re- 
 mained out a week, after which, for another week, he 
 spent his diminishing halfpennies upon the Meteor ex- 
 pecting to see it in print. 
 
 Now he was looking at his second article, with — 
 "Damn your views. Where are your facts ?" scrawled 
 across it in blue pencil. 
 
 He hated the Meteor. He hated the man with the 
 grey eyes. He was adding insult to injury. He sulked. 
 The Meteor could soar to heaven with its circulation or 
 sink into the pit before he sent it a word. 
 
 This lasted a week, when his old hatred of failure 
 asserted itself. He wrote a short thousand- word article 
 upon the Syndicalist movement, giving what Wildish 
 had once called coarsely "the guts" of the thing, indi- 
 cating the line of advance. He despised it. It was a 
 corpse of an article. He had prostituted his talent. 
 
 It stayed out like the previous ones. He didn't even 
 trouble to buy a copy of the paper and awaited its 
 return. 
 
 85 
 
86 DEMOCRACY 
 
 He was walking through the Underground station 
 at Hammersmith, when the station turned round him. 
 It seemed as though somebody else were looking at the 
 scarlet Meteor poster with the words — "The Syndi- 
 calist Menace/^ and in smaller type — ''By a Syndi- 
 caHst." 
 
 He saw his name in print for the first time on page 4. 
 He had drawn first blood. The rest seemed easy. 
 Having one's articles upon posters was the easiest 
 thing in the world. All you had to do was to "write 
 down." After all it was legitimate enough when a fel- 
 low had to earn his bread and butter. 
 
 He was wrong. Many months went by before the 
 Meteor took another article. However, he began to 
 pick up a few shillings here and there in all kinds of 
 despised weeklies, and, though it seemed impossible, 
 when the money totalled up, it was keeping him alive. 
 
 In the previous months he had been under the im- 
 pression that he was "writing down" to the crowd, 
 until one day he discovered that he was writing as well 
 as he knew how. Not writing what he wanted to 
 write, but putting his best into what he did write. It 
 was humiliating. . . . 
 
 By this time Destin was committed to the Socialist 
 left wing. The Trafalgar Square meeting had con- 
 firmed him. Each night saw him laying down the law 
 — expostulating, arguing, and even fighting with his 
 audiences. 
 
 "Direct action" was his text. Physical force and the 
 General Strike. His mind, like his voice, had become 
 megaphonic. Giant policemen listened in sleepy good 
 humour to the fulminations of Creegan's new lieuten- 
 ant, for with the meteoric rise of Creegan's star in the 
 political firmament, Destin with Wildish and one or 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 87 
 
 two others found himself flaming upwards giddily. 
 Wildish did not exactly declare himself against all 
 political action, but he was contemptuous enough of 
 the House of which he was a member, and fierce 
 enough to be to all intents and purposes a Syndicalist 
 Simon Pure, dyed in the wool. 
 
 The pace was hair-raising. Like a man on a tight 
 rope, he felt he had to run forwards faster and faster 
 or fall. The Direct Actionists had held one or two big 
 Hyde Park meetings, there being much talking, dust, 
 and noise. The magnet at the second meeting had 
 been an Italian Syndicalist leader of the name of Mari- 
 anetti, who nearly caused a riot on the platform 
 through his fatal fluency in Anglo-Italian, which pre- 
 vented his leaving off. He was full of fire and facts, 
 but he left Destin a little cold too. There was some- 
 thing about his nondescript hair and gingery, upturned 
 moustaches which left everything he said a little col- 
 ourless to Destin. The crowd however shouted for 
 him. 
 
 But the distinguished Frenchwoman who was the 
 principal speaker at the second platform satisfied him. 
 There was a slash and sweep about her words which 
 went well with her tall, well-developed bust, small hips, 
 and flaming Buffalo Bill hat, which would have looked 
 flamboyant and ridiculous on anyone else. 
 
 She riddled the politicals, doing it in excellent Eng- 
 lish, too, poking fun especially at Steltham and Mc- 
 Graw. She was called Satalia — just that. Everyone 
 addressed her by that single name and forgot any 
 other, if she had ever had another. 
 
 After listening to her speech, Destin felt more 
 assured than ever of the intuitions which had led him 
 into the Direct Action camp. True, there were one or 
 
88 DEMOCRACY 
 
 two doubtful references in her speech about the free- 
 dom of the individual which left him a little chilled, 
 for the lady on the platform seemed to regard liberty 
 and license as the same thing, but he forgot all this 
 quickly. 
 
 Creegan had been there, but he was cold, almost 
 brutal, to Mme. Satalia. Destin thought it might be a 
 little political jealousy, but he put it from him as un- 
 worthy. 
 
 After that second meeting, the Syndicalists found 
 themselves political Ishmaelites. Theirs was a motley 
 enemy, for their former comrades in that "Mahomed's 
 coffin of revolution," as Damascene phrased it, the 
 Social-Democratic Union, the orthodox Labourists of 
 the Workers' Party, and the Law itself, found them- 
 selves in awkward comradeship against the new force. 
 The Social Democrats felt hurt at the secession of so 
 many of their members to the camp of ultra revolution, 
 after abandoning political action, in which they be- 
 lieved, provided it were of the proper, militant, class- 
 conscious brand ; whilst it was only natural they should 
 not easily forgive the stealing of their own revolution- 
 ary thunder. As impossibilists, who had declared 
 against the panacea of political action, the Workers' 
 Party of course had no use for them. 
 
 All this however put Creegan's men into effective 
 isolation, being able to criticise not only what they 
 called happily "the labour fakirs," but "Mahomed's 
 coffin," which hung between that paradise of ortho- 
 doxy, the Workers' Party, and the hell of revolution, 
 and pluming themselves upon pioneering into the New 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 As he gained fluency and power, Destin found him- 
 self giving three parts of his speeches to criticisms of 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 89 
 
 other comrades. As a critic, he was megasauric, but 
 there were difficulties on the constructive side, which, 
 however, he got out of by simply saying — "Aren't the 
 workers ten to one? The workers have the future in 
 their own hands. Let them refuse to sell their labour- 
 power, and capitalism must fall." 
 
 It was a watertight argument. To him there could 
 be no reply. It was one of his new "facts." 
 
 Sometimes, only sometimes, a Trade Union branch 
 would ask the Direct Actionists to send a speaker to 
 propound the new gospel. At the beginning, in these 
 Unions, he was flattered at the warmth of his reception, 
 until he discovered that it invariably came from a small 
 section of the younger men, the men who, after Wild- 
 ish, were coming to be known as "the young men in a 
 hurry." And even this was only the case in some 
 Unions, which seemed to vary as much in psychology 
 as their individual members. 
 
 Most of the branch leaders, who, as a rule, were 
 eager, active young men, whilst criticising the lack of 
 militancy of the Parliamentary leaders, frankly 
 avowed themselves in favour of the National Workers' 
 Party, and were mostly members of its Socialist wing, 
 the Independent Socialists, whilst the older men, 
 though saying little, looked askance at the new method 
 of progress by barricade. Generally speaking, and with 
 one notable exception, that of the South Wales miners, 
 eager fiery Celts, with a strong Syndicalist impregna- 
 tion, the new propaganda was not a success. 
 
 But one or two debates he had in local halls were 
 more like the real thing. Here he had "wiped the 
 floor" with his more orthodox opponents. For Destin, 
 under the lash of the crowd, was very hard indeed to 
 stop when he got under weigh. Each day saw him 
 
90 DEMOCRACY 
 
 gaining new courage and, what he had begun to regard 
 as an essential of life for the Syndicalist movement — 
 advertisement. By this time the Syndicalists were run- 
 ning upon the same lines as the Meteor, minus the 
 respectability. 
 
 He was now in charge of "Creegan^s Invincibles," a 
 sort of flying corps which the Direct Actionists flung 
 into Workers' Party meetings. They were composed 
 of fanatical young men who were being used as the 
 nucleus and inspiration for the Direct Actionists within 
 the Unions, and were beginning to make themselves 
 felt. They had their own headquarters in one of the 
 back-blocks near the Mile End Road, from which they 
 swooped down with masses of propaganda literature 
 out of all proportion to their numbers, with which they 
 flooded the streets and the Unions. 
 
 They now formed a standing headline in the Daily 
 Meteor — "Creegan's Invincibles Again!" which took 
 a dignified interest in the new fanaticism, and even 
 went so far as to pat them on the back in a leaderette, 
 which left Destin with mixed emotions. Still, it was 
 all to the good. 
 
 One of the backers of the Invincibles was Miss 
 Craven, who, taking no active part herself, was, how- 
 ever, the goddess in the machine. As Destin often 
 said, they would have been lost without her help. He 
 was constantly at the Hampstead flat, where there 
 were always badges to be made, policies to be dis- 
 cussed, or a sympathiser (influential) to be met at 
 afternoon tea. Miss Craven did not spare herself, or 
 her table, or her pocket. 
 
 But she was. always cool — ^never flurried. And 
 through it all she kept her virginal inaccessibility. 
 
 Miss Craven it seemed was giving *'a little friendly 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 91 
 
 talkee-talkee" for a few sympathisers at "The Hut," 
 as she called her flat. It was most essential to the 
 future of the cause that Destin should be present as 
 there would be a good chance to rope in a few likely 
 ones. 
 
 When he entered the little antechamber that served 
 as a hall for "The Hut," Destin caught the scent of hot 
 tea and cake and heard through the open door the 
 infernal clatter he knew so well. 
 
 Miss Craven's flat was as she said "a Liberty flat" — 
 Liberty by design and by nature. The cool, water- 
 green curtains shaded to a nicety the polished oak 
 floors, on which rugs from the Orient gave a precari- 
 ous foothold. to the mass of humanity which slid, or 
 limped, or fell from wall to wall. The distemper was 
 a shade of delicate grey. There were some reproduc- 
 tions of Hals and other masters, with a genuine Corot, 
 whilst two blue Chinese vases stood on either side of 
 the open fireplace like sentinel dragons. 
 
 Divans that were gargantuan cushions, took the 
 place of chairs, whilst there was an absence of bric-a- 
 brac which did credit to the owner's taste. 
 
 Vesta Craven, in a sea-green gown which clung to 
 her like a mermaid, was standing near the door. She 
 nodded to him proprietorially as to one she saw every 
 day, holding her Russian cigarette between her first 
 and second fingers to the manner born, not like the 
 many other ladies who were smoking with an air of 
 desperation, who held their cigarettes awkwardly be- 
 tween thumb and forefinger as though they were 
 needles. 
 
 He drifted into the group, which was remarkable. 
 All Miss Craven's groups were remarkable. A young 
 man clothed in a sort of collarless Greek garment, bare- 
 
92 DEMOCRACY 
 
 footed and sandalled, his straight, lank hair hanging 
 to his shoulders, was speaking about Epictetus. Epic- 
 tetus it seemed was not known enough in England. 
 His was a complete philosophy. The gospel of manual 
 labour-digging with the spade for instance — "the sim- 
 ple life," "the return to nature" — these were the ideals 
 of Epictetus or of the speaker — Destin could not be 
 sure which, as he was thinking of the likeness to a 
 picture of Christ he had seen in an Irish chapel. But 
 "Epictetus" looked indeed a weak edition of all the 
 Christs that had ever been painted. He, it seemed, 
 was an anarchist. 
 
 Miss Craven puffed daintily at her cigarette, with 
 her name in gold on the side. When the gentleman in 
 the robe spoke of digging, she nodded her head em- 
 phatically, to encourage him. 
 
 The philosopher was in the middle of one of his 
 dreamiest periods, in which bananas was the leit motiv, 
 when Miss Craven, rather rudely it seemed to Destin, 
 who felt quite sorry for the speaker, fluttered across 
 the room and shook by both hands a young girl, 
 dressed in white, who had just entered. Two or three 
 others had run over and were clustering around her 
 adoringly. 
 
 "Now, virgin queen," said one of them, "tell us all 
 about it. How did you escape the cops?" 
 
 "Oh ! do tell us," the others chorused ecstatically. 
 
 The girl they addressed, a rather plain, pert-looking 
 girl, with an upturned nose and baby cheeks, seemed 
 singularly self-possessed and was clothed in a fine air 
 of indifference. She was obviously used to homage 
 and as obviously bored. 
 
 There was something so cherubic and childlike about 
 the girl that Destin was surprised to find everybody 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 93 
 
 staring at her. A woman behind him said — "So that's 
 Pamela, is it?" Then he remembered. 
 
 This was the Pamela Priggle who had chained her- 
 self either to the Clock Tower or the Speaker's Chair 
 — ^nobody seemed to know which. Who had drafted a 
 scheme for tunnelling under the House of Commons 
 from a house opposite, which was found by the police 
 to be full of the earth taken out. The stand-by of the 
 halfpenny picture press, which always, when in doubt, 
 "played Pamela." 
 
 Now she destroyed the glamour of her reputation by 
 asking in matter-of-fact tones for a cup of tea. There 
 was an enthusiastic rush to get it for her. 
 
 The girls who stood around her chattering volubly 
 were all fashionably dressed in a desperate, ragged 
 way. Their compressed, turned-in mouths, their eager, 
 quick eyes, and a general air of living in the middle of 
 events, contrasted with Vesta Craven's air of delicate 
 languor. 
 
 Above the chatter, he caught the piercing voice of 
 a woman older than the rest. A harsh-featured, hol- 
 low-cheeked, pallid woman, fashionably dressed in 
 black. She was speaking to a girl bizarrely clothed in 
 a black and yellow checked tunic gathered at the waist 
 by a green snake belt, a skirt and stockings of purple, 
 and sandalled feet. When this girl moved she walked 
 flat-footed like a ballet dancer. Her short black curls, 
 monkeyish but attractive face, and brilliant black eyes 
 arrested the attention. 
 
 She was speaking to the woman in black in low, 
 hoarse accents, her companion cutting across her with 
 at voice piercing and hard. 
 
 "But don't you see," the latter was saying, "don't 
 you see that if you give the vote to all men and women 
 
94 DEMOCRACY 
 
 you will let in the common, uneducated horde ? When 
 we women have the vote on a property qualification 
 which will give the vote to refined and educated 
 women, then of course we shall vote against Adult 
 Suffrage. Pamela says so." This, as an appeal be- 
 yond which there was no argument. 
 
 *'0h, damn Pamela!" said the girl in the sandals 
 bluntly. "I'm an anarchist, and I don't believe in 
 Government, by votes or otherwise, but if you give 
 the vote to what you call 'ladies/ then the working- 
 woman should have it too." 
 
 "I fear," said the other woman haughtily, *'that 
 neither our language nor our ideals have much in com- 
 mon." And she turned across the floor, whilst the 
 girl in the tunic laughed venomously after her. 
 
 Destin had. been listening to all this, when there was 
 an exclamation behind him in the doorway, and there 
 swayed Damascene in his cloak, which flamed back 
 from his shoulders in scarlet splendour, the sweeping 
 sombrero of black velvet held in his right hand, whilst 
 his left rested upon a black cane with an ivory top 
 carved into the head of a gargoyle, which spat malig- 
 nantly at the room. 
 
 "Good God ! this is too much," he murmured under 
 his breath as he clutched at the wall. 
 
 Miss Craven had run forward, leaving her friend, 
 who, for all her indifference, seemed to throw her nose 
 a trifle into the air. 
 
 "What is it. Damascene? Do tell me." 
 
 "What is it?" repeated that agitated young man, 
 whose monocle stared glassily at her. "What is it? 
 Good God, ma'am ! can't you see ?" 
 
 He pointed with the cane at a scarlet vase which 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 95 
 
 flamed in the corner. "That vase against that wall 
 has nearly cost me my life." 
 
 "And I thought you would like it too," pouted Miss 
 Craven. "I put it there this morning." 
 
 " Tut if there.' Tut it there/ he repeated. "You 
 don't put vases, you let them put themselves. 
 
 "Scarlet against those curtains? What are you 
 thinking of Vesta?" he asked, sinking cloak and all 
 upon a yellow and green divan. 
 
 And there he sat for the rest of the afternoon en- 
 throned, still wearing his cloak, and grasping his hat 
 and stick. To Destin he looked ridiculous, but there 
 was something magnificent about him too. 
 
 Three or four young men had stolen to his side. 
 There was an intangible something which to Destin 
 made their faces all of a strange camaraderie » It might 
 have been a shadow or it might have been the light — 
 like the greeney-brown reflection on the face of a man 
 when he bends over a glass of absinthe. In the face 
 of the one who was speaking to Damascene in a low, 
 sweet voice, almost like that of a girl, a tracery of lines" 
 was whipped. 
 
 Denis Destin caught snatches of their conversation. 
 "... I told Josephs I wouldn't pay a thousand. It 
 might not be a genuine Carillo. You know. Damas- 
 cene, that little yellow spot was not underneath." 
 
 "But you know, dear boy, that there are three in 
 existence without the spot." 
 
 "Yes, I know that, but I wasn't taking any chances. 
 And then my room is now a scarlet and grey and the 
 vase would thunder against the background." 
 
 All four men spoke in slow, even voices, whilst they 
 sipped their tea and nibbled delicately at their cake. 
 One of them had a curiously protruding vision. It was 
 
96 DEMOCRACY 
 
 something Destin had noticed about Damascene him- 
 self. 
 
 A threatening figure was staring down at Damascene 
 where he lolled. The hands were clasped easily behind 
 the fan-shaped back. The face was contemptuous. 
 Damascene glanced up as he felt the stare. 
 
 "Creegan, my dear chap, how are you ? How ener- 
 getic you were in the Square the other Sunday. How 
 do you do it ?" 
 
 Damascene's friends looked at Creegan disdainfully. 
 
 "One would imagine you believed in all that sort of 
 thing and so on and so forth," went on Damascene, 
 fanning himself with his sombrero. 
 
 "The difference between you and me, Mr. Dam- 
 ascene," said Creegan roughly, "is that I believe in 
 something, and you in nothing." The other remained 
 perfectly unruffled. 
 
 "But you are so damnably personal, my dear 
 Creegan," he expostulated. 
 
 "And you are wrong — indeed you are." He was 
 speaking earnestly as though to- himself. "I believe in 
 Socialism just as much as you do, but I don't believe 
 in getting hot over it. Life isn't worth it. For every 
 one reason you can give me for believing in Social- 
 ism, I'll give you twenty, and much more elegantly." 
 
 "I believe in Socialism, because I believe in the 
 people," said Creegan sullenly. 
 
 "The people! My dear fellow! How shockingly 
 old-fashioned you are. 'Vox populi — vox Dei.' Who 
 are the people? What do the people know? 
 
 "Why the people would not understand the harmony 
 of those Chinese vases and the distemper and this 
 floor, nor the time and trouble it took me to assemble 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 97 
 
 them. The people spit and smell and are a damn 
 nuisance. 
 
 "Why, my dear Creegan — and you will understand 
 no personal reference is intended — you can't dine with 
 the people or wine with them. You can't write for the 
 people, though I admit you can speak to them. 
 
 "Now I'm a Socialist because I don't like ugly things 
 — including the people. Let us abolish the people. To 
 do that you must have Socialism. When you've abol- 
 ished the people you will have abolished all that is 
 worth abolishing." 
 
 The young men were smiling softly, like cats it 
 seemed to Destin. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Damascene," said Creegan in a low, 
 harsh voice, the brogue rolling through it angrily, "ye 
 can talk about abolishing the people, of 'art for art's 
 sake,* and all the rest of it. Ye can talk of Socialism 
 as ye talk of a painted woman or a beautiful room, but 
 I tell ye that the people are a living, breathing thing. 
 They are the basis of everything — it is they who build 
 your beautiful rooms and give their leisure to the 
 architects to design them as they give it to your paint- 
 ers who paint your pictures and their daughters for 
 your light-o'-loves. Everything rises from them — 
 everything goes back to them. In a sense, the artist 
 is the people. Sneer at the mob — laugh at it — ^but, by 
 God ! the people are your master and mine." 
 
 And Creegan strode away, leaving Damascene 
 laughing heartily on his cushion as he turned to his 
 Platonists. 
 
 Destin looked at Creegan's shoulders passing 
 through that crowd as though they were pigmies. Then 
 he looked at Damascene. And then, as he looked, he 
 felt that he wanted to put his foot on that smiling face. 
 
98 DEMOCRACY 
 
 He couldn^t understand it, for he had rather liked this 
 man with the monocle and the everlasting sleepy smile. 
 Now he felt as if he were something monstrous, some- 
 thing to be trodden underfoot. 
 
 He had forgotten this, however, as he caught that 
 delicate odour of "White Rose'* which he now knew 
 so well. A little fresh hand was on his arm. A little 
 voice was saying in his ear — "Come, Destin." 
 
 The sound of his name, unadorned, thrilled him. It 
 put him on a level with Damascene. He was one of 
 them. It was the collective-sense — the feeling of exotic 
 comradeship. 
 
 "Let us talk here, away from all these people." She 
 led him to a partially screened corner. 
 
 "I want to talk about the meeting for Sunday . . . 
 Destin.'* There was a scarcely perceptible pause before 
 the name. Again it thrilled him with a delicious feel- 
 ing of camaraderie^ but with something else in it too. 
 
 As she bent forward, her elbows on her knees and 
 the finger-ends of her little shapely hands touching, 
 he sensed the slender girlishness — with something 
 womanly and satisfying, and something irritating in 
 it too. He sensed the slender limbs and delicate 
 woman-curves. The perfume that came from her 
 took possession of him. With it, that indefinable odor 
 feminina. 
 
 It passed through and about him, and mingled with 
 the scent of the tea, the colours of the room — with the 
 whole exotic whirl of living breathing beings. He 
 surrendered himself to it. 
 
 Many times before, when in the late hours they had 
 been discussing ways and means far into the night, this 
 anaesthesia of woman had come to him — almost lulled 
 him more than once into something of which he could 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 99 
 
 see neither the beginning nor the end — ^had impelled 
 him to the edge of something direct and desperate. 
 
 For Denis Destin had a sensuous side — an eating, 
 corroding, shadowy side, which found itself in subtle 
 but violent contrast to that other side — that hard, 
 sterner idealism. 
 
 No woman had ever been so provocative to Destin 
 as this girl who sat near him — so tantalising — so alto- 
 gether desirable. This afternoon in particular she was 
 alluring. Yet she was only speaking about that Sun- 
 day meeting. 
 
 Hitherto she had always kept him at a distance — 
 with an inflection, a word, she had held him at arm's 
 length. Now, although she was speaking of meetings 
 and speakers, there was something intimate, something 
 surrendering, something winning. And Destin lost 
 himself. 
 
 With all his self-assurance, he felt humble with this 
 girl. Felt unsure. Now, as she sat by him, for the 
 first time it ran through his mind that he loved her. 
 
 He had never thought of that with her. There was 
 something about Vesta Craven which shut out the 
 thought of marriage. 
 
 Even as he thought it, he found himself bending 
 forward, speaking passionately to her. Asking her if 
 she felt only to him as a comrade. Whether she cared 
 for him a little otherwise. 
 
 The clatter of the cups was deafening. The smother 
 of words numbing. But even through it all he could 
 not fail to notice her sang froid — her splendid cool- 
 ness. It chilled him, but it held him too. . . , 
 
 And now she was laughing — a low laugh that came 
 and went deeply like the glug-glug of a nightingale. 
 "Dear boy," she said, and for one tiny moment rested 
 
100 DEMOCRACY 
 
 her fingers on his knee. "Perhaps I do. We shall 
 see. . . ." 
 
 Angry a little, he was following it up by asking her 
 to say what she meant, when a woman in a diaphanous 
 gown and henna wig, a sort of elderly Babylonian 
 dancing girl, followed by half a dozen men and women, 
 had run across the room and appealed to his com- 
 panion. 
 
 "Now, Vesta, you shall be the arbiter. Enid here 
 is talking most shockingly. She says she believes in 
 'free love.' And Ella Tosti says it is the only honest 
 thing. She says if you are an anarchist and a vege- 
 tarian, you must be a 'free lover.' That's not true, is 
 it? Look at the guilty couple over there caught in 
 flagrante delicto" And she sniggered. 
 
 She pointed to a tall, pale, hollow-cheeked girl who 
 stood against the mantelpiece speaking to the girl in 
 sandals whom Destin had seen before. Vesta Craven 
 laughed and said to Destin, "Come." There was 
 again that air of the proprietor which flattered but 
 annoyed him also. 
 
 They went over to the two girls. 
 
 "Repeat what you said, you naughty girl," said the 
 lady of the wig. 
 
 The tall girl replied quietly, as she sucked at her 
 cigarette, "There is nothing much to repeat — only that 
 I believe in 'free love,' sexual freedom, call it what you 
 will. I am only putting into words what three-fourths 
 of you believe in and practice— or would if you dared 
 . . . much the same as the outside world you know." 
 Her words came cuttingly. 
 
 The mouth, thin, was compressed. She wore a 
 fringe, frowsy and pale, French fashion. There was 
 an air of in-brooding— of a light behind those pale eyes 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 101 
 
 as though she were consumed by some hidden fire ^rhat 
 tormented her. . . * '. 
 
 "Free love," repeated in a horrific undertone pne of 
 Miss Priggle*s young ladies in a lamp-shade skirt, 
 "What we want to-day is not more license, but less. 
 If I had my way, I would make every marriage a life- 
 long union, and punish any infraction of it with hang- 
 ing. I have burned a few churches in my time, but all 
 the same I would stop this registry office scandal, and 
 compel everybody to be married by a clergyman. It 
 gives some guarantee of permanency." 
 
 The girl in sandals burst in — "Rot ! Do you know 
 a single happy marriage? Be honest now. Is man a 
 polygamous animal or is he not ? Come — put it plainer 
 still — is not woman a polygamous animal too when 
 you go deep enough? Don't the divorce courts show 
 that? What is the logical outcome of that but free 
 mating? When men and women can leave each other 
 when they feel inclined, there will be no more prosti- 
 tution and no more 'hidden plague.' " 
 
 "I don't go as far as you, dear," tittered the lady 
 from Babylon nastily. "But there's something in it 
 too." 
 
 "Have you practised what you preach?" put in the 
 tall girl quietly, looking at Ella Tosti with cold con- 
 tempt. 
 
 The other blenched. "My private morals are no 
 business of anybody," she stammered. "Such a ques- 
 tion is a stupid insult." 
 
 "Because if you have, it is your business to say so," 
 said the tall girl. "I haven't, but I wish to God I 
 could." 
 
 The eyes of the speaker glowed as though the 
 quenchless fire inside were blazing again. She had the 
 
102 DEMOCRACY 
 
 eateit, -suppressed look of the virgin who is passing 
 the thirties. No one there doubted hen 
 
 Mis*: Craven held herself aloof, though not Puritan- 
 ically aloof, from this talk of free love. Destin 
 thought she looked daintier than ever, with her air of 
 friendly exclusiveness. Creegan was prowling up and 
 down the outskirts of the crowd like a caged tiger, 
 whilst two other girls, who looked like burned out 
 matches, were sucking their cigarettes eagerly and 
 tearing the subject to pieces. But what Destin noticed 
 was that nobody cared to say they had passed from 
 theory to practice. 
 
 Whilst he was thinking on this, he found that the 
 discussion in some unaccountable way had shifted to 
 vegetarianism and vivisection. 
 
 He was carried away in the babel that ensued, in 
 which he caught — "the shedding of blood" — ''licensed 
 torturers" — "corpses of animals"- — "uncooked food" 
 — "sun-kissed fruit" — whilst the clatter became un- 
 bearable. 
 
 The floor had become a mosaic of expostulations, 
 chatterings, arguments. The dancing girl was empha- 
 sising with a bejewelled hand some point in the corner, 
 whilst near her, calm and placid, Epictetus was talking 
 on in the steady even voice which Destin had heard 
 when he entered the room. The girl with the cherub 
 face was now talking rapidly, as he could see by her 
 lips, for no sound reached him — whilst she drew some- 
 thing rapidly with a fountain pen, taken from the 
 chatelaine at her waist, upon a piece of paper for the 
 benefit of the coterie which surrounded her adoringly. 
 
 Damascene sat on his cushion smiling, holding a 
 court of young men, who lounged about him on divans 
 and cushions which they had dragged around him. 
 
MANICURED REVOLUTION 103 
 
 The clamour was terrifying. The scent — the flash 
 of jewels — the bare feet of Epictetus — the rustle of 
 silks — the shimmering movement — and through it all 
 the fresh dainty presence of Vesta Craven, who sat 
 there quite coolly, sipping her tea and mouthing her 
 cigarette. 
 
 Creegan alone stood aloof. He was in the comer, 
 half crouching, looking out of the window, his eyes 
 set across the roof-tops of London, now turning to 
 molten bronze in the dying furnace of the September 
 sun. 
 
 Destin wondered of what he was thinking. 
 
VII 
 
 THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK 
 
 Destin saw it in his Meteor. A paragraph under 
 "Odds and Ends." 
 
 "Some men at Bowchester, on the Great North- West- 
 ern Railway, are threatening to come out owing to the 
 suspension of a goods driver for drunkenness. Not much 
 importance is attached to the threats. The failure of 
 similar threats, made at the Trafalgar Square protest 
 meeting last June, is still fresh in the minds of the public." 
 
 A little clerk in the corner of the railway carriage 
 had caught sight of the paragraph at the same time. 
 "I say, Harry, here's another of those drunken rail- 
 waymen suspended, and the usual talk of strike. I 
 suppose they'll go on strike for the right to get drunk 
 next." He laughed to his companion, who replied 
 with a little throaty crackle. 
 
 Several others joined in, one man, a rubicund stock- 
 broker, giving his theory of strike-stopping — what he 
 called the theory of the mailed fist. "Settle *em in a 
 jiff," he said lightheartedly, "but what can you expect 
 of the present government?" 
 
 It seemed that each man there had his pet theory, 
 from frank bludgeoning, to bargaining and "doing the 
 fellars in the eye." 
 
 The carriage having settled the matter comfortably, 
 it may be imagined that Destines late incursion into the 
 argument, with shock tactics delivered like a charge 
 
 104 
 
THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK 105 
 
 of heavy cavalry, with much smashing and slashing, 
 carried dismay into the ranks of "things as they are." 
 As one man in the corner, with a preposterously pale 
 face and heavy jowl said — "Here was a man who by 
 his appearance was a respectable member of the mid- 
 dle-classes, the backbone of the country, encouraging 
 anarchy in the broad light of day. Where were you?" 
 
 When the train reached the terminus, it seemed that 
 the Bowchester trouble was taking head. That early 
 halfpenny, the Twinkler, published nominally for late 
 news, but actually for racing tips, had even brought out 
 a placard — "Railway Strike Threatened/' whilst 
 its rival, the Night Bird, made no bones about it, but 
 declared in extra big type — "Strike for Right to 
 GET Drunk !" In fact, as time went on, the railway- 
 men and insobriety became synonymous to the-man- 
 in-the-street, who saw everywhere drunken drivers, 
 drunken guards, and drunken porters — ^a saturnalia of 
 delirium tremens on wheels. 
 
 As the day came to a close and Destin had finished 
 his editorial calls, Fleet Street began to hum. You 
 could feel it in the air and hear it raucously on the cold 
 December wind. "Extra Speshul. Grite Rilewye 
 Strike! . . . Speshul!!" Passing down Bouverie 
 Street, there was a maddened mob of ragged sporting- 
 capped newspaper boys at the counter of the Owl, 
 screaming for "pipers." As fast as a boy got a bundle 
 he ducked under the crowd, and breaking his way out, 
 scuttled off, screaming — "'Orrible Threat by Creegan." 
 
 "Creegan." At the name, unknown to the-man-in- 
 the-street a few months before, men fumbled quickly 
 in their pockets and gave pennies for halfpenny papers, 
 the boys running along, dodging in and out of the 
 traffic, whilst rushing past them went dilapidated but 
 
106 DEMOCRACY 
 
 workmanlike bicycles ridden by crouching monkeys 
 with open bags bulging with distended packets of 
 papers, wheeling here, under a horse's nose, there, 
 under a policeman's, and overrunning the highways 
 and byeways. 
 
 The Kensington, dignified as ever, simply put in 
 black type on white ground the words — "Creegan 
 Again/* No notes of exclamation about the Ken- 
 sington. 
 
 Late into the night, when the cold moon flooded the 
 broad streets, a poster fluttered out — "50,000 Men on 
 Strike!" But that was the Twinkler, and nobody 
 took the Twinkler seriously, though what the Twinkler 
 didn't know it guessed and was right much oftener 
 than it had any right to be. As he passed along the 
 Embankment, Destin heard the growl of the giant in 
 Bethlehem House. He could see the miles of paper 
 fed into the maw of the monster and those one and a 
 half millions of the digested matter pouring out, run- 
 ning on motor vans to the special trains, waiting to 
 scatter them over Britain. 
 
 In Bethlehem House he could see lights twinkling. 
 There must be big work on. And the thought came to 
 him of what the editor had said to him of the power 
 of the press. 
 
 The next morning came a line from Creegan, scrib- 
 bled in an angular, powerful hand with heavy down 
 strokes, as though it were written with a pickaxe: 
 "Bowchester, December 14. This time it is the real 
 thing. Go with Wildish and feel the pulse of the 
 London dockers. Write me to headquarters of rail- 
 waymen's union.^ — B. C." 
 
 Out in the street, and the Twinkler, liar or not, had 
 run up to "100,000 Men out. Strike Spreading.-" 
 
THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK 107 
 
 Then the Daily Worker, the organ of the National 
 Workers* Party, curiously restrained — "Big Railway 
 Strike/' He paid his halfpenny for the Worker and 
 found the strike relegated to the lower columns of the 
 front page and about four inches of matter. In a 
 leaderette there were some vague references to "throw- 
 ing over the leaders . . ." "anarchic action . . ." and 
 "we do hope that Mr. Creegan will keep himself in 
 hand." 
 
 After he had made a call upon the editor of a weekly, 
 who had wired him that morning and who wanted him 
 to write an article on "What the Workers Really 
 Want," he went down to the Syndicalist headquarters. 
 He had already telephoned Wildish, who promised to 
 meet him there "any time he liked." From the height 
 of a bus at the Bank, he saw on a placard — "London 
 Dockers Coming Out. Mr. Belch Talks.'' 
 
 The Kensington, for once startled out of its cus- 
 tomary dignity, had so far forgotten itself as to put 
 on a poster — "The Cads and the Rads ;" presumably 
 a reference to one of the "understandings" it was 
 always alleging against the left (Radical) wing of 
 Liberalism. "The Cads," it frankly said, were those 
 working men who, "forgetting the best traditions of 
 labour and that 'Laborare est orare,' had actually de- 
 manded the right for an engine driver to become intox- 
 icated — a man who every day had hundreds of lives 
 in his charge," (it had got slightly mixed had the 
 Kensington, for the man who was suspended was the 
 driver of a goods train with nothing on board but him- 
 self, his fireman, and guard) "who had been found 
 disgustingly drunk in the streets of Bowchester. The 
 fact that he was 'off duty' at the time, and the denials 
 of his fellows, does not make his offence any the less 
 
108 DEMOCRACY 
 
 heinous. . . " It quite broke down in its leader in 
 the face of such depravity, and it was all very dignified 
 and improving. ' 
 
 The London dockers had their headquarters in the 
 Mill wall Road, in what had been a century before a 
 private house. The place was a regular hive — the 
 door was open and men were crawling in and out like 
 bees. Upstairs he found Westerley, the Secretary, 
 who sat at his desk in his shirt sleeves despite the cold, 
 as cool as the weather outside. He made a fine silhou- 
 ette, Destin thought, as he bent against the telephone 
 receiver, the hand lying on the table warped, as though 
 it had been broken and set badly ". . . well if you can't 
 hold 'em, let 'em out and be hanged to 'em." There 
 was a note of exultation in his clear, strong voice. 
 
 This man had been everything. Circus rider, Sun- 
 day-school teacher, foremast hand, stevedore, gold 
 miner, and many other things, including professional 
 boxer — something that had not marred a head and 
 face that might have been taken from a Greek vase. 
 With an old-time hero of the movement, a man 
 named Bent, who had since gone to Australia, he had 
 led many sectional strikes in the nineties, coming in 
 on the crest of the rising labour movement. 
 
 "Wildish hasn't turned up yet?" asked Destin. 
 
 "No," replied Westerley, hanging up the receiver. 
 "He never does. It is one of Wildish's little ways." 
 
 "Creegan sent me a line this morning. The Tzvink- 
 ler says your men are coming out." 
 
 ''Are coming out," said Westerley, running his 
 hand through his short curling hair. "They have 
 come out. I tell you what it is, Destin ; the men don't 
 want leaders any more. They are doing the leading. 
 It is the right spirit. I used to believe Parliament 
 
THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK 109 
 
 was the shop for labour — ^but 'pon me God ! the more 
 I think of it the more I believe Creegan is on the 
 right tack. You know that Ben 'down under' has 
 come to the same conclusion. Still, there can be no 
 harm in having our men in the Gas House at West- 
 minster to watch the meter." 
 
 "Yes," said Destin doubtfully, "but they must have 
 leaders all the same. There must be a head to think." 
 
 "That's all right," said the other, "but weVe had 
 too many leaders in the past. Let the men lead now 
 for a change. 
 
 "This is metaphysics, my boy. It has grown from 
 a glass of whiskey which never existed! Neither 
 Belch nor Creegan nor I knew anything about it — we 
 can only ride the whirlwind — ^we can't direct it." 
 
 He broke into the old hymn — "He rides the whirl- 
 wind and directs the storm," in a full baritone. "Sang 
 it forty years ago when I was a teacher in a New York 
 Methodist Sunday-school." 
 
 As they were settling a ring of meetings and going 
 through their list of speakers, Wildish came in, his 
 hat a little on one side. "Awfully sorry, you chaps, 
 but I've had a frightful lot to do this morning. Been 
 with two old pals from Christchurch, Platonists, who 
 are making things shift down there. What's the row?" 
 
 They told him. He treated it all as a huge joke, 
 and even asked them to "come out and have one to 
 lubricate their thinking apparatus." Westerley re- 
 fused shortly. 
 
 When Destin got outside, the papers were fast ex- 
 hausting their adjectives. 
 
 The London railwaymen had come out and the 
 termini were congested. It seemed that the only way 
 to relieve the congestion, according to the Kensing- 
 
no DEMOCRACY 
 
 ton, which was fast losing its temper, was "a dose of 
 ball," as though the termini were a horse with an ob- 
 struction. Trains were getting away sometimes, 
 sometimes not, whilst the suspension of the London 
 suburban service was gritting the middle classes into 
 apoplexy. 
 
 As the days went on the news grew worse. The 
 papers were by now speechless, having exhausted their 
 poster vocabulary, and had returned to the simple 
 statement. "Miners Come Out/' was all the Twink- 
 ler could say. 
 
 This, according to the Kensington, was the crown- 
 ing infamy of labour. *Tt was not cricket.'* To take 
 advantage of the Christmas season, when millions of 
 poor people needed fire and light, was disgusting. 
 The miners, it appeared, had never been satisfied with 
 the working of their Rates agreement, and were now 
 raising the devil over some mythical "difficult places," 
 from which the coal was difficult — or at least they 
 said it was difficult — to "win," language which the- 
 man-in-the-street regarded as sheer obtuseness and 
 perversity invented for the occasion, and left it there. 
 
 As the Meteor said in a fine peroration — "if a hard- 
 working clerk, trying to keep himself and his family 
 respectable upon thirty shillings a week, talked of 
 'difficult places* when his ledger was more troublesome 
 than usual, what would his employer say?" and 
 stopped there appalled at the vision it had conjured up. 
 
 As for the Direct Actionists, Destin and Wildish 
 had addressed some big meetings at the docks, and 
 had been considerably titillated to see their names in 
 the Owl. 
 
 But Creegan and Belch were the presiding genii 
 of the new revolution. Creegan in particular was 
 
THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK 111 
 
 ubiquitous. One day in the North stirring up the 
 railwaymen, the next at a London dockers' meeting, 
 and the following day in South Wales, setting the 
 brand to the combustible matter of the Welsh miners 
 who were the mainspring of the new miners' move. 
 But Belch surpassed himself, talking a great deal to 
 sundry newspaper correspondents, it is true, but show- 
 ing once more his gift of organisation. The Worker 
 by now was putting his name in capitals, an unusual 
 thing for them, even though he were a member of the 
 Parliamentary Party. 
 
 Even the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire miners, 
 with the old Liberal tradition still clinging to them 
 raggedly, felt themselves swept into the vortex of 
 revolution, andi were ceasing work. This maelstrom 
 was gathering force day by day. It was as though it 
 had solved the secret of perpetual motion and whirled 
 faster and faster from its own innate velocity. The 
 orthodox Labour members, even, were forced to come 
 down from the fence where they had been sitting and 
 go with the swim or lose their grip on the Unions. 
 
 So far, the Law had kept the strong arm in abey- 
 ance. There had been a rather ugly pithead struggle 
 in Glamorgan, in which Belch had shown great cour- 
 age, whilst in Newcastle, the men's pickets had come 
 into collision with the police. The authorities, how- 
 ever, had not "seen red," despite frantic appeals di- 
 rectly and through the press from the mine owners 
 and railway directors for the upholding of law and 
 order. 
 
 The Olympian was thunderous with the protests 
 of the aristocracy and the squirearchy, but it was the 
 Daily Meteor which in particular was like a den of 
 rattlesnakes, for the middle-class man, upon whom it 
 
112 DEMOCRACY 
 
 largely relied for its circulation, not unnaturally, find- 
 ing himself fireless, trainless, and rapidly becoming 
 foodless, "and not," as one gentleman expressed it, 
 "being exactly a blessed spirit," set himself on end 
 and rattled. 
 
 Vainly, at the beginning, the Workers' Party leaders 
 in Parliament tried to hold back the men. Steltham 
 in particular did effective work here in his widely 
 quoted Kellerton speech, in which he said — "The 
 British working-man is on his trial. Victories are 
 not won by ill-considered action and the throwing over 
 of leaders. Let the British worker prove that he is 
 not a mere sentimentalist, but one of the hardest- 
 headed men in Europe — not swayed by the breath of 
 faction or the lure of direct action." 
 
 However that might be, the British working-man, 
 who seemed to have been developing quite a Gallic 
 impetuousness during the previous ten years — a, phe- 
 nomenon which one or two writers, who had been 
 laughed at for their pains, had noticed — was nibling 
 at the Syndicalist lure. The men had the bit in their 
 teeth, "and you couldn't stop 'em unless you tore the 
 teeth out of them, and you can't bite without teeth," 
 Creegan said, and Creegan knew. 
 
 The National Workers' Freedom Society, called by 
 the strikers "the Society of 'Scabs,' " the name given 
 to the strikebreaker despite the ruling in the Courts 
 that such terms constituted libel, supplied "free la- 
 bourers" to Capital. These aristocrats of unskilled 
 labour had the time of their lives, running waggons 
 off the metals or into one another, wrecking engine 
 rooms (all in good faith), keeping down the water 
 in the mines (sometimes), and living on the fat of 
 the land. After a time, and in strange contradiction 
 
( 
 
 THE RIGHT TO GET DRUNK 113 
 
 to the earlier announcements that Capital "had all and 
 more men than it wanted," it seemed that the new- 
 comers were likely to prove un embarras de richesses 
 and were being got rid of as quickly as possible. 
 
 It was when the latter stage had been reached and 
 after the Shipping Trust found its steamers either 
 languishing under heavy cargoes which could not be 
 discharged, or lying in port lighthanded and light- 
 headed, that Sir James Buckley, the genial Board of 
 Trade arbitrator, suggested an informal conference 
 between masters and men. 
 
 At a meeting of the men's leaders to consider the 
 offer, Creegan laughed at it and talked about "bilkers." 
 Westerley followed suit and declared that "By Jupi- 
 ter! weVe got their tails down and if they want to 
 meet us they must reinstate Bingley" (that was the 
 goods driver) "and concede the full demands of the 
 transport workers and the miners." 
 
 Steltham wasn't so sure. This in his opinion was 
 the psychological moment for treating. Later, with 
 depleted war chests, the men would not be in anything 
 like so good a position to bargain. And he knew that 
 many of the Radicals were with the men now, whereas 
 did they perversely prolong the struggle, they would 
 lose their friends on the floor of the House. 
 
 The argument ranged backwards and forwards in 
 the Strike Executive, Belch being, for him, strangely 
 silent. "What do you say, Belch?" asked Creegan. 
 
 Belch began to speak in short, quick, stuttering sen- 
 tences, gathering fluency as he went on. 
 
 He pointed out that the miners had lost already 
 nearly £12,000,000 in wages and strike pay; that the 
 dockers, living as they did upon something under an 
 average of £1 a week, had saved nothing and were 
 
114' DEMOCRACY 
 
 living God alone knew how. He had been down in 
 Glamorgan and had witnessed scenes of desperate 
 hardship. The little children whose boots had been 
 pawned were running about barefoot in the snow — 
 the houses lacked food and were coalless. "They are 
 looking each morning at tens of thousands of tons of 
 the stuff they've slaved for and they can't touch a 
 grain of it. That alone will drive them back before 
 long. Anyhow, let us thrash it out over the arbitra- 
 tion table — ^we may beat the devils, and we can always 
 back out if we wish." 
 
 Creegan was scowling, but Belch, whose voice had 
 now risen to a bellow and whose blue eyes were set 
 vaguely above the head of the chairman, Steltham, 
 pictured such a tale of hardship that the miners' repre- 
 sentatives on the executive came to his way of think- 
 ing, and a decision to meet the masters was carried 
 by two. 
 
 The evening papers were filled with olive branches, 
 excepting the implacable Kensington, which declared 
 that arbitration upon such a matter was a scandal. 
 "Let the men go back to work and leave the whole 
 thing in the hands of the masters," which, as the 
 Meteor, which sometimes had a burst into pro-labour- 
 ism, said, was archaic and only worthy of papers 
 which hadn't their fingers on the pulse of labour. The 
 Meteor had just bitten the Kensington's circulation in 
 two and was naturally critical. 
 
VIII 
 
 MASTERS AND MEN 
 
 When Destin walked down the incline to the Great 
 North-Western terminus, in the offices of which col- 
 liery proprietors, railway magnates, and shipowners 
 were to meet the men's leaders, it was like walking 
 into a graveyard. Across the vacant stretch of plat- 
 forms there was but a single trickle of thin white 
 steam. The busiest terminus in Europe was empty. 
 
 A uniformed attendant took him and his papers up 
 in a noiseless lift. Another ushered him, as though 
 he had been a railway magnate himself, into a noise- 
 less Board-room on the first stage. 
 
 It was a dark, mahogany-toned room, with crimson 
 leather table in the centre and crimson chairs. Around 
 the walls hung the fathers of the Great North- Western 
 in oils, whilst at the top, behind the carved chair, 
 crouched a Chinese joss, leering down the room. 
 
 He was there as a sort of secretary to Creegan, and 
 was arranging his papers, when two of the miners 
 came through the door. Their gaze travelled rever- 
 entially around the room, until it rested on the joss. 
 "Bowing down to their idols in wood and stone. Bill !" 
 whispered one to the other behind his hand as though 
 he were in church. The other laughed vaguely — "Ay- 
 ay, lad." 
 
 Westerley came in as cool as an iceberg, with 
 
 115 
 
116 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Steltham behind him, who smiled darkly as he shook 
 hands. Then McGraw, his briar in full blast, with a 
 tartan around his neck. 
 
 When all the men's chiefs had arrived save Belch 
 and Creegan, Sir James blew in through the door in 
 the bluff way he had, his flowing side-whiskers moist 
 with cold. 
 
 He went up to Steltham and shook him cordially 
 by the hand, afterwards taking each man's hand in a 
 close, intimate way. He always did it as though he 
 knew everything about the man. . . . "Have met 
 you before, my dear fellow — sure of it — can't remem- 
 ber where at the moment." He was generally right, 
 for his bluff, clean face, side-whiskers, and pince-nez 
 were known at every arbitration table in Britain. 
 
 Then a different kind of bird. Sir Crespigny 
 Cathcart, called by the Radicals "Dodo" Cathcart, in 
 reference to the almost extinct set of opinions which, 
 as a Tory of the old school, he championed both in- 
 side and outside the House of Commons, was a dis- 
 tinguished-looking man, his hair, like hoar frost, 
 making a picturesque crown for his fresh, clean- 
 shaven face and coal black eyebrows. His eye was 
 glazed by a monocle, rimless and black-ribboned; his 
 hat, as black as ebony, he carried in his hand, and a 
 blue Melton, that was a sort of blue skin, covered his 
 long back. A pretty picture of a man, though a 
 frosty one. He took a seat at the table with the curt- 
 est of nods to the others. 
 
 Three or four from the men's executives, rugged- 
 looking fellows, whose rounded shoulders and short, 
 thickened arms told the story of hewing and lifting, 
 came in at intervals. They looked stiffly uncomforta- 
 ble in their suits of good broadcloth and clean dickeys. 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 117 
 
 Each man took his seat close against his fellows as 
 though he were in church, and looked as though he 
 didn't quite know what to do with his hands. But 
 Westerley, Steltham, and McGraw, each in his own 
 way, showed themselves at home — Westerley perhaps 
 a little too much so, as he pulled out and lit a strong 
 black cigar, which he puffed upwards nonchalantly 
 into space as he sat back in his chair. 
 
 McGraw was talking to Sir James In low, gruff 
 accents, the arbitrator listening with serious interest. 
 Steltham was making notes on the sheet of foolscap 
 before him. 
 
 A couple of colliery proprietors and a^ shipowner, 
 all plain if rather hard-looking men of affairs, had 
 entered and added themselves to the bunch of pre- 
 cisely dressed men who were listening to a funny story 
 being told by an earlier arrival. Sir Gilbert Goring, 
 one of the chiefs of the Shipping Trust. Destin could 
 see the round, inflamed head topping the group, with 
 the network of bluish veins cris-crossing the temples 
 and running up into the hairless skull, as it threw it- 
 self back in hoarse humour; the great clean-shaven 
 mouth opening cavernously in a high laugh to show 
 the strong, yellow horse-teeth. Over the high white 
 collar that forced the head off the lumpy shoulders, 
 there ran a deep lip of crimson flesh which folded 
 above Into the scanty hair on the nape of the neck. 
 The voice roared upwards. Impregnating the air with 
 the smell of brandy. 
 
 Sitting at the table, reading the Liberal daily, the 
 Monitor, his back slightly turned upon the group, sat 
 a rather delicate, refined-looking man, his grey frock 
 coat caught slenderly by a silken catch at the waist. 
 His grey eyes were slightly knitted. Everything about 
 
118 DEMOCRACY 
 
 this man was in place, Destin noting the tie of dark 
 green silk with the Mexican fire opal in it, his neat 
 glazed double collar, and the exquisitely fitting clothes. 
 
 Afterwards he learned that he was Mr. Ellerton 
 Muschamp, philanthropist and colliery owner, who 
 was distinguished by an incredible meanness to his 
 employees and an unfathomable purse for charity. 
 Muschamp had founded half a dozen homes for lost 
 girls and was a professing Christian, being laughed 
 at behind his back by his fellows for his pains as a 
 "Methody." But they all respected one of the most 
 acute business brains in England. 
 
 Sir James came slowly to the head of the table, 
 balancing his gold glasses in his hand and smiling 
 largely around him. "I think, gentlemen, we might 
 start. It has gone ten, and you know my motto — I 
 believe in punctuality. I am afraid we shall have to 
 begin without Mr. Creegan and Mr. Goldbeater." 
 
 "I don't think you will. Sir James," said a voice 
 near the door. Nobody had seen the man entering 
 who had spoken. 
 
 At first sight there was something intolerably com- 
 monplace about Richard Goldbeater, K.C., M.P., and 
 railway director. He looked the average man — so 
 much so that witnesses in the law courts told him all 
 sorts of things in the box as one man would tell some- 
 thing to another — for everyone likes the average man. 
 
 He was of average height. His sweeping morning 
 coat, which enveloped his comfortable average cor- 
 poration, though beautifully cut, was an average coat. 
 His collar and his tie were the kind of collar and tie 
 which can never be recalled afterwards. The silk hat 
 which he held in his hand was an average hat, well 
 polished. Only his boots, which were long and slen- 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 119 
 
 der and square-toed, were noticeable — perhaps because 
 he always got his boots in Paris. 
 
 The head, round and porcine, was an average head, 
 the features nondescript, from the short, rather irregu- 
 lar nose to the jaw. The eyes might have been of any 
 colour. 
 
 Then he smiled, as he came to the table, and the 
 whole man had changed. 
 
 The eyes had sunk almost out of sight in the heavy 
 cheek-folds, slanting either side in his head. The 
 mouth had closed and also disappeared. Even the 
 tiny ears had become invisible. But the jaw, till now 
 unnoticeable, had broadened like that of a constrictor 
 in the act of deglutition. 
 
 Destin felt that he had seen this man before, and 
 recently. He turned instinctively to the Chinese joss. 
 The man coming to the table was the joss. There was 
 something porcine, but sleuthy about him. Something 
 that to him at least was utterly un-moral. Something 
 that appalled him, as Damascene had appalled him — 
 only that he was frightened too. 
 
 The little plump white hand went out quickly to Sir 
 James. The figure turned like a globe, bent across 
 the table as far as it could and shook Steltham's hand 
 with courteous warmth — "Glad to meet you again, Mr. 
 Steltham." Then to the other men on Steltham's side 
 of the table, to whom he bowed collectively but indi- 
 vidually — with a bland "Good morning, gentlemen." 
 To Goring and the others he nodded. There was a 
 vacant chair at the head of the table next to Mus- 
 champ. He slipped into it as though it had been 
 greased. 
 
 The others came up to the table still laughing at 
 Goring's story. Muschamp peered through his pince' 
 
120 DEMOCRACY 
 
 nes around the table, and said — "As I am sure neither 
 side wishes to take an unfair advantage of the other, 
 I propose Sir James Bulkley as Chairman." Sir 
 James took the raised chair at the head of the table. 
 
 As he was sitting down, Creegan came in, the points 
 of his flannel collar caught closely under his tie by a 
 thin bar of Connemara marble. He nodded curtly to 
 his own men and sat down in the last chair on the 
 men's side of the table, putting his sweeping, conical 
 hat, with the deep cleft, on the table before him. 
 
 "We are just starting, Creegan," said Belch amica- 
 bly and a little nervously. Belch had slipped into his 
 place the moment before. 
 
 "Who's the chairman?" said Creegan. 
 
 "Sir James Bulkley, the arbitrator, of course, Mr. 
 Creegan," smiled Goldbeater. "You* weren't thinking 
 of taking the chair yourself, were you?" He smiled 
 sweetly. 
 
 Creegan's face was suffused. "I object," he said 
 shortly. 
 
 "But, my dear Mr. Creegan, Sir James Is the arbi- 
 trator." There was immense patronage in Goldbeat- 
 er's voice. 
 
 "I won't have one of the master-class in the chair," 
 said Creegan sullenly. 
 
 *'You wont. You won't. But, my dear Mr. Cree- 
 gan, there are others besides you to be considered. 
 Again he smiled. 
 
 "I object," repeated Creegan doggedly. The men 
 by his side looked shocked, especially the miners, 
 whilst Steltham said — "Mr. Creegan, I fear, has little 
 knowledge of arbitration boards. Surely he must 
 know that an arbitrator belongs to no class, represent- 
 ing as he does the rights of all classes." 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 121 
 
 "Never mind what knowledge I have, or haven't, 
 Steltham,'' said Creegan, scowling. Goldbeater smiled 
 indulgently. Goring looked apoplectic. The others 
 politely deaf. 
 
 "If my election is not unanimous, I will have noth- 
 ing further to do with the proceedings," said Sir 
 James quietly. "If you think I am not honest enough 
 to hold the chair impartially, Mr. Creegan, I am sorry, 
 but I can go." 
 
 Creegan was silent. He looked like a sulky boy. 
 But he scowled something which might have been 
 acquiescence or dissent. 
 
 "As there now appears to be no further objection, 
 Sir James," said Goldbeater, who had been watching 
 Steltham fingering his notes, "I propose that we get 
 to business. I have jotted down here a few rough 
 notes for an agenda to save time. I think the gentle- 
 men present will find it covers the points at issue 
 fairly." 
 
 The chairman took the paper, which was typed, and 
 after glancing it over said — "I think it puts the points 
 fairly. But I will read them out: 
 
 "i. Whether drunkenness of engine drivers off duty 
 is a matter of public safety and therefore of reinstate- 
 ment. 
 
 "2. Wages and hours of the dockers. 
 
 "3. The general conditions of the railwaymen. 
 
 "4. Prices for 'difficult places* for miners. 
 
 "5. Whether a further increase should be granted 
 in view of the fact that wages on the average have 
 risen twenty per cent, within the last ten years." 
 
 Steltham said that he also had jotted down a few 
 rough notes, and looked a little upset when Bulkley 
 
122 DEMOCRACY 
 
 suggested that unless they brought in other issues, they 
 had better confine themselves to the agenda before 
 him. 
 
 Steltham replied quietly and courteously — "I am 
 afraid I shall have to follow my friend Mr. Creegan 
 and say *I object.' " 
 
 "But surely those are the points at issue, Mr. 
 Steltham?'' 
 
 "They may be, but I think they might be put 
 differently." 
 
 "How would you state them?" 
 
 "This is not a question of Bingley. It is a question 
 purely of wages and hours." 
 
 "Bingley's the red herring," said Creegan coarsely. 
 
 "I don't think we need cry 'stinking fish' yet a bit," 
 said Mr. Muschamp. "I for one am quite willing to 
 make it a question more or less of wages and hours." 
 
 "Good God! Muschamp— what are you saying?" 
 burst out Goring. "You know we settled all that 
 long . . ." He broke off. Muschamp was looking 
 at him serenely. 
 
 "Oh! is that it, gentlemen?" inserted Steltham. 
 "You had the whole thing cut and dry before, you 
 came in." 
 
 "Dash it all, Steltham!" interposed Belch, indig- 
 nantly, "I suppose they have as much right to meet 
 as we." 
 
 Creegan looked at him. 
 
 Goring was apoplectic again. As Belch had said, 
 they had as much right to meet as anyone else, but 
 everyone, including the arbitrator, looked as though 
 they had been children caught stealing apples. Even 
 Cathcart held himself a little more rigidly in his chair. 
 
 The two miners who had come in first and Manby, 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 123 
 
 who was one of the railwaymen's representatives, 
 stared at the chairman, bewildered. 
 
 "What is the trouble?" asked Manby. "For my 
 part, I think Mr. Belch has put it about right." 
 
 "Very well, gentlemen, if you are agreed, I suggest 
 that for the moment we hold the agenda over," said 
 Sir James. 
 
 "First blood!" said Steltham under his breath. 
 
 "We had better start with an informal, friendly 
 discussion so as to get roughly at the points at issue, 
 with a statement of the case from each side. Who 
 will open?" 
 
 "I am sure I am speaking for my colleagues when 
 I say that the advantage of first speaking should lie 
 with the gentlemen on the other side of the table." 
 Goldbeater was exquisitely polite. 
 
 "Good! good! Goldbeater knows his business," 
 said one of the shipowners to his neighbour. 
 
 But to the surprise of some of his colleagues, Stel- 
 tham would not have it. "I do not wish Labour to 
 be behindhand in the courtesies of life. Let one of 
 you gentlemen speak first." 
 
 To Destin, watching, it seemed that out of the 
 bunch of men there, the two men that mattered were 
 Steltham and Goldbeater — with perhaps Creegan in 
 the background, but remote. They were saluting be- 
 fore making play with the rapiers of argument. Nor 
 could he help noticing how ill at ease some of the 
 labour men looked. They moved uncomfortably in 
 their chairs. Before the urbanity of the Masters they 
 showed up badly. 
 
 "I suggest, gentlemen, to save time, that Labour 
 speaks first, as it first took the offensive," said the 
 chairman. 
 
124 DEMOCRACY 
 
 To this Steltham had no reply. So he got to his 
 feet, his face more craggy than ever, the smile dark- 
 ening in his eyes. He commenced in even tones: 
 
 "I am perfectly sure, and my colleagues are per- 
 fectly sure, that the gentlemen on the other side of 
 the table have met us in the Jhonest determination to 
 find a way out of the dreadful impasse in which we 
 find ourselves, and indeed to do justice to Labour's 
 claims if those claims can be substantiated." It was 
 Steltham's well-known pacifist introduction. 
 
 "Speak for yourself," growled Creegan. 
 
 "Of course I except Mr. Creegan," said Steltham, 
 the smile darkening again in his eyes. "Mr. Creegan 
 is always the exception." 
 
 A little smile ran from face to face amongst the 
 Masters. It flickered a ipoment and went out. Stel- 
 th9,m had seen it, and he gripped the lapels of his 
 coat tightly. 
 
 "But I should be sorry," he went on, "if there were 
 any misapprehension on this matter. Mr. Creegan 
 and I stand side by side in this fight — stand for a 
 common object." The words were addressed to the 
 chairman, but the glance went out to Goldbeater, who, 
 however, was smiling to his neighbour as though he 
 were not listening. 
 
 In a statement, in which there was not a super- 
 fluous word, in which each fact dovetailed into its 
 predecessor, Steltham outlined dispassionately the po- 
 sition of the three principal unions involved. "Over 
 one million and a half of men out . . ." "indus- 
 try paralysed ... . " "the dreadful threat of the 
 future." 
 
 The words came evenly and coldly, but, as he 
 passed from the statement of the position of the indi- 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 125 
 
 vidual unions and the question of wages and hours 
 involved, to the growing federation of these unions, 
 showing how resistlessly the work of federation went 
 on day and night, his statement took a higher note. 
 It was still smooth and resistless as a flowing tide, but 
 underneath, it held the rumble and threat of the flood 
 to come. . . . "Yesterday it was the individual 
 union battling for life against the overwhelming power 
 of capital. To-day it is the linking up of inter-de- 
 pendent trades, as we have federated the Miners, the 
 Railwaymen, and the Dockers for defensive action. 
 To-morrow . . . ?" he stopped. But now the smile 
 had passed from Richard Goldbeater's face — the eyes 
 and ears had emerged again. The men by his side were 
 tense. Goring alone was spluttering and eruptive. 
 
 "But it is not the wish of Labour to bring this 
 tremendous engine into action. We hold that matters 
 like the present are for the Conciliation Board and 
 the House of Commons — ^not for primeval weapons 
 and primeval passions." The voice had become con- 
 ciliatory once more. 
 
 It had sunk, Destin noticed, but there was nothing 
 of the anti-climax about it as he passed on to his final 
 thrust. 
 
 "Nor do we wish to destroy the rights of the 
 Minority by sheer dead weight. We wish to respect 
 minority rights. For no man in this room, and, least 
 of all, Mr. Richard Goldbeater, who knows the posi- 
 tion intimately, as he showed in his recent evidence 
 before the Royal Commission upon Labour Unrest, 
 will deny that Demos holds the last word. When 
 everything is said and done, Demos the voter can 
 outvote Capital the voter at the polls. If the present 
 Government wish to invite certain disaster" (here he 
 
126 DEMOCRACY 
 
 looked steadfastly at Goldbeater and Muschamp) "they 
 will refuse to consider the claims of labour. It is 
 literally true that the fate of the Government, which, 
 after all, in the greater sense, as a Capitalist Govern- 
 ment, has the interests of both Liberal and Conserva- 
 tive in its hands, lies with the gentlemen on the other 
 side of the table. The General Election is not far 
 off — ^the reply of Demos at that election will hang 
 upon the results of the present conference. I make 
 no threats; I am simply pointing out the logical se- 
 quence of cause and effect." 
 
 Creegan sat hunched over the table, driving deep 
 holes into the sheet of blotting paper before him with 
 a pencil. Muschamp was writing rapidly. Cathcart 
 sat looking stiffly before him like an aristocratic 
 mummy. Goldbeater was smiling. 
 
 Destin, looking on from where he sat at the end 
 of the table taking a shorthand precis of Steltham's 
 argument, felt that it was what he called "a water- 
 tight case." He could not conceive any effective re- 
 ply. But he was indignant at the studious restraint 
 of the speaker — ^at what Creegan would call "truck- 
 ling to the priests of Baal," whilst the blank unre- 
 sponsiveness of Cathcart, the stolidity of the masters, 
 excepting Goring, whose face had grown more threat- 
 ening from minute to minute, and beyond all else the 
 sleepy smile of Goldbeater, unnerved him. 
 
 Put it to himself how he would, there was an air 
 of sureness, of command — call it tradition, or heredity, 
 or what you would — which conjured up to him a dead 
 wall impossible of climbing over or battering down. 
 For a moment, as he glanced at Creegan, driving 
 deeply into the blotting paper, he faltered in doubt 
 even of his own beloved direct action. 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 127 
 
 Goldbeater seemed in no hurry to reply. He sat 
 there smiling sleepily and probing his teeth through 
 his closed lips with a gold tortoise-shell toothpick. 
 Yet everybody was looking at him. It was not boast- 
 fulness — it was certainty — that sureness which in the 
 prize ring as in the strike Creegan had always said 
 was half the battle. 
 
 Sir James was asking for a representative of Capi- 
 tal to reply. Muschamp was nodding to Goldbeater, 
 who at last rose to his feet. 
 
 "It seems that I am expected to reply," he said. 
 "Yet, if Mr. Steltham will let me say so, I don't think 
 there is anything to reply to, for the argument we 
 have heard was to a certain extent partly a statement 
 of facts, which I for one should not attempt to chal- 
 lenge, partly baseless assumption, partly rhetoric, and 
 partly, I am sorry to say, a threat, despite the final 
 repudiation. There is, however, a happy augury in its 
 moderation of tone, though not of statement, for the 
 result of our deliberations. 
 
 "Let m.e reciprocate from this side of the table Mr. 
 Steltham*s opening statement about our honest wish 
 to find a way out; but, whilst reciprocating it fully, 
 let me also say that it is not the Masters who have 
 to find a. way out, but the Men. 
 
 "It is peculiarly unpleasant for my colleagues to 
 have to point to inexorable circumstance, but it is 
 not we who have created the present situation, by 
 locking out the men, but the men who have come out. 
 
 "What are the facts? I noticed that Mr. Steltham 
 most carefully abstained from stating the origin of 
 the present strike. 
 
 "An engine driver is found drunk off duty and is 
 suspended. It may be claimed, as he does claim, that 
 
128 DEMOCRACY 
 
 when a man is off duty he can do what he likes with 
 his time — ^but is it so? Is it not the merest sophistry 
 to say so? The companies are responsible for the 
 safety of the public, of whom, in common with their 
 employees, they are the servants. The man who gets 
 drunk off duty is likely to get drunk on duty, or to 
 go drunk to his duty. That means murder on the 
 railways. To back such a strike, call it 'sympathetic* 
 or what you will, is to preach murder indirectly, but 
 none the less — murder. 
 
 "Again, however distasteful it may be, let us deal 
 with inexorable fact — for it is fact, and not sentiment, 
 that will, I believe, kill the 'sympathetic* strike. 
 
 "Mr. Steltham has spoken of the strength of the 
 position of the three unions involved — of their un- 
 limited war-chests — of their unity. I fear that Mr. 
 Steltham is not so sure of his facts as we are of 
 ours. There are not over a million and a half of 
 men out, but, at the end of last week, a little over 
 one million two hundred thousand. (Will he kindly 
 note the figures, as the information may prove use- 
 ful.)" The speaker was smiling blandly. "Then, so 
 far as the war-chests are concerned, the less said the 
 better. 
 
 "If he would like me to give him the figures, I 
 shall be happy to do so, but it is sufficient here to 
 say that during the last series of strikes the Miners 
 alone lost twelve million pounds in wages and out of 
 work pay, the Dockers were decimated, whilst the 
 Railwaymen, I fancy, are not anxious for a prolonged 
 trial of strength." He glanced along the men whom 
 he addressed. Some of them moved uneasily in their 
 seats, but Westerley threw back his head and laughed. 
 
 "I see that Mr. Westerley doubts my figures. He 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 129 
 
 doubts them though he well knows that in the balance 
 sheet he took out last week for his executive, it 
 showed that his Union had in hand something imder 
 twenty thousand pounds." Westerley had stopped 
 laughing. 
 
 "But enough of that. Let me come to the non- 
 combatants, who in this class-war — I use Mr. Cree- 
 gan's favourite term" — Goldbeater was smiling again 
 — "as in all other wars, are the chief sufferers. 
 Frankly," and his face grew serious again, "we don't 
 like the misery to which this impossible strike is sub- 
 jecting the women and children. But if the struggle 
 turns upon what I may term the *war-chest,' as it does, 
 and it is Mr. Steltham, not I, who has introduced this 
 issue, I think my friend, if he will let me call him so, 
 my friend, Mr. Steltham, will see with the sanity 
 which has always distinguished him, which side can 
 hold out the longer. Because the coldest winter for 
 many years is with us — the children are crying for 
 bread — the women for those comforts which can make 
 life, liveable. 
 
 "But to get this bread and those comforts, the men 
 must have work. We alone, I fear, can give them 
 that work. However unpleasant or grotesque it may 
 seem to my friends on the other side of the table, 
 we own the land and the machinery. Our society of 
 to-day is founded on the principle of private property. 
 These are facts. 
 
 "Now I am not going to make any threats. I don't 
 believe in threats ; but again, what are the facts ? Mr. 
 Steltham has alluded to the gradual linking up of the 
 men's unions into national federation by trade, and 
 of individual trades where they are interdependent, 
 foreshadowing the day when in Great Britain there 
 
130 DEMOCRACY 
 
 will be but one union — in his own words, *a tremen- 
 dous engine of warfare.' 
 
 "Pending the time when the creation of such anti- 
 social weapons may be dealt with as menaces to so- 
 ciety — and I am glad he has so plainly laid his cards 
 on the arbitration table, for it opens our eyes to the 
 creation of a tyranny which we never suspected" (he 
 was speaking reprovingly as a father might speak to 
 a naughty child) — "might I ask him whether he 
 knows anything of the Unions of Masters and their 
 federation ? 
 
 "Let us get the facts again." (Here once more was 
 that passion for facts which Destin found dominated 
 this conference as it dominated everything else.) 
 
 "There are to-day in Great Britain between one 
 and two thousand Unions of Masters, and they out- 
 number those of the Men. 
 
 "He speaks of giant federations. What of our fed- 
 erations? Let me take one as an example of the rest. 
 
 "The shipbuilders are to-day federated into the 
 Shipping Trust, which in Great Britain holds in its 
 hands tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of 
 thousands of tons of shipping — and, to go outside 
 Britain, internationally, holds millions of lives and 
 millions of tons of shipping. The coal owners and 
 many other interests are federated in the same way. 
 It is regrettable, but federation begets federation — 
 force begets force. It is Labour which has appealed 
 to force. It is Labour which has thrown down the 
 gauntlet — ^not we. 
 
 "And this word 'force' brings me to one of Mr. 
 Steltham's threats, the main argument of Mr. Stel- 
 tham, which was from beginning to end an appeal to 
 force. He realised the very unpleasant fact that all 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 131 
 
 argument ultimately rests on force." ("That's it," 
 said Goring deeply.) "We have the ballot to avoid 
 the bullet — Parliament and the arbitration table to 
 save the barricade and the noose. If we Masters were 
 the tyrants we are represented to be, we should not 
 trouble the arbitration table and the law courts — we 
 should call into action the forces behind Society. 
 
 "But all that has been unwillingly dragged from 
 me and is only given in refutation of some of Mr. 
 Steltham*s assumptions. 
 
 "The gentleman who preceded me has shown a very 
 nice consideration for the Government. I for one was 
 under the impression that he was an enemy of the 
 Government, though I have always noticed when it 
 comes to the pinch, he and his party usually support 
 us in the division lobby. However that may be, I 
 congratulate him upon his perspicacity in what I take 
 to be his foreseeing of the time when there will pos- 
 sibly be no longer the Liberal, the Tory, and the 
 Workers' Parties, but only two — the Socialist and the 
 anti-Socialist. (Something incidentally which throws 
 a new light upon his wish to protect the Liberal Gov- 
 ernment, for the throwing out of that Government 
 would expedite the very combination he fears. ) When 
 that combination comes, and it has already been fore- 
 shadowed at the great Magog meeting in the spring 
 of this year, then we shall be able to deal with mili- 
 tant Trades Unionism as it should be dealt with. Like 
 Mr. Steltham, I make no threats; I am only pointing 
 out the logical sequence of cause and effect." 
 
 And Goldbeater sat down, still with that gentle 
 suavity. 
 
 Destines pen, taking down the gist of the speech, 
 stopped. The room had grown unbearably close. He 
 
132 DEMOCRACY 
 
 felt a sense of strangulation. Creegan below him 
 clutched at his throat as though he too were strug- 
 ghng to breathe. "Direct Action." "Direct Action." 
 The words danced on the sheet before him. They 
 looked ridiculous. 
 
 The discussion was carried on by the two miners 
 and a couple of colliery owners in amicable fashion. 
 The tension that had followed Goldbeater was yield- 
 ing. It seemed as though the whole dispute could be 
 arranged there and then, and when Muschamp fol- 
 lowed with a sort of nunc dimittis, in which he said 
 pontifically — "The Great Arbiter has seen fit to de- 
 liver the keys of Society into our hands. We take 
 them as a trust. We recognise our duties to Labour, 
 and we only ask that in return Labour shall recognise 
 its duties not only to itself but to Society" — ^he felt 
 that the whole m^atter was as good as settled. The 
 miners were obviously impressed. 
 
 Destin recognised in him as in Courcy that same 
 steadfast belief in the divine right of Capital: his 
 honest regret at the unavoidable misery of the strike. 
 It was Benevolent Bureaucracy speaking to its erring 
 children. But behind it also, the same implacability 
 — the same sureness of purpose — the spirit that 
 shrinks at nothing necessary to the fulfilment of that 
 purpose. 
 
 Bulkley alone looked from face to face with appre- 
 hension. The Sabbath evening in heaven calm did not 
 appear to impress him. 
 
 Through all this, Sir Gilbert Goring had been 
 shuffling his feet. Several times he had tried to speak, 
 but always Muschamp or Goldbeater whispered to him 
 or passed him a twist of paper. Now, as Muschamp 
 sat down, he erupted at his side. 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 133 
 
 Bulkley was looking hard at him, his brows slightly 
 knitted. Muschamp was speaking upwards to him. 
 Even Goldbeater was frowning a little. 
 
 The voice was thin and high like steam overdriven 
 through a tiny escape pipe. Inarticulate at first, it 
 gathered strength. 
 
 He rambled for a few sentences in an endeavor to 
 keep within the conventions. He was clawing the air 
 for the right words. Then they came torrentially. 
 
 "Let us have no nonsense about this matter. Let 
 us talk as business men to the point. Let us say what 
 we mean." (Goldbeater was frowning at him.) "No, 
 Mr. Goldbeater, this is my horse and I'm going to 
 ride him. 
 
 "What is this strike? It is a strike for the right 
 to get drunk. Nothing more. All this talk about 
 wages and hours is humbug. All this talk about 
 starving women and children is humbug — dishonest 
 humbug. It is not we who are on our defence, but 
 Labour. Labour is in the dock. 
 
 "Trades Unionism has been growing year by year — 
 growing into a hydra-headed monster which devours 
 everything before it. Lop one head — and another 
 grows in its place. The time has come to call 'halt!' 
 First, it was improved conditions. Then reduction of 
 hours. Then increase of wages. 
 
 "Not satisfied with fighting the employers on the 
 industrial field, it has now entered the political. No- 
 body knows where it will stop. But it has got to 
 stop right there. 
 
 ^'Threats! Who talks of threats?" (He swung 
 round, looking squarely first at Steltham and then 
 Creegan.) "Argument! Who talks of argument?" 
 
134 DEMOCRACY 
 
 The veins were swelling in his head. His neck, em- 
 purpled, was lapping his white collar. 
 
 "There is only one argument. Force. There is 
 only one threat that is effective. Force. 
 
 *Tt is not Labour that shall decide its hours and 
 wages — it is we. It is not Labour that shall set the 
 pace — it is we. We are in the saddle, and by God! 
 we shall ride the horse. 
 
 "We own the means of life, as Mr. Creegan has it 
 in his jargon. We have behind us the triple engines 
 of the State — ^the army, navy and police. Who con- 
 trols those three engines ? Is it the Unions ? Pah ! 
 
 "When we give the word, we shall settle this mat- 
 ter in our own way. We shall settle it — ^not at the 
 arbitration table — ^but at the barricade and with the 
 firing platoon. 
 
 "You talk of capturing the political machine. What 
 does the political machine rest on? Force. What 
 lies behind Westminster ? The bayonets of the British 
 Army. And by God!" (he struck the table passion- 
 ately) "by God! we are going to use them." 
 
 He sat down abruptly, the veins knotted in his tem- 
 ples — ^the face and neck suffused — one great hairy 
 claw clenched before him on the table. There was 
 something cavernous about the man, something ele- 
 mental. 
 
 The silence fell over the table like a shroud. Gold- 
 beater had ceased to smile. Muschamp looked irri- 
 tated and disgusted. The miners had a shocked, child- 
 ish astonishment. Belch seemed depressed, almost 
 cowed. Only Steltham smiled and bent over his 
 papers. 
 
 Goldbeater rose, angry lights in his eyes. "I chink 
 it only fair to myself and my colleagues to say that 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 135 
 
 we entirely dissent from Sir Gilbert Goring's remarks, 
 which seem to us unfortunate." He sat down again. 
 
 But there was one man there who was neither irri- 
 tated nor cowed. As Destin looked down the table, 
 he saw the long keen nose, the grey-blue eyes, staring 
 at Goring. Behind the eyes there was a quiet, savage 
 triumph. 
 
 Creegan was on his feet. The graceful pillar of a 
 man whose height, alone in that room, held him 
 squarely to that of Goring, looked the natural cor- 
 rective of the other — ^the ascetic, fanatical face, pallid 
 now, a thin sweat on the forehead. 
 
 If Steltham had in his mind the thought to stop 
 Creegan, it passed from him as quickly as it came. 
 Creegan would not be stopped. He, too, was ele- 
 mental. 
 
 "Thank God Almighty for Sir Gilbert Goring." It 
 was a curious beginning. Creegan stared at his man 
 as he said it. 
 
 "Thank God Almighty for Sir Gilbert Goring!" 
 The sentence came again like the beat of a hammer. 
 "Let us always meet the mailed fist rather than the 
 velvet glove. Sir Gilbert has no mask. Now we know 
 where we stand. 
 
 "Whilst you gentlemen" — ^he sneered along the line 
 of his fellows — "have been talking about politics, the 
 gentlemen opposite have been forging guns. Whilst 
 you palavered, they prepared. It is the vindication 
 of direct action." 
 
 He turned to his colleagues. "What is your answer 
 going to be? Are ye going to be after talking pretty 
 nothingness to the other gentlemen? Are ye going 
 to talk about voting yourselves into power? Are ye 
 going to boast of your big vote battalions, when you 
 
136 DEMOCRACY- 
 
 know, full well, in the heart of ye, that half your army 
 are Liberal asses in Socialist skins? Are ye going to 
 Westminster cap in hand to ask the Masters for the 
 love of God to let you rule by the ballot, when they 
 mean to rule by the bullet? 
 
 "Can ye doubt it? There is one man, besides Sir 
 Gilbert, who has no doubt anyhow. Mr. Goldbeater. 
 Whilst Mr. Steltham, who may know something of 
 arbitration tables, but nothing of the facts behind 
 them, has been fluttering his ballot paper in the face 
 of Capital, Capital has held the Big Stick over his 
 head, ready to knock out his brains and the brains of 
 the ballot for which he stands. Of course, Mr. Stel- 
 tham's speech was a threat — ^but what a threat! My 
 God! 
 
 "Let us tear away the mask. Take away the smile 
 from Mr. Goldbeater's face, and what lies behind? 
 Sheer, brute force. He says — 'Spend your years get- 
 ting the ballot, and when youVe got it, use it ... if 
 you're able.' The Big Stick. 
 
 "Where they can't bluff us, they'll bludgeon us. 
 Where they can't chloroform us in the Courts — the 
 judge to-day is the surgeon for capital — they'll use 
 the stick. Every man here knows that the decisions 
 of the Courts for the past five years have tied us hand 
 and foot. The judge is above the law — ^above Parlia- 
 ment itself. No one of us knows what we can or 
 cannot do. 
 
 " The right to get drunk.' Is there a man here 
 who doesn't know that there isn't a man on the other 
 side of the table but claims the right to get drunk 
 how and when he likes. Is there a man here that 
 doesn't know that, rather than lose the strike, the 
 gentlemen opposite, for all their fine talk about the 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 137 
 
 women and children, would send them to hell? Do 
 you think that the men who have their spies honey- 
 combing our Unions, who can give us our balance 
 sheets better than we can do it ourselves, will stop at 
 such a trifle as the murder of women — ^always allow- 
 ing that it is murder in uniform? 
 
 "And if our peacemakers like Mr. Steltham want 
 any other proof, they have it in the fact that every 
 word used by the previous speakers showed that Capi- 
 talism is in the saddle and that Capitalism means to 
 ride the horse. It is for that they are putting the 
 strangle-hold on the Unions — it is for that the em- 
 ployers' federation chain is being forged — it is for 
 that they hold in the background the noiseless steel 
 and the bullet — 'the noose and the barricade' as Mr. 
 Goldbeater put it. 
 
 "If any doubt could have been left, it was removed 
 by Sir Gilbert Goring. He stands for that gospel of 
 force which every man on the other side of the table 
 backs either consciously or unconsciously. Sir Gilbert 
 believes, likes Nietszche, that there are but two classes 
 — ^the Master and the Slave — and with him he believes 
 that one has the divine right — the other, no rights. 
 Mr. Muschamp in his way believes the same thing. 
 Will ye tell me where is the need of talking? 
 
 "That means one thing — the return of Man to the 
 abyss from which he has crawled during the ages. 
 That means that this matter is to be settled by force, 
 and by force alone. That means we must meet force 
 by force and not by talk if civilisation itself is to be 
 saved. 
 
 "It is, I say, the vindication of 'direct action.' 
 
 "This is no question of wages and hours — of a man 
 being drunk or not being drunk. It means something 
 
138 DEMOCRACY 
 
 deep — ineradicable. Something that the ages have 
 seen — the battle between right and might — between 
 light and darkness — between two opposing forces — 
 two policies which Heaven itself cannot reconcile. 
 What the slave fought for under the Roman emperors 
 — what the revolt of the serf meant — this new revolt 
 under capitalism means also. Lefs cut the cackle and 
 get to business. Let's look this bloody thing in the 
 maw. ^ 
 
 "Labour has flung down the gauntlet to Society. 
 Society is taking it up. And for what has it flung 
 down the gauntlet? 
 
 "It has thrown it down for the prostitute and the 
 man clogged to the earth — for the oppression of race 
 by race and of colour by colour — it has thrown it down 
 to declare that the White shall not oppress the Black 
 and the Yellow, that in the biggest and best sense all 
 men are equal. It is throwing it down not only for 
 the sweated matchbox-maker in the east of London, 
 but for the sweated peasant in India. It is a gauntlet 
 flung down, not by men of the White Races only, but 
 by their brothers of the Yellow Races in China and 
 Japan and by the Brown Man in India. It is an Arma- 
 geddon — in which the fight is to the finish. 
 
 "Sir Gilbert Goring and his kind are prepared to 
 drench Britain in blood to win this strike. I go far- 
 ther. We are prepared to drench the world. He is 
 prepared to set brother against brother — we are pre- 
 pared to go farther — to set child against mother — ^the 
 coming generation against the present. If there is to 
 be a blood-drench — let it come and quickly. 
 
 " 'Right to get drunk.' 'Difficult places.' Wages 
 and hours.' 
 
 "Something deeper far. Something that neither 
 
MASTERS AND MEN 139 
 
 time nor perhaps eternity can efface — a chasm that can- 
 not be bridged — the battle of two opposing principles 
 — of an intensity of hate which has no counterpart on 
 the earth — of night and darkness — of heaven and 
 hell." 
 
 In the days that followed, through the ebb and 
 flow of argument — through Belches strange silences 
 — Destin could hear those words — "the battle of 
 principles . . ." "an intensity of hate that has no 
 counterpart on earth . . ." "of night and darkness, of 
 heaven and hell." He at least felt that Creegan was 
 right — there were chasms that could not be bridged — 
 "heaven and hell" — "heaven and hell." 
 
IX 
 
 IRON AND VELVET 
 
 The days passed into weeks. The arbitration meeting 
 had broken up temporarily, finding agreement impos- 
 sible, though Sir James Bulkley, with delicate tactful- 
 ness, had prevented a final breach. In the meantime, 
 both sides were putting out all their strength. The 
 Masters had even persuaded the authorities to call out 
 the military in the north and in the South Wales coal 
 districts, but they had not been used, though the police 
 were everywhere working the baton and some hun- 
 dreds of men had been mauled. 
 
 Creegan was now in supreme control of the strike. 
 Belch was said to be ill. Destin was everywhere with 
 his chief, and had addressed, together with Wildish, a 
 ring of mass meetings in the north, one day speaking 
 in the slush at the "bank" of a coal pit — another in a 
 barn of a hall. He was becoming more restrained, for 
 he began to feel for the first time in the movement the 
 weight of responsibility, a feeling which strained 
 whilst it flattered, for it meant shutting off steam. 
 Wildish, in fact, scoffed at his lack of what he called 
 "go." 
 
 The Big Stick at the Great North- Western was still 
 in his mind. He could feel that the Masters held 
 something in leash, waiting for the time to unslip it. 
 
 The men were showing unexpected powers of resist- 
 ance despite the lowness of their war-chests. In those 
 
 140 
 
IRON AND VELVET 141 
 
 districts where the coal companies were their land- 
 lords and had turned them out into the winter, they 
 simply went to their more fortunate fellows and slept 
 two and three in a bed. When the out-of-work pay 
 had dribbled down to a dole, they took another hole 
 in their belts and shut their ears to the wailing of the 
 hungry children. "Another Hole in the Belt," in fact, 
 became first a headline in the labour papers and was 
 then taken up half -mockingly by the general press. 
 
 The employers had used starvation and the streets 
 to beat the men. Destin wondered what they would 
 use next, and asked Creegan what he thought, in Bex- 
 ham, the colliery town where they had been speaking. 
 
 "Do next, is it?" said Creegan. "Sure, that's not 
 hard to see. They'll use the cold steel next. That's 
 what they'll do." 
 
 Creegan was right. There had been some move- 
 ments of troops in the morning to protect with the 
 police the pit-head of the Black Mountain colliery, 
 where the manager, a sandy-headed Londoner who had 
 made himself generally unpleasant, did the work of 
 three men, and with the help of a few dozen "black- 
 legs," kept the water from rising in the mine and 
 drowning out the machinery. Stones had been thrown 
 and there had been a baton charge or two. Now the 
 khaki of the soldiers browned the pit-head as Creegan 
 and Destin made their way to it in the raw cold of a 
 January morning, the police standing at the side in a 
 compact, black mass, with a few reporters looking thin 
 and cold in their turned-up collars. 
 
 When Destin saw the glitter of the bayonets under 
 the angry red light of the January sun, his heart failed 
 him. Creegan pulled his hat tighter on his head and 
 scowled. "The curse of Cain on them !" he said, drop- 
 
142 DEMOCRACY 
 
 ping deeper into the Irish vernacular, as he always did 
 when excited. "They'll massacree us, will they? 
 Then let them look to it." 
 
 Destin tried to dissuade him. "Get our men away 
 from the pit-head, for Heaven's sake, Brian," he 
 urged. Creegan made no reply but went to a group 
 of strikers and began to talk with them. 
 
 Destin was standing away from the crowd on an 
 overturned truck waiting for his crowd. It had been 
 arranged that he was to address a morning meeting. 
 He looked over the bobbing heads of the men and the 
 shawled heads of the women as they clustered around 
 Creegan. There were perhaps a couple of thousand 
 of them and they seemed quiet enough — ^but not so 
 quiet as the lines of brown jnen who stood, leaning 
 easily on their spiked rifles. Again there came to his 
 mind the contrast of "Order" and "Disorder" he had 
 seen in the Square that day in June. Here a con- 
 fused moving mass of people, outnumbering the sol- 
 diers ten to one — inchoate and helpless — and up there 
 beyond, the thin brown lines, ready to be swung at 
 the word into fierce effectiveness. 
 
 The mass seemed purposeless as it moved uncer- 
 tainly backwards and forwards, crowding around 
 Creegan, whose head stood out above it. Then some- 
 thing happened. He heard a scuttering behind the 
 truck where he stood, and saw a man scrambling along. 
 When he got to the end of the line of tip-waggons, he 
 stooped, and taking a piece of slate in his hand threw 
 it over the heads of the people into the soldiers. 
 
 It seemed to have freed something. The police ran 
 towards the strikers, loosening their batons as they 
 came. In a moment, the crowd had scattered, and the 
 next, pieces of coal and stone were flying thickly 
 
IRON AND VELVET 143 
 
 through the air. A whistle shrilled and the black wave 
 had wheeled to one side and was doubling back at the 
 moment when the crowd had instinctively closed up 
 to receive them. There was a movement up there by 
 the pit-head — a word of command, and the brown 
 lines had stiffened to attention. 
 
 Another word, and fascinated, he watched the rifles 
 coming machine-like to the shoulders of the men under 
 the angry winter sun. Something ran along them, 
 though for a moment he thought it was the flash of 
 the sun on the steel, a spattering came to his ears — a 
 shouting with higher notes that pierced it — a running 
 hither and thither, and when the crowd had broken 
 there were five or six figures lying on the groimd, 
 one of them clutching at its throat. 
 
 Creegan alone stood his ground, his hat off, his 
 fists jutting downwards at his side, screaming at the 
 soldiers who lapped at the double, led by their officer, 
 a slight-looking boy with a wisp of moustache. The 
 rush passed and he disappeared. The Big Stick was 
 getting to work in earnest. 
 
 The impulse came to Destin, strong, overwhelming, 
 to run from the place — the next moment he found 
 himself running forward towards the soldiers, his 
 hands clenched, his lips mouthing incoherences. Some- 
 thing cannoned into him and he went down. He was 
 up again, calling to the men and women to rally. He 
 felt himself caught from behind and run helplessly, his 
 arms pinioned, down the pit works and outside. 
 
 Maddened, he taunted the police who held him, 
 daring them to bludgeon him. But they only laughed. 
 They evidently had their orders, for they refused to 
 arrest him, and he found himself an hour afterwards 
 looking at a leaden face in the glass of the railway 
 
144 DEMOCRACY 
 
 waiting room — 3, new Destin, but unhurt. The Big 
 Stick could discriminate. 
 
 The next morning he found his name and Creegan's 
 side by side in the.headUnes of the press, in which 
 a highly imaginative account of his battle with the 
 police under the heading — "One Man Defies a Regi- 
 ment," appeared, with an undertone of irony however. 
 During the day he received from his mother, who 
 broke through her six months' silence, a letter of digni- 
 fied protest at what she called his "proceedings," with 
 two or three telegrams asking him to address meetings 
 to protest against police brutality, and he found, like 
 many before him, that it was an ill wind which blew 
 nobody any good, for the Black Mountain business 
 put him in the forefront as a Syndicalist leader, even 
 the-man-in-the-street beginning to look for the name 
 of Destin as a sort of second Creegan. 
 
 But as he opened his Meteor, there was something 
 else that struck him between the eyes. The headline — 
 "Mr. John Belch Joins the Cabinet." In a mo- 
 ment he had run his eye down the details, giving a 
 sketch of the new member's career from the days when, 
 as a working joiner, he had been returned for his 
 district council, down to his making of history as the 
 first working-man to rise to cabinet rank. 
 
 The tone of the notice was quite cordial, though 
 near the end there was a little "incident" recorded, as 
 showing a well-known side of his personality (the 
 paper called it "belief in himself"). It was said that 
 upon the Prime Minister advising him of his appoint- 
 ment, he had replied — "And an excellent idea too, Mr. 
 Transome. Now I shall be able to hold the scales be- 
 tween Capital and Labour." 
 
 The long silences at the conferences — the stilted, 
 
IRON AND VELVET 145 
 
 jerky self-assertiveness — all these things were ex- 
 plained now, and when Destin turned to his Labour 
 paper, with the heading — "Judas Iscariot/' with ref- 
 erences to "thirty pieces of silver," and "an attempt to 
 undermine independent Labour representation," he 
 found only one more endorsement of his contempt for 
 politics and politicians. "Belch was like the rest of 
 them" — and he left it there. 
 
 He found to his surprise that so far from his Syn- 
 dicalism killing his journalism, as he feared, the editors 
 of the capitalist papers wanted very much indeed to 
 know his opinion upon men and things. The Daily 
 Meteor even asked him to go to the House of Com- 
 mons and write them a column giving his impressions 
 of the debate upon labour unrest, a debate which was 
 to be one of the "big nights." 
 
 I It was all part of the mystery of what the man in 
 Bethlehem House had called "the power of the press." 
 It was a thing incomprehensible to the man outside the 
 inner workings — even to a "free lance" like himself, 
 who was beginning to know the ropes. But it was 
 all helping him in his Fleet Street struggle, and he 
 didn't look gift horses in the mouth even when they 
 came from Capitalism. 
 
 He walked through the insignificant side entrance 
 to the House, trying to feel as modest as possible, but 
 could not help a little thrill of pleasure as the two 
 giants at the outside door looked at him and smiled to 
 each other. This lifting from the reek of the average 
 was comforting to him, and as he made his way to 
 the octagonal hall between the lines of seated people, 
 waiting to get into the debate, he could not help glanc- 
 ing a little from side to side to see if those others no- 
 ticed him, for his large soft green hat, a more modest 
 
146 DEMOCRACY 
 
 imitation of Creegan's, had appeared in the Daily 
 Looking Glass with other celebrities. But they were 
 quite indifferent. He was beginning to find that 
 London was a big place. 
 
 He stood in the hall amongst others, looking about 
 him for a bit, uncertain where he was to present the 
 signed order for admission which the Daily Meteor 
 had so kindly provided, and which bore the signature 
 of a well-known Conservative M.P. Every now and 
 then he saw the double lines extended beyond the 
 wooden railings, which screened the awful presence of 
 the people's law-makers, crane forward as the police- 
 man in the centre called out the name of the member 
 they wished to see in a voice that seemed sacrilegious. 
 Every few minutes, a figure appeared, with the bash- 
 fulness of the truly great, behind the announcer, who, 
 standing on one side as the visitor came forward, ex- 
 posed the legislator to the vulgar gaze. All with one 
 exception, when a well-known voice made itself heard, 
 the man behind the voice pushing the policeman on one 
 side and running forward to shake hands with a short, 
 stubbly man, talking all the while, the voice passing 
 into a crescendo, as arm in arm its owner led the short 
 man to some sacred interior, where it gradually died 
 away in a diminuendo. It was Belch. 
 
 Whilst he stood there, he saw bald, pompous little 
 men who doubled at the waist ; tall, thin, hair-pin men 
 who moved angularly, and even McGraw, who nodded 
 to him cordially to his delight. But what he noticed 
 about most of these men was that they seemed to feel 
 their position keenly, moving and speaking not as ordi- 
 nary mortals, though looking excessively common- 
 place, but with a sort of forced good-fellowship, tem- 
 pered by a dignified assertiveness. They more than 
 
IRON AND VELVET 147 
 
 confirmed all his contempt for politics and politicians. 
 He contrasted them with Creegan — even with the 
 Labour members themselves, and felt the gap between 
 idealism and commonplace reality. 
 
 Directed by the policeman, whom he approached as 
 diffidently as anyone else, he found himself climbing 
 a winding stone stairs, then past a suavely courteous 
 gentleman in evening dress who asked him to put his 
 name in a book, which he did with the characteristic 
 line underneath, making a murderous blot with the 
 unaccustomed quill, and then through two more doors 
 where he found himself in a musty, fusty atmosphere, 
 that smelled yellow. 
 
 Coming out of the sepulchre of a place was a voice, 
 speaking thinly from somewhere underneath. He had 
 the feeling as he made his way to a seat in the steep- 
 ness of the gallery, that he was about to topple head- 
 long into the bosom of England's legislators. It was 
 some minutes before his mind began to take in his sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 The place had the "dim, religious light" of a cathe- 
 dral, with the Speaker as a sort of high priest in his 
 box, the long rows of men on the floor looking like 
 choir men, at intervals erupting decorously to express 
 indignation or assent. "Everything was done decently 
 and in order'* as though the place were a church. It 
 was what he had so often militated against — "the tone 
 of the House." 
 
 With a little thrill, he recognised Courcy, his shoul- 
 ders bent, his long, slender legs twined inextricably. 
 By his side he recognised also several of the great ones 
 of British politics, whilst almost underneath him, be- 
 low the Opposition, he saw the men who seemed to 
 him the most human things in the place, from whose 
 
148 DEMOCRACY 
 
 grey eyes and humorous mouths sometimes shot quick, 
 sharp criticism, when a ripple of suppressed laughter 
 ran around the House. They were politicians, but he 
 loved them. They were his own race. 
 
 But his eyes did not travel long. Ever and again 
 they came back to the place where the thin high voice 
 of the speaker was leading the debate on behalf of the 
 Government. The veined, domed forehead came out 
 abysmally over the little, crafty eyes. The massive 
 head with the pug nose, thrust forward characteristic- 
 ally from the hunched shoulders, the keen quick thrust 
 of the forefinger — ^all showed the famous man who 
 represented Cheriton in the House of Commons, the 
 last of the Winterhursts, of whom men spoke in bated 
 breath, in admiring fearsomeness, as a mass of secret 
 vices, though nothing definite seemed to be known 
 about him except his exploits in the Boer War, which 
 had filled the press of the Empire, and which had given 
 him the V.C. 
 
 The man looked rotten to Destin — 3, shell with the 
 light shining through the crannies. But it was a bril- 
 liant rottenness. He drove home his points, in which 
 he showed himself as a friend of Labour — ^as its 
 friendly adviser. After running through the misery 
 of the strike to the women and children in tones that 
 brought back Goldbeater's speech at the Great North- 
 Western, he want on: 
 
 "As for us, we recognise that a fair day's wages for 
 a fair day's work must be the object of all sides of 
 the House. All classes of society are recognising the 
 splendid work the Trade Unions have done to organise 
 labour, but a giant's strength having been given them, 
 they must not use it as a giant." There was gentle 
 irony in his voice. "Since the incursion of Labour 
 
IRON AND VELVET 149 
 
 into this House, its representatives have won for them- 
 selves the praise of all parties'* ("Hear-hear" from 
 Courcy and a patronising chorus that rippled after 
 him from the benches behind) "by their behaviour and 
 by the moderation of tone which, like others, they have 
 learned goes farthest in this assembly as outside. 
 Again and again has Labour protested its moderation, 
 and now is the time to prove to the nation its words, 
 which I for one do not doubt are honestly meant." 
 
 The figure seemed to come forward a little, the 
 finger was thrust downwards a trifle, and the voice 
 went on — "It is not what are called the employing 
 classes who will use force, even though they have be- 
 hind them the armed forces of the nation. That rests 
 with Labour. The unhappy Black Mountain incident 
 it is hoped will be the last of its kind, as otherwise in 
 the near future we might find England in a state of 
 civil war, in which the Government, in the national in- 
 terests, would have no option but to crush it with a 
 strong hand." 
 
 "The Big Stick you mean," came from a Labour 
 man on whom Steltham frowned from his place on 
 the front Labour bench. Even the Workers' Party 
 leader, a perfectly honest and perfectly undistinguished 
 man of the name of Johnson, who owed his position 
 to the fact that he had been one of the first amongst 
 the more prominent Trade Union officials to get into 
 the House, looked at the offender in pained surprise. 
 
 "No," the speaker replied, "I mean the iron hand 
 in the velvet glove." 
 
 The voice was still suave, but underneath there was 
 an erosion, a burning, which showed itself more and 
 more as the speaker proceeded. Nor could Destin fail 
 to notice how the more ominous portions of his speech 
 
150 DEMOCRACY 
 
 were received with silence from the benches around — 
 not a condemnatory silence, but a brooding silence, as 
 though the words should go home to the handful of 
 Labour men, who sat silent and unconvinced, but over- 
 awed. There could be no doubt about it. The inter- 
 jections, which at the earlier stage had broken from 
 them, gradually died away, but despite it, there was a 
 stubbornness about them which reminded Destin of a 
 child punished wrongfully, but who determines he will 
 be naughty again at the first chance. 
 
 Winterhurst finished upon a note of optimism, win- 
 ning from all parts of the House, including even a few 
 on the Labour benches, a gentlemanly chorus of 
 "Hear-hears!" 
 
 Steltham, who followed Winterhurst, was to Des- 
 tin's surprise, received with quite an encouraging 
 undercurrent of applause from both sides of the 
 House. What mystified him in particular was that 
 Courcy, who had attacked Steltham bitterly in the 
 country, and Goldbeater who sat by him, added their 
 quota to the general approbation. Steltham, whose 
 face had been pale, flushed slightly and began his 
 speech upon the nominal cause of debate, the wages 
 for "difiicult places" for miners, by a conciliatory ap- 
 peal to all sections of the House, constantly referring 
 to members in other parts of the House as "my Hon. 
 friend," or "the Hon. and gallant member for so and so." 
 
 All these conciliatory appeals were backed enthusi- 
 astically by a knot of Labour members, who, he heard 
 a man near him whisper, were the Miners' representa- 
 tives, and who looked rather out of place amongst the 
 others. McGraw alone, his white beard jutting out 
 pugnaciously, his arms folded across his chest, listened 
 with detachment. 
 
IRON AND VELVET 151 
 
 Steltham's was a closely reasoned speech, but it 
 seemed to Destin to lack "bite," and was in singular 
 contrast to the face of the speaker, with its short, 
 fighting, shearing nose, craggy jaw, and unquenchable 
 eyes. It seemed to him "pumped up" when it passed 
 from the reasoned to the pleading, but when he sat 
 down all parts of the House applauded enthusiastically, 
 Winterhurst smiling craftily under his bulging fore- 
 head, whilst Goldbeater's face creased itself into the 
 Chinese joss look which Destin now knew so well. It 
 was a successful speech, delivered with clearness and 
 reserve. 
 
 A volley of welcome had rumbled round the House, 
 grown in volume and died away. Destin could not 
 see what was going forward, until the well-remem- 
 bered bass boomed upwards from the Government 
 front bench. It was Belch. 
 
 From some of the Labour members came angry 
 cries of "Rat !" "Traitor !" but the stubborn, powerful 
 figure that stood there on the floor of the House, the 
 keen blue eyes facing round challengingly upon his 
 former colleagues, did not blench. Whatever might 
 be said of Belch, he had great courage, and had never 
 wanted it more than now when he was making his first 
 speech from the Front Bench. 
 
 There was nothing apologetic about the man, in his 
 short rough pea-jacket, as, his left hand clenching a 
 bundle of papers, he sprang into the middle of his 
 speech. Behind him the massed Liberals looked at him 
 doubtfully — even up there in the gallery Destin could 
 feel that — whilst the Opposition found a new interest 
 in the man who had baited them in the past more than 
 any other representative of Labour. 
 
152 DEMOCRACY 
 
 The man himself had no more doubt of his present 
 mission than he had ever had of the one that was 
 closed for ever. The whip of Local Government had 
 been given into his hands, and, if necessary, he would 
 wield it as mercilessly against his former colleagues as 
 he had done in the past against the men who now sat 
 with him upon the Liberal benches. The voice boomed 
 upwards, declaring its intention, in blasphemous om- 
 nipotence, of acting as the intermediary between Cap- 
 ital and Labour, "which now, in my present position, 
 I shall be able to do with more effect than I ever could 
 have done in the past." 
 
 The reiteration of the "I" came like the beat of a 
 bass drum, punctuating his speech, which now no 
 longer drew the plaudits even of his own men. There 
 seemed to be a certain though indefinable distrust of 
 the speaker, even amongst his present colleagues, which 
 passed in the case of those he had left, to hatred and 
 contempt. 
 
 The incarnate egotism of the man was fascinating 
 to watch, and when he sat down, obviously pleased 
 with himself, the feeling of the House seemed to be 
 crystallised by the voice of a man who sat below Destin 
 in the gallery, a voice which he seemed to recognise, 
 which shouted in a high treble — "You dirty traitor! 
 you dirty traitor!" nor did it cease whilst the man 
 himself was being bundled out by the policeman. 
 "Dirty traitor V could be heard dying away down the 
 corridor. Even Belch flushed. The voice was 
 Graney's. 
 
 Courcy was on his feet as Destin turned his eyes 
 downwards again. In a speech of modulated grace, 
 the Opposition leader paid a delicate compliment to 
 the courage with which the Right Honourable member 
 
IRON AND VELVET 153 
 
 who had just spoken had not been afraid to fill what 
 he called "the imminent deadly breach" of the Cabinet. 
 "We all admire his forcefulness, even though our 
 admiration may not be shared by certain portions of 
 the House. ... I include myself," he said, in rueful 
 irony, in recollection of past battles with Belch, as a 
 little laugh ran round the building. 
 
 "No doubt/' he went on, "the Right Honourable 
 member, with the aid of his former colleagues, whose 
 cause he is doubtless serving more excellently in his 
 present position than he ever could have done before, 
 as he said himself, with a frankness which is peculiarly 
 his own, and with whom his parting is really a serv- 
 ice," (an indescribable irony ran through his words) 
 "will be able to adjust the points in dispute between 
 Capital and Labour." 
 
 His words flowed on mellifluously, though every 
 now and then they checked for a moment to sting, 
 then flowing on as before as though the interjection 
 were a mere ornament of rhetoric. But one thing 
 occurred again and again in his speech as Destin no- 
 ticed, the assertion that in this case both Government 
 and Opposition were at one. "In matters where 
 national interests are concerned, of which this is one ; 
 where widespread misery exists through unemploy- 
 ment — ^unnecessary unemployment let me add — where 
 millions of people are incommoded from going about 
 their business through lack of trains — where the homes 
 of England lack fire and light — then, whilst anxious to 
 make the fullest possible concessions to Labour, we 
 have a national duty to perform, and in that perform- 
 ance all party differences are sunk, as they will always 
 be sunk. In the words of my Right Honourable 
 
154 DEMOCRACY 
 
 friend, we prefer to use 'the velvet glove/ but there is 
 *an iron hand' inside it." 
 
 Again Destin felt that strangulation — that sense of 
 helplessness — he had felt at the Conference. There 
 was the same certainty — the same passionlessness. 
 
 Passing on quickly, his face lighted by one of his 
 rare smiles, the Opposition leader associated himself 
 with Winterhurst in the just tribute he had paid to the 
 Workers' Party in the House. "At the beginning, it 
 was true, some of them on the Opposition benches had 
 feared that the Mother of Parliaments might lose 
 her reputation for suavity of debate and chivalrous 
 courtesy, but he was happy to say that such had not 
 been the case, as the Honourable members opposite 
 had kept up that reputation and supported the tradi- 
 tions of the House. He was sure that in the rest of 
 the debate, so admirably continued on behalf of 
 Labour by the Honourable member for Westburn, no 
 jarring note would interfere with what promised to be 
 a mutually satisfactory settlement of the points at 
 issue, which had been so ably and moderately set out 
 by the Honourable member who distinguishes the 
 Workers' Party by his leadership and by his Right 
 Honourable friend, the member for Cheriton." 
 
 The tone of the chamber had become curiously warm 
 and friendly. The leaders of both sides beamed on 
 each other, whilst the Prime Minister, a fine-looking 
 man, whose head might have been carved from a block 
 of teak, his white hair falling picturesquely around his 
 noble forehead and jaw, smiled in the benevolent, dig- 
 nified way famous throughout the illustrateds as "the 
 Transome smile." 
 
 There was still a certain stubbornness about the 
 Labour men, but it was obvious they had been softened 
 
IRON AND VELVET 155 
 
 and were now only anxious to come to a settlement. 
 The place had become a vast pigeon-loft, in which 
 only the billing and cooing of politics could be heard. 
 Some of the members, in low courteous rumblings were 
 murmuring "'Vide, 'Vide.** They evidently regarded 
 the debate as good as over. 
 
 There was a sudden stiffening of the faces as Destin 
 ran his eye along the benches. It was as though a 
 chill breath had passed over the House. The faces, 
 broken a moment ago, were now all staring one way, 
 looking at the figure which had risen near the end of 
 the front Labour bench. 
 
 It was not the first time Destin had seen the man 
 who was about to speak, the man whose figure, like 
 a figure of fate, dominated every labour congress, as 
 it dominated the most difficult assembly in the world — 
 the British House of Commons. "Kisterling's up!" 
 had run through the corridors outside, and there was 
 a hurrying in at the doors of members who had run 
 from the smoking rooms and dining rooms to hear the 
 man who so seldom spoke. 
 
 He stood there, one hand clenched on his slender 
 hip, the body crippled by a cruel accident in the days 
 when he had driven a pen in a Birmingham office, but 
 indomitable, tense. Above the bulging forehead, high 
 and vast, the green eyes set deeply under the over- 
 hanging, rather bushy, brows; the nose straight and 
 keen as the stem of a liner ; the ears placed closely to 
 the head in the manner of the fighter; and the most 
 terrible jaw and mouth in the House. The jaw, the 
 jaw of the political fighting-man — the mouth, thin- 
 lipped, scorpion, fit channel for the most biting tongue 
 in the chamber, not excepting that of Courcy. "Corro- 
 sive Sublimate," they called him. 
 
.156 DEMOCRACY 
 
 The words came gently, almost caressingly, from 
 the thin lips as he opened delicately but inexorably, 
 feeling his way to the facts of the dispute, which he 
 marshalled one by one until they stood limned before 
 his hearers. He was speaking easily, shouldering his 
 way through his figures as a yacht shoulders her way 
 through a long, gently heaving sea. But now and then 
 there would be a hiss of spume, and as Destin watched 
 the lips he could almost see the forked tongue flicker 
 out for a moment, then disappear. 
 
 Column by column he marshalled his figures, making 
 living facts of the dry bones of statistics. Then, his 
 groundwork prepared and the foundations made ready, 
 as a gun platform is made ready for the weapon it is 
 to support, he paused for a moment, gazing around 
 and through the silence which enveloped him. In an 
 instant he had swung round, facing Steltham, who 
 sat, his arms folded sulkily, a few seats from him, and 
 in defiance of all known rules of debate, proceeded to 
 lay bare the skeleton of his colleague's facts. 
 
 With the eye and hand of an anatomist of words, he 
 bared the faulty logic, taking limb from limb, fibre 
 from fibre, until he left on the operating table of the 
 House a thing of disarticulation. 
 
 With vitriolic irony, he dwelt upon the imperfect 
 grip of Labour itself upon its own facts, but said em- 
 phatically that he stood, not for Labour's supposed 
 leaders, but for the voiceless masses of the rank and 
 file outside Parliament who could not speak for them- 
 selves. There was no appeal to sentiment — ^no frothy 
 rhetoric, yet his speech was a rhetorical masterpiece. 
 
 Passing from his colleague, who smiled darkly and 
 perhaps derisively, he turned coldly towards Belch. 
 A^ h^ looked at him an instant before speaking, 
 
IRON AND VELVET 157 
 
 Destin saw the doomed man blench just a shade — so 
 sHghtly that if he had not been watching him closely 
 he would have thought it imagination — and then brace 
 himself to the blast. Stinging, the words whipped out 
 from the lips— each word barbed and poison-tipped, 
 punctuated by the long thin index finger, thrust rapier- 
 like before him. Keeping his feet, unentangled by the 
 rules of debate of the House, those hair lines used to 
 catch the feet of the unwary, he spoke of Judas and 
 thirty pieces of silver, without referring directly to 
 the man himself. Again and again he drove his 
 weapon home, until Belch, for the first time in the 
 memory of man, lost his colour and his self-possession, 
 his eyes staring haggardly out before him. 
 
 The benches of the two chief parties were now 
 watching him with joy unconcealed, for here was "the 
 house divided against itself." But in the middle of a 
 spatter of uneasy laughter at some particularly keen 
 thrust, the cold green eyes had run along the benches, 
 and the smiles had fixed themselves. 
 
 In a passionless, resistless review, he had dropped 
 the stilettos of argument and was using the whip upon 
 the shoulders of those who crouched before him, for 
 the thrust of the forefinger had become a beat — ^the 
 beat of a whip. Destin could see the pale figure, like 
 that of Death, straddling over the benches, flogging 
 them into impotent fury. Again and again like a fig- 
 ure of revolution the figure raised itself and flailed the 
 men who cowered there before the beat of the long 
 lean finger as though accused by the finger of God. 
 Higher and higher it rose, dominating the House, until 
 with one last contemptuous stroke, the figure had 
 flung away the whip and sunk into invisibility. 
 
 There was a tinkling of bells. A confused scutter- 
 
158 DEMOCRACY 
 
 ing on the floor, and the bruised men had hurried out 
 to the division, their backs a Httle bowed it seemed to 
 Destin, and when the figures were announced on the 
 floor of the House, Destin found that Labour had 
 been beaten to earth, smashed into helplessness by the 
 dead weight of a united House, but all "decently and 
 in order." "Iron and velvet." 
 
 As he sat there and watched the procession of the 
 tellers up the floor of the chamber, a great passion rose 
 within him — sl passion which would find its vent in 
 hewing and smashing — in the abyss of physical force. 
 
 "The tone of the House !" He hated them with the 
 hate of the impotent. Strangled, stifled, as he was, 
 again there stirred within him that flickering hope 
 which always came in his moments of dark depression, 
 and as he walked out of the building, his loins girt, it 
 was with unquenchable resolution to plough his row 
 to the end. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 
 
 When Destin opened his Daily Meteor the next mom- 
 ing, he found the labour debate almost hidden by a big 
 murder, in which, in the words of its editor, there was 
 the cardinal selling-trinity of fighting, flirting, and 
 finance. The outline of the debate alone was given, 
 but on the leader page there were a few lines as a sub- 
 leader: 
 
 "Labour Unrest 
 
 "The country which has so anxiously awaited the 
 labour debate will turn with satisfaction this morning 
 to the splendid moderation of the speeches from all 
 sides of the House, and from none more than from the 
 Labour benches, which, however, was marred by an 
 unfortunate and intemperately worded incursion into 
 the debate by Mr. Kisterling, who, however, has the 
 satisfaction of knowing that he represents no one but 
 himself. Now that the crux of the labour unrest has 
 been thrashed out in full and free debate in Parlia- 
 ment, and as the majority of the people's representa- 
 tives have decided against the claims of Labour, it is 
 to be hoped that the private conference between Mas- 
 ters and Men, which is to resume its sittings to-mor- 
 row, will take the hint. Nothing could be more 
 repugnant to the mind of the Government than that 
 the force element should further enter into the strug- 
 
 159 
 
160 DEMOCRACY 
 
 gle, with the danger of its becoming an integral part 
 of the disputes between Capital and Labour." 
 
 "Force." That was the word which stood out from 
 all the others in the mind of Destin. Surely the Rad- 
 ical papers, which had all along professed their sym- 
 pathy with the claims of Trades Unionism generally, 
 would take a different tone. After breakfast, Destin 
 went into the neighbouring library and there read the 
 notices in the Liberal dailies. His eye caught — "The 
 upholding of the traditions of the House . . ." "moder- 
 ation of Labour's tone . . ." "fine common-sense of 
 the miner's representatives. . . ." "Mr. Kisterling's 
 unfortunate remarks." And through the whole, like 
 a thin red line, the frequent recurrence of the assertion 
 that "where national interests were involved, the his- 
 toric parties of the House find themselves at one." 
 
 This was set out in various forms, in a play and 
 interplay of words and meanings — ^but it always came 
 back to the point that the historic parties as guardians 
 of the nation's rights were of one mind. 
 
 He knew that it was "all over, bar shouting," as a 
 Labour journalist told him in Fleet Street, and when 
 the next day's Conference was held at the Great North- 
 Western, at which Belch did not put in an appearance, 
 it was to find the Labour delegates anxious to settle 
 the whole thing quickly ere worse befell them. 
 
 There was no crowing over the defeat of Labour 
 by the Masters. It was true that Goldbeater looked like 
 a snake just after the act of deglutition, and Goring a 
 little more swollen than usual — ^but the behaviour of 
 Muschamp, Sir Claude Crespigny, and the other repre- 
 sentatives of the Masters, was all that could be desired, 
 while Sir James Bulkley was consideration itself. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 161 
 
 Westerley still puffed his cigar nonchalantly at the 
 ceiling, Steltham looked much as before, whilst the 
 miners' delegates were obviously more than pleased 
 at the cessation of hostilities. 
 
 McGraw alone sat a little more heavily in his chair, 
 Creegan, indomitable as ever, being the one harsh note 
 of a peaceful finish, not speaking it is true, but sitting 
 crouched over his blotting pad. He took no part in 
 the proceedings, and when on the final vote Labour 
 went down to defeat, he refused to hold up his hand 
 one way or the other. 
 
 Denis Destin stood at the crossroads. This he felt 
 as he sat in "The Silver Herring," a little coffee house 
 near the Great North- Western, waiting for Creegan, 
 who had asked him to meet him there after the con- 
 ference. The whole business from the first day's sit- 
 ting, through the debate in the House, down to the 
 pitiful aftermath of that morning, fell upon him crush- . 
 ingly. First the Big Stick on the head — then the 
 Stiletto through the heart. "Iron and Velvet." These 
 were the things that ran shadow-like through his brain. 
 
 The thing that struck cold to him was the apathy 
 of the politicians, and not so much their apathy as the 
 fact that they were the accredited representatives of 
 Demos in the supreme tribunal. If the working-man 
 could make that mistake, where was that "Vox populi 
 — ^vox Dei !" of which he was never tired of speaking 
 from the platform? And through all this depression, 
 and the blind infatuation with the will o' the wisp of 
 political action, there straggled flittingly McGraw and 
 Kisterling and half a dozen other men whom he knew 
 to be not only absolutely honest — for every Labour 
 member was that — ^but militant and idealist. 
 
 The fine freedom of the Syndicalist faith — the clean, 
 
162 DEMOCRACY 
 
 direct solution for all social evils — ^the General Strike 
 ... all this seemed pitiful also in face of the facts. 
 He knew that Syndicalism had scarcely a foothold in 
 the Unions — he knew, though he often tried not to 
 know, that even the Syndicalist leaders themselves, 
 and always with the exception of Creegan, whilst 
 talking so much of idealism in politics, were sometimes 
 far from being idealist in their lives. What was the 
 use of it all ? 
 
 Then there came to him Creegan. Creegan, the 
 indomitable, brutal tyrant of the workers. Creegan, 
 the self-educated Irishman from a Dublin back-block. 
 Creegan, the most despised and attacked man in the 
 Labour movement, fighting a lone hand not only 
 against the apathy of the Unions but even against the 
 Labour leaders themselves. 
 
 Creegan, the dreamer, who even admitted that vi- 
 sions came to him in the night watches. Creegan, the 
 devout Romanist, who believed in saints and devils, 
 and who was cursed and disowned by the hierarchy 
 of his own church. Creegan — the beaten, broken 
 Creegan. 
 
 It was with that figure of the beaten, broken man 
 that now came to him a feeling of fatality — the feeling 
 that whatever the cost to himself, and despite what he 
 knew to be his own passion for domination, he would 
 follow Brian Creegan to the end of the road. He knew 
 that he, like the others, was caught up in a machine 
 from which he was powerless to free himself, which 
 he could not control, and which might either absorb 
 him, or spew him out a broken, bloody mass. But for 
 good or ill he was part of that machine — the turning, 
 rending, blind machine of Labour. 
 
 He was roused from the vision he had conjured by 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 163 
 
 the voice of Creegan himself, who was asking the girl 
 to give him a cup of tea and some scones "or anything 
 you have, Miss." Creegan had a great love for tea, 
 which he drank poisonously strong, and it was an old 
 bone of contention between Destin and himself, for 
 Destin, who had a lust for reformation not second to 
 Creegan's own, had a habit of going into minutiae of 
 this kind. But Creegan still drank his tea. 
 
 It was to lay their plans for the coming Workers* 
 Party Congress to be held in the next week at Circester 
 that Creegan had asked him to meet him. Destin was 
 now a sort of Assistant Secretary to the Transport 
 Union, of which Creegan was the Secretary, working 
 a few hours each evening after his journalism and 
 receiving the nominal remuneration of ten shillings 
 a week, so as to make him a paid agent of the society, 
 and therefore "a Transport Worker." He and Cree- 
 gan, amongst others, were the delegates to the coming 
 Congress. 
 
 Creegan as he bent over his tea looked like^ man 
 with a beaten head. Destin could almost see the marks 
 of the Big Stick — ^but the spirit was dauntless as ever. 
 He found this dour Irishman entirely uncowed, and 
 when he had heard him plunge into the machinery of 
 the Congress to come, laying his plans carefully, he 
 felt again that, short of killing him, the man did not 
 live who could stop Brian Creegan. 
 
 The Congress was vital to Labour it seemed, for in 
 it the Syndicalists were about to make their first Con- 
 gress attack upon the fort of Political Action. It gave 
 new vitality to the man listening to him, as he spoke, a 
 flush on his face, of the possibilities of the Congress — 
 "if we can only get our fellows to work together." He 
 repeated — "if we can only get our fellows to work 
 
164 DEMOCRACY 
 
 together." That had always been the difficulty 
 amongst the Syndicalists, who, demanding the freest 
 individual action, were rather a handful, and Creegan 
 alone could do anything with them. Even Creegan at 
 times, domineering as he was, feared to go too far, for 
 though a Syndicalist himself, his Union still favoured 
 political as well as strike action, though, under his 
 lead, the Syndicalists had managed to get most of the 
 chief positions. He generally drove them on the curb, 
 1)ut sometimes used the light rein. 
 
 It was outside the Town Hall at Circester a week 
 later that Destin again met his chief. He was stand- 
 ing in the cold wind of the March morning, his dust 
 overcoat buttoned close around his neck, the invariable 
 long cheroot in his mouth jutting at an aggressive 
 angle under the sugar-loaf hat which brimmed the 
 whole. Around him were twenty or thirty delegates, 
 who were listening to some final word. While he was 
 speaking, Johnson, the chairman of the Workers' 
 Party, came past, smiling in the grim good-humour 
 of a man on the successful side, as he caught sight of 
 the group. Steltham walked a few steps behind, but 
 there was no question of the darkling of his smile. 
 
 Men were standing on the steps of the building; 
 lounging in the passages ; talking around the brilliant 
 red bookstall covered with Socialist publications; and 
 when Destin walked to his place almost under the 
 gallery of the hall, with its long trestle tables covered 
 neatly with sheets of foolscap, pencils, printed leaflets, 
 and agendas of the Congress, he heard the scuttering 
 and mumbling of the delegates who were slowly taking 
 their places. 
 
 Steltham was the chairman of the Congress. He 
 sat up there on the platform frowning over the agenda 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 165 
 
 before him. Ranged on either side of him were the 
 other members of the executive, men of all types from 
 burly navvies and broad, smooth-faced miners, to wiry 
 engineers. Those were the Seats of the Mighty, and 
 when Steltham jerked himself to his feet and struck 
 the bell before him, the delegates who were still strag- 
 gling into the hall, hurried to their places and sat 
 expectant. 
 
 Steltham read his chairman's address. It began 
 "My Friends," and after running through the events 
 of the previous year, breathed a placid hope for the 
 best possible results of their deliberations. It was a 
 non-committal address and, if anything, lacked origi- 
 nality and forcefulness, though here and there broke a 
 sentence of singular strength, and even of revolution, 
 which sounded oddly upon the lips of the man himself. 
 Destin could not help but feel that this man was torn 
 between two policies — he had noticed it at the Great 
 North- Western — ^between his natural and fundamental 
 cautiousness and a certain unruly, revolutionary feel- 
 ing which would not be stifled, but sometimes popped 
 its head up until it was smothered by caution. Stel- 
 tham could never forget, nor was he allowed to for- 
 get, that he was "the Strong Man of the movement." 
 
 When he had finished, there was hearty applause, 
 for Steltham appealed to nearly every man there. It 
 was then it came to Destin that this assembly, like that 
 other, did everything "decently and in order," for the 
 organ over the platform burst into an old hymn tune 
 as the Mayor of the town, a little penguin-man in red 
 robes and gold chain, with mace-bearer and aldermen 
 complete, waddled solemnly on to the platform to read 
 his address of welcome to the city. His message, like 
 Steltham's, breathed the spirit of good-will. There 
 
166 DEMOCRACY 
 
 was a certain sonorous vagueness about his speech, 
 which had many rolUng phrases — "national impor- 
 tance;*' "united deHberations ;" "all parties agreed," 
 and so on. The Mayor even sang the concluding 
 labour song led by the organ — though he stood a little 
 stiffly perhaps — and when he had done so, retired as 
 solemnly as he had entered, with his train of aldermen 
 and preceded by the mace-bearer, to the rousing cheers 
 of the delegates, who seemed to Destin to be rather 
 like schoolboys out for a rag. It was evidently their 
 desire to be on the best terms with everybody. There 
 was nothing revolutionary about them. 
 
 They plunged into the agenda, after electing a 
 Standing Orders Committee to expedite the business 
 of the Congress. As the chairman read out resolution 
 after resolution — all of the "pious" sort, he heard a 
 Transport Worker growl to his mate — the delegates 
 chaunted "agreed — agreed," as though they were a 
 congregation responding to a priest. 
 
 There was a hypnotism about the proceedings, as 
 half a dozen resolutions were rapidly polished off, to 
 the confusion of Destin, who vainly tried to follow 
 them on the agenda before him, when an insignificant 
 resolution came up which stated that the Congress was 
 agreed upon the arbitration board as the best method 
 of settling disputes between Capital and Labour. 
 
 "Is it agreed, my friends?" asked the chairman 
 blandly. "Agreed — agreed" was being murmured 
 when there cut across the drone angry "No, no's." 
 The peace of the Congress was disturbed. It was the 
 first feeling out of the rival parties. 
 
 Creegan had told Destin that he had been unable 
 to get his men together before the Congress as had 
 been agreed, so as to fix their final plans of action. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 167 
 
 There were stray Syndicalist delegates from other 
 Unions, but their action it seemed was a little uncer- 
 tain. The only thing that had been arranged was that 
 Wildish should lead off in opposing arbitration. It 
 seemed that, despite his general rebelliousness, the 
 orthodoxy of the Clerks' Union, which had sent him 
 as its representative, had broken down before the 
 magic of the "M.P.'* after his name. 
 
 Now, Creegan searched the benches, looking eagerly 
 for the broad, smiling face, but no Wildish arose. 
 Consequently, a young Syndicalist a few paces away, 
 unknown, but eager to win his spurs, jumped up, to 
 Creegan*s chagrin, and in a speech, voluble and reso- 
 nant, as though he were haranguing a crowd in Tra- 
 falgar Square, he opposed the resolution. 
 
 When he opened, it was not difficult to see the com- 
 placency of the men on the platform. There was a 
 sort of "The Lord hath delivered the enemy into our 
 hands" about them, which was particularly galling. 
 Yet Steltham showed the speaker every latitude — for 
 again and again when he wandered from the main res- 
 olution, chasing all sorts of will o' the wisps down all 
 kinds of by-paths, the courteous guiding hand of the 
 chairman brought him gently back again instead of 
 ruling him out of order. 
 
 When the chairman at last had banged his bell more 
 than once to enforce the time limit, and only then, the 
 young stalwart, a compositor, whose delicate frame 
 and pasty face gave the lie to a tremendous voice, sat 
 down in the middle of a sentence, quite spoiling any 
 effect the speech might have had. The honest faces of 
 the workers grinned delightedly. The speech had "cut 
 no ice." 
 
 "Let it go now !" growled Creegan under his breath. 
 
168 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "But, curse him! where's Wildish?" He got his an- 
 swer, for at that moment, cheerful as ever, Wildish, a 
 good-humored grin on his face, came in, making his 
 way to Creegan's side — "Awfully sorry, Brian, old boy 
 — ^but I met a friend/' Creegan gave him his shoulder. 
 
 The Syndicalist amendment was lost by an over- 
 whelming show of hands. Wildish made an attempt 
 to challenge the vote and demanded a ballot in a 
 loud voice, slightly hoarse. But Creegan pulled him 
 down. 
 
 It was however but a skirmish — the main issue 
 would be raised later. But the politicals had won the 
 first round — ^and as Destin knew by now, these first 
 rounds had a habit of deciding the big issues later. 
 
 A stream of resolutions ran easily off the chairman's 
 bat. The Congress was again peaceful, but it was the 
 peace of the boa constrictor after digestion. 
 
 One of the men who took part in the debate struck 
 him. He was the Secretary of a Dockers' Union, 
 whose broken, scarred face proclaimed the danger of 
 his former toil in an explosives factory. It was this 
 broken object, the face drawn to one side in a grin, 
 who with dry humour and loving outlook on life, made 
 the delegates laugh again and again. 
 
 Once more it was borne in on him that the Labour 
 leader was not a type — that in "the movement" all 
 types were to be found. For this man was followed 
 by a blonde chestnut giant from the Yorkshire cotton 
 mills, and he by a little black-eyed middle-class woman 
 who made her way to the heart of the Congress in a 
 cultured, restrained voice. Here, a lanky engineer 
 from a London shed was followed by a little man 
 under five feet with a trombone voice, who rose from 
 under his arm and who stared owl-like after he had 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 169 
 
 made each point to see its effect. Saturnine men suc- 
 ceeded easy-going men — ^men of humour, men of ac- 
 tion — and men of action, men of the study. This 
 indeed was a colony of types ; all devoted to one end. 
 The Syndicalists alone formed a group type — ^both in 
 speech and action. But he found that the Syndicalists 
 did not count, with the exception of Creegan, who had 
 a certain dour influence of his own, even amongst those 
 who disliked him and his methods. 
 
 Destin had been turning over his particular second- 
 ing speech on the main resolution of policy, when 
 there was a silence. All eyes were turned on the plat- 
 form, where a flash of scarlet caught the eye. This 
 flash of scarlet had been running backwards and for- 
 wards at the back of the hall during the whole 
 morning in Destines eye, though he had been too 
 engaged to notice it more distinctly. Then he re- 
 membered. 
 
 It was Satalia, the woman he had heard that day 
 in the summer in Hyde Park. The chairman was 
 introducing her as the fraternal delegate of the 
 French Transport Workers, and was asking for sus- 
 pension of the Standing Orders — those Standing 
 Orders which were a sort of religious seal upon the 
 whole of the proceedings — in order that she might 
 be heard, after which, he said, they would take the 
 resolution upon party policy, to be moved by the 
 Transport Workers. A shout of assent went up from 
 the delegates, who roared full-lunged at the striking, 
 though rather flamboyant figure which now took the 
 centre of the platform. 
 
 She wore the same Buffalo Bill hat, slashed with 
 scarlet — ^turned up very much on one side and down 
 on the other, and a tight-fitting costume of smooth 
 
170 DEMOCRACY 
 
 blue serge, red-bodiced. The tiny hands sunk in the 
 natty side pockets of her jacket, the Frenchwoman 
 began to speak in excellent English. 
 
 Yet, Destin could not but feel that this theatrical 
 appearance made the sober-looking men around him 
 uneasy. They listened with courtesy it is true, but 
 with an air of unmistakable dissent if not of boredom, 
 for the whole of the speech was a violent incitement 
 to Direct Action, which, according to the speaker, 
 alone gave the workers a chance with the masters. 
 It was, she said, sweeping over Italy, France, and 
 Spain, whilst its beginning in England presaged final 
 victory. 
 
 Here again Destin found that ingrained love of facts. 
 For the first time, a low grumble of dissent went up, 
 circled, and subsided. 
 
 "No, no." 
 
 The eyes of the woman on the platform, which 
 moved curiously independent of each other, as one 
 sometimes sees in dogs and Spanish dancers, ran 
 around the hall. From where he sat, he caught the 
 gleam of the free eye. It brightened as a counter of 
 approval came from Creegan's men in different parts 
 of the hall, and it was evident that she regarded this 
 minority as the dominating fraction, for her voice, 
 which had halted for a moment, took its old note of 
 confidence, pointing out the vast strikes of the pre- 
 vious months as evidence of the revolutionary spirit 
 of the British workers. She was swimming along 
 when a voice in broad Yorkshire boomed across her 
 own — "Nay, lass, thou doesn't know t'Englishmen !" 
 A roar of laughter followed, which killed the speech, 
 the lady, after a concluding sentence or two, retiring 
 as gracefully as possible. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 171 
 
 Steltham was courtesy itself, bowing to her ere she 
 left, but when he turned to the agenda it was with 
 a certain satisfaction in his face. 
 
 "May I venture to suggest that we take the reso- 
 lution on Labour Policy, friends," he asked, "so that 
 after lunch we can get on with the mass of other 
 business waiting?" 
 
 A chorus of "Ayes!" went up. 
 
 "No, no!" protested the Syndicalists. 
 
 "If he rushes this through before lunch we won't get 
 a discussion," Creegan whispered to Destin, shouting 
 "No, no!" at intervals. But the Congress was over- 
 whelmingly in favour of taking the resolution then, 
 and the Syndicalists once more found themselves 
 beaten by what Creegan called "the caucus," which 
 according to him settled all these things to a hair's 
 breadth ere they entered the hall, giving them a big, 
 though he did not say unfair, advantage over the 
 Direct Actionists, who never seemed able to get to- 
 gether. He admitted that in their place he would do 
 the same. This rather shocked Destin, who had al- 
 ways put these unworthy tricks of political card-play- 
 ing down to the politicals. 
 
 The resolution itself was scarcely more than half a 
 dozen words — "That this Congress of the Workers' 
 Party affirms its belief in Parliamentary action as the 
 main line for Labour's advance." 
 
 Destin expected to see one of the older members of 
 the Party get up to move the resolution, but was 
 surprised when a young delegate, who, incidentally, 
 had been a Direct Actionist up to the year before and 
 was therefore "a traitor," catch the chairman's eye. 
 
 This young man, a Scotsman, was admirably cool 
 and restrained. He outlined forcefully but with mod- 
 
172 DEMOCRACY 
 
 eration the victories won in Parliament from the in- 
 ception of the Party there. He touched lightly and 
 not unkindly upon the failure of the strike in the 
 previous months, and avowed with a frankness that 
 won the mass of the delegates his own conversion 
 from Syndicalism. . . . "The Great Strike was the 
 cold douche that brought me to my senses." 
 
 "Rat! rat!" yelled the young Syndicalist who had 
 spoken. In a moment the chairman was on his feet 
 and waving the Scotsman to his seat. 
 
 "Just a moment, my friends," he said soothingly, 
 but with that sureness underneath which Destin had 
 seen before. "In this assembly we pride ourselves 
 upon our good manners. That last word is, if I may 
 say so, not only unparliamentary but dirty. 'Dirty,' 
 I said. As a matter of decency, and I hope the gentle- 
 men of the press will ignore the incident, I ask you to 
 withdraw it." 
 
 "Withdraw! withdraw!" was shouted. For a mo- 
 ment the angry delegate showed fight, but finally made 
 a sort of apology, which was applauded by the dele- 
 gates as the amende honorable. 
 
 "Now the debate can go on," said Steltham settling 
 himself comfortably in his chair. 
 
 It had nothing to do with the debate, but Destin 
 felt in that moment that the interrupting delegate had 
 destroyed the Syndicalist case. Good manners he 
 found were not the privilege of the aristocrat, but were 
 also worshipped by that strange animal, Demos. "Put 
 yourself wrong with the Congress," growled Creegan, 
 "and you might as well stay outside." 
 
 The mover of the political policy resolution resumed 
 his speech, being enthusiastically cheered as he made 
 his points. Labour loved nothing so much as the 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 173 
 
 prodigal son, and always had the fatted calf warmed 
 and ready. 
 
 Creegan had been called out to see an Irish friend 
 who brought him urgent news from Belfast. He 
 went, telling Destin he would return in a moment to 
 move the amendment, as it was obvious that the advo- 
 cate of political policy having another fifteen minutes 
 to go, would use them. As it happened, this young 
 man who had a very shrewd head on very young 
 shoulders, caught sight of Creegan leaving the hall, 
 and instantly saw a chance for a coup. Saying that 
 the case for Parliamentary action was so obvious, he 
 did not propose to burden the delegates with any more 
 arguments, he sat down abruptly. The delegates, who 
 seemed to like nothing better than a long speech ex- 
 cept a short one, gave him wholehearted applause. 
 
 "Any amendment?" asked the chairman, turning 
 instinctively to Creegan's empty place. The eye of 
 every delegate followed his own, waiting for the form 
 of the Syndicalist chief to rise. But there was no 
 Creegan. 
 
 "If there is no amendment, and it having been 
 seconded, I propose to put the resolution," said the 
 chairman evenly, when Destin, staggered for a mo- 
 ment by Creegan's absence, sprang into the breach, 
 and rose, saying — *T move an amendment." 
 
 Agitated though he was, from where he stood he 
 could see something like disappointment upon the faces 
 of the executive. McGraw alone smiled. It heartened 
 him. 
 
 Destines was the one speech that filled the headlines 
 of the capitalist papers the following day, for it was 
 the first attack ever made in the Workers' Congress 
 upon parliamentary policy. He excelled himself, for 
 
174 DEMOCRACY 
 
 always braced to the big occasion, he took his points 
 One by one, making them, if more passionately, as 
 coolly as the man who had moved the resolution. His 
 depression vanished in a moment under the stimulus 
 of battle. Like another Sir Galahad he felt that his 
 was a holy mission — ^that his weapon was not the 
 tongue but the sword — that he was a pioneer of his 
 time. 
 
 Like the policy he represented, he used the direct 
 action method, going straight for the heart of the 
 enemy. With a sweeping brush he painted in the story 
 of the Great North-Western conference — of the Big 
 Stick — ^and then in more delicate colours the stiletto 
 in the House of Commons. For the disastrous defeat 
 of the strike he made no apologies, emerging from the 
 welter with the flag of revolution in his hands, and 
 prophesying with the fires of fanaticism now burning 
 through the caution of his earlier periods, the anni- 
 hilation of the Parliamentarians and the coming of 
 the General Strike. 
 
 Lost to his surroundings in his Celtic abandonment, 
 he had not seen Creegan steal in as he spoke. It was 
 not until he felt the sinewy hand pressing the hollow 
 of his arm and heard the voice — "Well done, boy!" 
 that he knew the joys of approving comradeship. In 
 that moment he felt a great happiness. 
 
 Creegan saw that any attempt at a speech would 
 destroy the effect of his lieutenant, so he contented 
 himself with formally seconding. 
 
 Yet even here Destin would have wished to have 
 had a less noisy appreciation when he had finished. 
 There had been a silence — the silence which told him 
 that he had got home, when his followers, led by 
 Wildish, who had no jealousy, had jumped to their 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 175 
 
 feet, screaming incoherently. It was once more what 
 he was finding to be the fatal exuberance of the 
 Syndicalist. No doubt it sprang from an overwhelm- 
 ing belief in direct action, and it was all very well in 
 its way, but it had a habit of coming in at the wrong 
 moment. 
 
 When he had finished, speeches were made by men 
 from either side — many of them young men obviously 
 anxious "to get there." He wondered why the older 
 leaders of the Parliamentarians had not spoken, when 
 he found that they had been reserving themselves to 
 the last. 
 
 The man they had chosen to speak for them was 
 McGraw, above all others. McGraw whom Destin 
 nearly loved. And it was McGraw, standing up, who 
 was now speaking. 
 
 It was McGraw who in his broad Scottish compli- 
 mented Destin on his speech, which he described as 
 "bonny" . . . "which gives us all the assurance of a 
 promising career, which I hope," he added with a 
 twinkle, "will be devoted to the interests of political 
 action." With the skill of the old hand, he showed 
 that political action was not opposed to strike action. 
 "They are like husband and wife, comrades — when 
 they pull together they can move mountains — divided, 
 they perish. They may quarrel ye ken, but heaven 
 help anybody who tries to come between them." 
 
 A shout of laughter went up, and in it Destin found 
 that laughter, not anger, was the great solvent. 
 
 McGraw continued — "We stand for the dual policy 
 — our opponents for a one-armed, and, let me add, 
 one-eyed policy. The Syndicalist strike-weapon is a 
 two-edged sword which may or may not kill its enemy 
 in its sweep, but which may cut the man who holds it 
 
176 DEMOCRACY 
 
 on Its return swing. My own wing of tlie Workers* 
 Party may not always see eye to eye with their com- 
 rades, may sometimes think that we tak' too little 
 whuskey in our water, but that doesn't mean we are 
 going over to pure spirit — to the delirium of direct 
 action unwatered by political action." 
 
 It was this shrewd, honest, forceful Scotsman — ^the 
 patriarch of Labour — ^beloved by all, who turned any 
 transient ideas of Syndicalism away from the dele- 
 gates, the card vote leaving the Syndicalists over- 
 whelmed. Even as he listened, it seemed to Destin 
 that he was being seduced from the faith. The man 
 himself looked so clean and "good" — so different to 
 the many Syndicalist leaders he had known, men, 
 sometimes, of unrestrained .action, political and moral 
 — that he felt though his heart lay with the Syndi- 
 calists, something deeper yet called to him to take his 
 place in the ranks of his present adversaries. 
 
 But one look at Creegan made him forget all that. 
 This was his peerless knight — the man whose escut- 
 cheon had never been stained. Brian Creegan at least 
 was pure-hearted and pure-souled. 
 
 Yet for that day and many«days after, these things 
 flitted shadow-like across the retina of his mind. 
 Persons and policies — principles and parties — ^became 
 inextricably blended. He found himself in despair 
 trying to find the truth of these things, and failing. 
 
 Destin had been up in the gallery to see Creegan, 
 when, looking about him, he heard Creegan's voice 
 behind him — "This is Mr. Destin. Denis — a country- 
 woman of ours — one of the Danes, though she hasn't 
 red hair." It was one of Creegan's rare attempts at 
 humour, and had reference to a popular superstition 
 in the South of Ireland. 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 177 
 
 Destin looked into the face of a slender girl in the 
 middle twenties, whose green eyes searched him in- 
 differently but surely. With her frame of thick, black- 
 brown hair, with something of bronze caught in its 
 meshes, cut squarely to the neck and brushed rather 
 low on the high, square forehead, she seemed to have 
 a quality different to that of any woman he had seen. 
 Her dress, of some rough green stuff, close-fitting and 
 in one piece, cut away around the clean, firm neck, set 
 off her graceful, rather boyish figure. 
 
 But it was to the eyes of this girl who now sat by 
 his side looking down into the body of the hall, the 
 eyes with the strange green lights in them, to which he 
 always returned. They permeated him like a flow of 
 water, leaving no distinct impression behind, but only 
 a glow — an influence. 
 
 He asked her the part of Ireland from which she 
 came, and caught the deep resonance of the voice with 
 the slightest Southern roll — a brogue so faint that it 
 ran through the colder English like the voice of 
 the curling wave upon the iron beach. For there 
 was something of iron as well as softness in the 
 voice. 
 
 She was from the South, the child of a Danish 
 father and an Irish mother, born and reared in Ireland. 
 She had, however, travelled much with her father, he 
 discovered afterwards, and had studied the Labour 
 movement in many countries, having just published 
 her first book, a novel, using the movement as her 
 basis. 
 
 "There's a man who will break his heart one day." 
 
 She was looking down at Creegan, who had left 
 them and who was now challenging a platform ruling 
 in low, hard tones. The sureness of the girl irritated 
 
178 DEMOCRACY 
 
 him. It was an irritation he learned to know well in 
 the months that followed. 
 
 "How do you know?" he queried a little impatiently. 
 "There are not many who know Brian Creegan." 
 
 "I know him," she said quietly. 
 
 In a moment Destin had launched into an argument 
 in which all the protestation was on his side. No, 
 Creegan was going on from strength to strength to 
 triumph over his enemies. 
 
 "But who are his enemies?" the girl interposed 
 quietly — "Mr. McGraw or the capitalist class? Won't 
 you put a name on them ?" There was quiet irony in 
 the Irish idiom as it came from her lips. 
 
 Destin came to a halt. Who were Creegan's ene- 
 mies? For years he had been embattled quite as much 
 with the politicals, as with the hated capitalists. But, 
 after all, it was Steltham and Manby who prevented 
 Creegan from doing his work effectively for the re- 
 generation of society. Anyone could see at a glance 
 in the present Congress as one had seen it in past 
 Congresses, that these politicals were playing only for 
 their own hands — that they were labour-fakirs and 
 labour-hazers. Could she deny it? 
 
 "Do you include McGraw?" she asked again, a little 
 smile at the back of her eyes, which shone greenly. 
 
 Destin knew that if she had said Steltham or Belch 
 or Manby or Johnson, he would have felt himself free 
 to reply. But McGraw — ^and the McGraw sort in the 
 Independent Socialists — that was different. He could 
 not, dare not, launch the fulminations he would have 
 launched if the others had been mentioned. 
 
 He fell back upon neutral ground. 
 
 "Can't you see the trickery and wire-pulling at the 
 present Congress?" he asked. "Don't you know they 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 179 
 
 mean to kill Creegan if they can? A blind man could 
 see that," he said rudely. There was something about 
 the quietness and quickness of this girl that was exas- 
 perating. 
 
 "If you Syndicalists were in the same position as the 
 politicals — wouldn't you do the same? . . . Now 
 wouldn't you?" she added in pleading irony. 
 
 He was about to deny it indignantly, when he re- 
 membered Creegan's assertion to the contrary. The 
 girl before him probably knew it also. He was 
 silent. 
 
 "Can ye not see, for even a blind man can see it — " 
 the little earnest face, shrouded in its short black 
 square-cut hair, smiled at him sweetly — "can ye not 
 see that all these Congresses, like the men behind them, 
 are mixtures of good and evil — of blacks and whites 
 and greys? Can ye not see that these men are all 
 more or less mastered by the machine — even Brian 
 Creegan? Don't ye know that Torquemada himself 
 was an honest fanatic — that Creegan, and in another 
 sense McGraw and Steltham, are also honest fanatics ? 
 Once these men persuade themselves they are right — 
 and there are few political Machiavellis, the rest is 
 easy. Everything becomes justified. It is the story 
 of the Jesuitry over again — for there are political as 
 well as religious Jesuits. Perhaps we are all Jesuits," 
 she said a little wistfully. 
 
 "But if what you say is true, what is the good of 
 democracy?" he asked, in blind anger and disappoint- 
 ment. "If the people's leaders are Jesuits — what is the 
 good of the people who elect them ? Isn't anarchy the 
 only thing left open to a reasonable man ?" 
 
 "There is always the common people behind," she 
 replied. "The common people, like the un-common. 
 
180 DEMOCRACY 
 
 are inexpressibly brutal and cruel and stupid and intui- 
 tive and omniscient and true. The Collective Con- 
 sciousness is a terrible machine — ^but it works out 
 absolutely true in time. The people make mistakes. 
 The people elect the wrong men. But the people are 
 always the heart of all things, good and evil. To 
 quarrel with the people is to quarrel with God. They 
 are God." 
 
 "Then you, even you who criticise so freely, make a 
 God of Democracy." 
 
 *T don't make it a God. It is a God. The majority 
 is always wrong and always right. From the wrong 
 majority of to-day comes the conscious and right 
 minority of to-morrow, yielding in its turn to the 
 other majorities — the eternal majority." 
 
 The girl had dropped her irony. The eyes were 
 flashing greenly and surely. The pale face was lighted. 
 The strong straight nose and pointed square jaw — like 
 the jaw of a serpent — had set. She was sureness 
 itself. The woman of the future was speaking — the 
 woman of intuition and consciousness. 
 
 "Then you believe in Democracy?" he asked de- 
 spairing, trying to have the thing brought to a definite 
 issue. 
 
 'T believe in nothing but myself," she said, and she 
 laughed again. *Tf you ask me whether I believe in 
 the people, I say I must do so if I am to believe in 
 myself. . . . But you surely haven't kept me here to 
 discuss sociology. I am only a girl you know, and here 
 you are making me talk like Ecclesiastes." 
 
 "But then, we can't all be right," Destin said finally. 
 
 "We are all right and all wrong. The truth doesn't 
 lie in the Syndicalist any more than it lies in the 
 political camp — in anarchy any more than in collec- 
 
THE PARLIAMENT OF LABOUR 181 
 
 tivism. The truth lies between. It always lies be- 
 tween. The truth lies in paradox." 
 
 And it was on that word, coming so strangely from 
 this girl, that he left her. Creegar\ was beckoning to 
 him from the hall. 
 
 "Paradox.*' "Syndicalism." "Democracy." The 
 words spun through his brain. But always "paradox." 
 
 Perhaps the earth was not intended to be a finish- 
 ing school — ^but only a place of paradox — a place of 
 preparation and fight. 
 
XI 
 
 THE RIGHT TO LIVE 
 
 At this time Denis Destin had his hands full. Rush- 
 ing from one thing. to another, he Hved on his nerves. 
 He had become a sort of nerve-drunkard, forced to 
 keep moving, satiating himself on excitement. He 
 passed from meeting to meeting, now snatching a few 
 hours to dash off an article, then rushing to one of 
 Miss Craven's democratic functions at Hampstead, 
 where he plunged himself to the neck in argument, 
 expostulation, and even vituperation — then sometimes 
 to one of the Duchess of Chillington's evenings, 
 where he held his fashionable audience, and himself, 
 spell-bound with the power of his denunciation, for 
 by now he had become quite a fashionable revolu- 
 tionist in certain select circles. 
 
 He felt more and more that he was a person who 
 mattered. Denis Destin was drunk — drunk on de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 Fleet Street by now wanted him. He found as one 
 of the Fleet Street paradoxes that the more revolu- 
 tionary and the more inimical to Capital he became, 
 the more Capital ran after him. The Meteor had asked 
 him to contribute a short weekly article to be called 
 "The Labour Thermometer," in which he was sup- 
 posed to have exclusive knowledge of the temperature 
 of Demos. He was in a constant state of astonish- 
 ment to find out how much he knew and how accurate 
 
 182 
 
THE RIGHT TO LIVE 183 
 
 were his forecasts. These things came to him "as in a 
 glass, darkly." 
 
 But everything grated him — even success. The 
 more successful he became, and the quicker those pink 
 cheques unfolded themselves, the more angry he was. 
 Yet at no time could he have said why he was angry. 
 
 There was Vesta Craven for instance. Whenever he 
 found himself near her, and that was pretty often, she 
 raw-edged him. They had been on the verge of 
 quarrelling more than once, and it was only Miss 
 Craven's Admirable tactf ulness and capacity for man- 
 aging that saved a breach. And nothing angered him 
 more than her tact, even whilst it mollified him. 
 
 Especially since the Circester Congress, he felt 
 something against her approaching resentment, and, 
 as he had to acknowledge to himself, for no real 
 reason. Perhaps the cavalier fashion in which she 
 had received his declaration at the Hampstead flat had 
 hurt him. Her well-groomed appearance — ^her method 
 of holding her cigarette, and the dainty thoughtful 
 way in which she cocked her little chin and expelled a 
 thin stream of smoke, or blew a smoke-ring, all worked 
 upon him in a nervous sort of way. It was only when 
 he was away from her that she attracted him now, 
 though he knew also that when separated from her 
 he was vaguely uneasy ; an uneasiness that passed only 
 when he found himself once more by her side. 
 
 Her vegetarian, votes-for-women, anti-vivisection 
 friends — ^all frayed his nerves, and all these things in 
 some inexplicable way were entangled with that Cir- 
 cester gathering — with his new-found doubts about 
 Syndicalism, policies and principles — ^and even with 
 Creegan and the green-eyed girl, whom he had seen 
 occasionally, who jarred him like those other things, 
 
184 DEMOCRACY 
 
 but differently. Once or twice he had seen the little 
 whimsical smile coming to him from his audiences, a 
 smile that always drove him into an exaggeration of 
 statement and into a sort of intellectual prickly-heat, 
 which appeared to amuse her more than ever. How- 
 ever, when he sought her out after the meetings, she 
 had always disappeared. 
 
 Perhaps it was all that "neurasthenia of the age" of 
 which his doctor had spoken. 
 
 Driven from strength to strength, his only relief 
 was to lose himself in his meetings. In the heart of 
 the mob he found his solace, and in the fact that at 
 last the efforts of Creegan and himself seemed to be 
 bearing fruit. For Syndicalism was undoubtedly pro- 
 gressing amongst the Unions if he were to take his 
 increasing meetings and the reports of the younger 
 men as a guide. 
 
 Above all, Creegan pointed to the great strikes of 
 the miners, transport workers, and railwaymen, with 
 the phenomenon of impatience with and even the 
 throwing over of their political leaders as sure evi- 
 dence of the advance of Syndicalism in Great Britain. 
 They took it all as presage of the triumph to come, 
 not only over the capitalists but over the politicals. 
 (The two were apt to get confused at times.) It was 
 the "Syndicalist Menace" as it was coming to be 
 known, and only the Syndicalist menace, which had 
 forced the Masters to declare themselves outside in 
 the country, instead of playing their favourite game 
 of Socialist-hazing in Parliament. As for the politi- 
 cals in Parliament, by now they were regarded in all 
 quarters as "tame mice," where they were not ac- 
 cused of downright dishonesty. The employers at 
 any rate did not fear them. 
 
THE RIGHT TO LIVE 185 
 
 The Syndicalists were much heartened by a series 
 of briUiant articles, sardonic and humorous, appearing 
 in the Daily Meteor under the name "Paddy Mac," in 
 which the fatal weaknesses of the politicals were laid 
 bare — the articles deriving much of their sting from 
 the brief editorial announcement that they were writ- 
 ten by a Socialist. They were obviously written by a 
 man with an intimate knowledge of the movement, 
 and had roused the labour leaders to angry expostula- 
 tion and recrimination, especially as "Paddy Mac" was 
 really supposed to be Kisterling, who by now was at 
 cross-purposes with his party. 
 
 Trade Union membership had been lifting fast dur- 
 ing the previous year (another proof in Creegan's eyes 
 of the Syndicalist advance), the men's war-chests were 
 now filling once more, and even the Parliamentarians 
 had been girding up their loins and were about to 
 embark upon an all-round 8-Hour Day Campaign. 
 Nasty questions had been asked in Parliament about 
 the administration of certain Boards of Conciliation, 
 and a new spirit, under the stimulus of Syndicalism — 
 at least that was what the Syndicalists said — was 
 showing itself amongst the labour representatives at 
 Westminster. There had been rumours indeed that 
 the Party was divided on tactics, a growing section 
 favouring a more militant policy. 
 
 However that might be, Destin knew from his con- 
 versations with editors and with some of the political 
 leaders, that Capital was taking fright. There were 
 two or three momentous questions upon which Labour 
 was concentrating more and more — notably the ques- 
 tion of "difficult places" for miners, for since the de- 
 feat at the Great North-Western Conference the men 
 had been more and more discontented, claiming that 
 
186 DEMOCRACY 
 
 as coal was the motive power that drove the machine 
 of the British Empire, they were entitled to special 
 consideration. 
 
 There was also an 8-hour day for railwaymen ; and 
 above all the question of a sliding-scale standard to 
 keep pace with the ever rising cost of living. The 
 Labour and Socialist papers, and even sometimes the 
 Olympian's columns, were filled with lines of figures 
 comparing prices and wages from year to year, which 
 showed an appalling rise in prices without any corre- 
 sponding rise in wages. 
 
 The Government had even, whilst denying the dis- 
 parity, promised an investigation, to the indignation 
 both of their own supporters and of the Opposition. 
 
 But it was upon "The Right to Work,*' or "The 
 Right to Live" as it was coming to be known, that 
 Labour was concentrating behind all these other 
 schemes. Labour, in a word, was demanding as its 
 right the provision of work or bread, and it was this 
 outrageous demand which the Masters feared more 
 than anything else, both Opposition and Government 
 combining in the division lobby against an amendment 
 to the King's Speech which had this object in view. 
 It was felt that if this right were once admitted, the 
 whole fabric of the competitive system would be under- 
 mined, and it was in order to stave off this demand, and 
 fearing the rising power of Labour, that certain con- 
 cessions had been made and that both the historic par- 
 ties were showing an increased tendency to combine 
 against the common enemy — a phenomenon that re- 
 peated itself in every European country — when some- 
 thing came to rive the Labour forces as the lightning 
 rives the oak. 
 
XII 
 
 THE AGE OF NERVES 
 
 To understand the position of Democracy at this time 
 in Europe, with its phenomena at the time of the Great 
 Peril, it is necessary to trace the story of the society 
 of the time — that society which tended more and more 
 to turn upon the grindstone of the labour that lay 
 underneath it. 
 
 At this moment, Europe was checkered by paradox 
 — ^by concentrated riches and intensive, inimitable 
 poverty cheek by jowl — the palace of the millionaire 
 overlooking the slum of the sweated. It was upon this 
 contrast, and especially in Britain, that Creegan and 
 the other Syndicalist leaders fed, declaring that politics 
 and politicians had failed to change anything, and that 
 the incursion of Labour into Parliament had been 
 unable to effect anything, a declaration that was being 
 made by their fellow-Syndicalists in the Latin coun- 
 tries. 
 
 It was an age of paradox — in which the newspapers 
 of the day were a strange compound of autocracy and 
 democracy — in which schemes for Social Reform took 
 shape in the midst of enormous power-concentration 
 in the hands of the few, and in which, above a steady 
 undertow of reaction, there flowed in all countries new 
 tides of democracy. Side by side with gargantuan in- 
 tellectual achievement and the conquest of matter by 
 
 187 
 
188 DEMOCRACY 
 
 man, there stood unparalleled degradation of mind 
 and body. Fifty millions of organised democracy in 
 Europe were ranging themselves in face of the inchoate 
 and non-resisting armies of the submerged and unor- 
 ganised, led hither and thither by the captains of in- 
 dustry as a counter to the skilled organised workers, 
 upon whom however they were forced to depend for 
 their chief labour-power. 
 
 Even in the midst of wars and rumours of wars, 
 peace movements had never been so numerous and so 
 widespread. The Church, in the trappings of democ- 
 racy, to which it made frantic but unheeded appeal, 
 was engaged in a life-and-death conflict v/ith Science 
 and with Socialism. Paradox was everywhere. The 
 White Race was in the melting-pot. 
 
 At this moment, it was Europe's boast that in the 
 domain of intellect she was supreme. Written broadly 
 across her newspapers and her books was the Pride of 
 Brain, of intellectual achievement, at the moment when 
 millions of her peoples were uneducated and unthink- 
 ing. In the world of science she pointed proudly to 
 the analysis of the atom or the hunting down of the 
 bacillus — in the face of a world where disease was 
 king. In the laboratory, the scientist pursued with 
 blind passion the atom of matter as he pursued the 
 disease germ. In an eternal analysis of the material 
 he saw the salvation of the race and in that analysis 
 won the plaudits of mankind. In the world of industry 
 she boasted the piling up of machine on machine 
 served by the sweating millions whom the machine had 
 mastered, for the European Frankenstein had called 
 into being the Machine, which it could neither control 
 nor stop. The Machine had mastered the Man. 
 
 In the world of literature, her writers pointed with 
 
THE AGE OF NERVES 189 
 
 pride to imaginative deserts from which the Idea of 
 God had been banished, and through the thunders 
 from the pulpits of the priests of the Prince of Peace, 
 there came the trial crash of ingenious and powerful 
 instruments of slaughter, upon which she spent more 
 than half the total of her expenditure upon all the 
 other things of life, goading her democracies into 
 guttural, sullen discontent. 
 
 The Europe of the day — the Europe of paradox — 
 was a Europe in which the triumph of matter was 
 complete. 
 
 The triumph of man over matter had become the 
 triumph of matter over man — the triumph of death 
 over life. 
 
 The reverse of this triumph of intellect to the exclu- 
 sion of the ideal was found in the story of a Europe 
 which had rapidly become a Europe of insanity and 
 nervous decadence. It was as though a stage had been 
 reached in the cold development of intellect to the ex- 
 clusion of the spiritual, when, with the decay of the 
 intuitive faculties, nerve-madness had supervened. It 
 was as though the intellectual process, unvitalised by 
 the spiritual, ceasing to be a bridge from the instinct 
 of the lower animals to the intuition of man, had 
 blinded itself in a cut de sac of matter, something espe- 
 cially true of the Teuton. 
 
 Even the democratic movements of the times found 
 their chief expression in material terms, not only in 
 theory as in what was called "the materialist concep- 
 tion of history," but in objective — the goal of democ- 
 racy, nominally at least, being a food goal and its pol- 
 itics bread and butter politics, hiding the real spirit of 
 democracy, which was something quite other. 
 
 The leading specialists of Europe stood in appalled 
 
190 DEMOCRACY 
 
 curiosity at the waves of insanity which swept over 
 her face. In Great Britain alone the ratio of the known 
 insane had doubled itself within the hand-span of fifty 
 years. Every European country showed this mounting 
 Tower of Babel. 
 
 But outside the known insane, there stood in gibber- 
 ing horror an ever-increasing mass of the imbecile and 
 half-witted. Whole communities and all classes were 
 impregnated with the seeds of madness — with that 
 half-madness which eluded the madhouse because it 
 was "harmless." The cities of the continent had be- 
 come forcing houses for madness, something which 
 crystallised itself in the saying of an international 
 authority — "It is difficult to say who is mad and who 
 not." 
 
 And the thing that stood behind this, the great 
 breeder of madness, was the frenzied competition of 
 the day. Europe had found her god in the god of 
 Competition — a Janus-god with faces of "liberty of 
 the subject" and "individualism." The age was one 
 of nerve-racking competition; a lustful, passionless 
 competition for gold and power, with "speeding-up" 
 as its stimulant. In the ever-rising tide of democracy, 
 the struggle was for power — power — power, for even 
 the democracies had learned their lesson from their 
 Masters — perhaps too well. They were nervous, or 
 "jumpy" as it was called in the new labour-jargon 
 which was developing. 
 
 Looking over the industrial fields of the Europe of 
 that day, one saw only the turning, twisting, thrusting 
 of wheels and cranks — heard only the thunder of those 
 giant machines which, nearly automatic themselves, 
 developing their own brain, had turned the workers 
 who waited on them into automata. For in that age. 
 
THE AGE OF NERVES 191 
 
 as has been said, the Machine had conquered the Man 
 who created it. 
 
 One saw men, women, and children toiling hope- 
 lessly, helplessly, caught in the cogs of this competition 
 where all things were crushed and torn in the battle for 
 the markets. The working-classes of Europe, not 
 only in the increasing, breeding, fermenting slums of 
 the great cities, but in the hovels of the countryside, 
 were living in a foetid squalor which had ceased to 
 impress. One saw the clash of Labour and Capital — 
 the era of great strikes and great combines — the tear- 
 ing, whirling, grinding of millstone against millstone, 
 and between, the tender bodies of the women and 
 children. 
 
 The leading sociologists of the time, where unfet- 
 tered, declared after exhaustive analysis that despite 
 the boast of European civilisation, the standard of her 
 common life had declined and was declining — that 
 democracy was inexorably falling backwards into the 
 abyss from which through the ages it had with such 
 effort emerged. In the schools of Europe, more than 
 half of the children of the people were found to be 
 physically or mentally defective, bred from mal- 
 nutrition and from two other far-reaching and still 
 only half -suspected causes. 
 
 For the thing that stood behind all this nerve- 
 madness and physical decadence — the great breeder 
 of decadence, was Vice, the inevitable reaction from 
 the madness of competition, in which forgetfulness 
 and counter-irritant were sought. In Europe at that 
 time "the vice of sex" dragged itself across every- 
 thing — across the pavements of her streets — across the 
 pages of her literature — ^across the whole of her social 
 life. It was found in the music-hall as in the "picture 
 
192 DEMOCRACY 
 
 palace" — ^the haunts of the over-driven democracy of 
 that time — its results in the hospital as in the asylum. 
 A Vice Commission, called into being in momentary 
 terror of the thing, had declared that at one period or 
 another of their lives the great mass of European males 
 in the cities at least suffered from sexual disease. It 
 was read, wondered at, and forgotten. 
 
 In the most fundamental, the most delicate, of all 
 realms — the realm of sex, romance had been thrust out 
 for sensuality and the intercourse of the spirit for the 
 intercourse of the flesh. Matter was supreme. 
 
 With the sexual vice was enmeshed the places of the 
 lower deeps — the place of the opium den and the 
 chloral fiend, or the nameless wastes of the unnatural, 
 though these places as yet had been reserved for the 
 Masters rather than for the Masses. In every consult- 
 ing room of her cities, in their medical literature, was 
 to be found the story of the drug fiend. The victim of 
 competition found in drugs the momentary forget ful- 
 ness he craved. 
 
 And moving around and through all this was the 
 bath of alcohol in which the European democracies, 
 like their masters, steeped themselves. From the man 
 of social position to the worker in the factory, alcohol 
 was regarded as the great stimulant to work or genius 
 — the sedative of nerve — the killer of worry. True 
 that democracy rising to power had begun to realise 
 the necessity of clearheadedness for the work before 
 it and through its temperance movements was seeking 
 to stem the alcoholic flood. But despite that, Europe's 
 gaols, hospitals, and lunatic asylums were filled to the 
 doors with the subjects of King Alcohol. Alcohol 
 was king — the Mad King. For the nerves of over- 
 driven Europe had to be satiated. 
 
THE AGE OF NERVES 193 
 
 But out of the universal decay were springing the 
 flowers of the new democracy. It was thus that life 
 came out of death — in classes as in nations ; in nations 
 as in races ; in races as in worlds. It was the Spring- 
 Song of the Eternal, finding its expression in the 
 rising of the sap of democracy, rising through the tree 
 of life. 
 
 Throughout Europe there were springing up in little 
 local communities men and women who, sometimes 
 almost inaudible, sometimes unconscious of the part 
 they were playing in the rising of democracy, were 
 making their protest in their day against the material- 
 ism of the time. Unknown these — the pioneers of the 
 future — they did their work, and when they had done 
 it, passed into oblivion. Unheralded they came — ^un- 
 honoured and unsung they laid down their earth-work 
 and passed onwards. 
 
 Passing from these local communities, one found in 
 the wider field of the city or county or province other 
 and stronger spirits, coordinating the work of those 
 others, who, giving it new inspiration, sent it forward 
 to a greater stage, where it was taken up by men and 
 women who were national figures, who in their turn 
 cooperated with men and women of their kind across 
 the frontiers of the nations, developing what was 
 shaping itself into an international protest of Democ- 
 racy against materialism throughout the White Conti- 
 nent. Now these movements were passing from the 
 White even to the Brown and Yellow Continents. 
 
 What was especially noticeable at this time was that 
 despite the materialist form of the democratic prop- 
 aganda, there was a steady tendency, and particularly 
 in Great Britain, for the movements of Democracy to 
 take a religious basis. Democracy was fast becoming 
 
194 DEMOCRACY 
 
 a new world-religion, with a central principle taking 
 the place of those other religions with a concrete, an- 
 thropomorphic God, which it was displacing, whilst 
 absorbing in its heart the foundation of all those other 
 religions, divorced from dogma. 
 
 It was to be noticed that the main pivots upon which 
 all these multitudinous movements were turning were 
 two— one the Religious, the other the Social; which 
 under the hammer blows of democracy, in their turn 
 were shown to be but two aspects of the one central 
 axis. 
 
 The European, with his passion for anarchy in 
 thought, had effectually pigeon-holed his various 
 activities. He had divorced Religion from Science — 
 Conduct from Business — and, in particular. Ethics 
 from Politics. It was this last which had aroused a 
 blind protest from Democracy, which, in the spiral of 
 time, under the new impulse, was swinging round to 
 the synthetic. It was the Age of Synthesis — the age 
 of the Breaking Down of Barriers — ^physical, mental, 
 spiritual. 
 
 The turning movement which had begun had a 
 curious fascination — it was the movement of the birth 
 of a new world from the womb of time — a movement 
 in which Democracy was the midwife of the new 
 Society. 
 
 And it was especially in the guise of Social Reform 
 — the war-cry of the new politics— that the new society 
 was showing itself. In the communities, the democ- 
 racy was developing a passion for social reform, was 
 shedding the old individualism as a worn-out garment, 
 and was taking in its place the garment of cooperation, 
 finding in it the hew individualism — ^an individualism 
 
THE AGE OF NERVES 195 
 
 which developed self by selflessness and found its king- 
 ship in service. 
 
 The town councillor, whether Latin, Teuton, or 
 Anglo-Saxon, was finding a new meaning to such 
 commonplace things as lighting, paving, and sanita- 
 tion. The material was seen to be the matrix of the 
 spirit. He was beginning to recognise that the slum 
 produces the slum mind, and that, to use one of the 
 commonest sayings of the time, "the body was the 
 temple of the soul." In such sayings the path of the 
 new democracy had its milestones. 
 
 In every political party in Europe, questions of 
 party-policy and party-advantage were giving way to 
 questions of Social Reform, which was becoming the 
 goal, real or affected, of all parties. 
 
 And through all these bread and butter politics there 
 came again and again the cry of the new democracy — 
 the cry for brotherhood, for understanding. "We are 
 sick of national and international jealousies — throw 
 down the barriers! Let us not work for ourselves 
 alone, but for mankind — throw down the barriers!" 
 Vague yesterday, the cry was taking form out of the 
 European void; was formulating its demands with 
 clearness and decision; was becoming the fury at the 
 feast of materialism. It would not be stifled. It was 
 the voice of the new synthesis. 
 
 Wherever this voice made itself heard, the masters 
 of mankind cowered before it. They fed it with 
 honeyed words — they stopped their ears — ^but still the 
 terrible call came to them, beating through the closed 
 doors of conscience. It was the voice of Democracy, 
 but it was also the voice of Religion — the new religion 
 — the Religion of International Democracy. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE BIG DRUM 
 
 It looked as though Democracy had entered upon its 
 last triumphant march to power. It was stretching 
 its tentacles over the face of the world. Its combina- 
 tions had spread from city to province, from province 
 to nation, and now were becoming International. 
 Already in Great Britain, the transport workers, in- 
 cluding the dockers and railwaymen, with the miners, 
 were federated for combined action against the mas- 
 ters. Trouble with one Union, nay with one man, 
 meant trouble with two millions of men and the paral- 
 ysis of society. "All for each — ^and each for all !'* was 
 the slogan of the new trades unionism. 
 
 Creegan and Destin were jubilant. In these new 
 combinations they saw the coming of Syndicalism — 
 felt the certainty of future victory. Yet these com- 
 binations so far showed no signs of throwing political 
 action overboard. After the strikes of the previous 
 years there had come the reaction, and already the 
 men were being rounded up into the sheepfolds of 
 politics. Yet, despite this labour paradox, there could 
 be no question that democracy was getting more im- 
 patient year by year. The postal workers had threat- 
 ened a national strike and had not hesitated to pit 
 themselves against the Government. These educated 
 proletarians had now banded themselves together into 
 a Postal Federation of six unions, whilst a still bigger 
 
 196 
 
THE BIG DRUM 197 
 
 combination was taking form in the Civil Service, 
 which had now thirteen Unions federated including 
 the Postal Federation itself. 
 
 The men were really driving their leaders before 
 them. The snobbishness of the caste unionism, which 
 in the past had cut off the aristocracy of the highly 
 skilled trades from their fellows, was ceasing to exist. 
 
 And now the Transport Workers, the Postmen, and 
 the Miners had passed national bounds and were linked 
 up into International organisations which had their 
 headquarters in two of the chief continental cities. 
 
 It was the logical sequence of democracy's awaken- 
 ing. All barriers, national and otherwise, were being 
 swept aside. 
 
 Capital, frightened, was organising itself apace. 
 Combination called combination into being automati- 
 cally. In Great Britain there were at this time over one 
 thousand men's Unions, but as Destin had discovered 
 in an analysis he had taken out, there were almost 
 exactly the same number of employers' Unions. In 
 answer to the war-chests of new and combined de- 
 mocracy, an Employers' Defence Union had been 
 formed, which was raising a fifty million pound war- 
 chest to fight the men ; like them, having for its motto 
 — "All for each — and each for all." In this combine 
 nearly four thousand firms were linked up for common 
 action. It was even seeking to steer the ship of state 
 itself, for one of the first demands in its constitution 
 was that it should be consulted by Parliament before 
 any fresh Trade Union legislation was undertaken. 
 
 Now the International combinations of the Men 
 were being met by International combinations of the 
 Masters, for all International jealousies of competition 
 were going down in the welter of the Big Idea. The 
 
198 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Shipping Trust had linked together the shipowners of 
 Great Britain, Germany, France, Austro-Hungary, 
 Russia, and Holland, and were negotiating with the 
 owners of the United States. In their hands they held 
 the shipping of Europe and the lives of five millions 
 of human beings directly or indirectly. Already, 
 understandings, shadowy at the moment, were materi- 
 alising between the Governments of Europe for deal- 
 ing with the rising of the red tide. There were now 
 two Internationals — the Red and. the Yellow — ^the Men 
 and the Masters. 
 
 Yet despite all the master-combinations, it seemed^ as 
 though each blow of the hammers of capitalism welded 
 democracy still more strongly together. Over a million 
 men in Britain had been stampeded into the Unions 
 in one year under the threat of the new combines. 
 Every combine of the Masters called forth a fresh 
 combine of the Men. In Germany as in Great Britain 
 and the other countries, democracy still climbed stead- 
 ily to political power, holding over the head of society 
 the sword of the General Strike. Democracy seemed 
 unstoppable. 
 
 Then there came the little cloud. 
 
 It was a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. Europe 
 had held herself in strained silence for half a century, 
 save for the rumblings of the little volcanic middle 
 states. The deadly order of war ranged itself along 
 the frontiers of the States of Christendom — ^behind it, 
 the furnaces of Moloch glaring the night skies, whilst 
 Princes in Shining Armour, persuaded of their mission 
 of divinity, stalked silently in the noonday, rattling 
 the sword inconsequently in the scabbard to prove to 
 Europe and themselves their preparedness. Behind 
 them, the mass of the democracies had learned to for- 
 
THE BIG DRUM 199 
 
 get — had developed, often in blind unconsciousness, 
 the spirit not so much of anti-nationalism as that of 
 Internationalism. 
 
 In vain had the apostles of nationalism appealed to 
 the feeling of race. The links of the chain of Democ- 
 racy had been and -were being forged, linking country 
 with country. The White labour organisations, tend- 
 ing nationally to more intimate cohesion, had passed 
 as inevitably as the formation .of a crystal to Interna- 
 tional understandings. "The Big Idea" was in the air. 
 Even the scarce-breathing democracy of the Yellow 
 and Brown men was reaching out its browned hands to 
 the White democracy for deliverance from the womb 
 of the travailing East. 
 
 In vain had the captains of industry and war 
 appealed forcefully, often genuinely, to "patriotism," 
 "religion," and "Imperialism." Stupefied but uncon- 
 vinced, the world-democracies watched in dumb sur- 
 prise and indifference the empires in the making of 
 which they had no part but which seemed to have 
 grown as unconsciously as the giant fungus of a night. 
 The average Briton could not have replied to the sim- 
 plest questions as to the geography and ethnography 
 of the British Empire. The material German, despite 
 a more conscious, perhaps more theatrical, pride, was 
 still more concerned with questions of daily bread and 
 internal administration than with Togoland or the 
 malaria-infested regions of the Germany overseas. 
 Teutonic dreams of a great South American Empire 
 left him cold. Beer and bread he asked, or, as it was 
 coming to be known under the rising poesy of democ- 
 racy — "Bread and Roses." 
 
 Democracy in the Latin countries had been drifting 
 to anarchism — to direct action — and, above all, to 
 
200 DEMOCRACY 
 
 anti-militarism. It was the passion of the southern 
 races, impatient of restraint, of the slowness of polit- 
 ical advance. For the previous decade, the Confedera- 
 tion General du Travail in France, like its counterparts 
 in Italy, had been challenging force with force, tramp- 
 ling militarism, and with it, nationalism, in the dust, 
 and saw in the red culotte of the soldier of the Republic 
 the badge of licensed butchery. 
 
 At the antipodes, on the limits of Empire, the de- 
 mocracy of the Englishman had forgotten its Imperial- 
 ism in the economic battle and had climbed triumphant- 
 ly to power. New Zealand, fresh from a quarter of a 
 century of democratic womanhood, turned a deaf ear 
 to the Scarlet Piper. 
 
 In the other corner of Empire, Dutchmen and Eng- 
 lishmen were breaking down the barriers of race-hatred 
 in a common effort against a common enemy. The 
 South African continent had been torn by the labour 
 war in which the Big Stick had been used unsparingly 
 by the joint captains of English and Dutch capitalism, 
 who, in the furnace of the labour struggle, had melted 
 the hates of yesterday. 
 
 In the New World as in the Old, changes both in 
 policies and principles had been taking place. The 
 American Federation of Labour, prime antagonist of 
 independent labour representation, had been gradually 
 yielding to the newer voice — to the voice of labour 
 militant. Its chief, the Hebrew who led his millions 
 as his prototype led the Children of Israel through the 
 deserts of the past, was being challenged by younger 
 and stronger men. The spirit of patriotism appealed 
 to in the North. American Continent by Big Business 
 failed to resurrect itself in the minds of the sons of 
 the Republic Neither a big navy nor a big army nor 
 
/'i THE BIG DRUM 201 
 
 the appeal of the Big Stick had been able to woo or 
 force the inheritance of the White Domination. 
 
 The White Race was urgent for democracy. The 
 little man at the street corner, like the historian of the 
 time, spoke with the Big Idea running through his 
 speech. The Fleet Street penny-a-liner, catching the 
 infection, dipped his pen in the ocean and wrote of 
 cataclysms and tidal waves and revolution. The jour- 
 nals of a conservative yesterday forgot themselves and 
 spoke vaguely of Social Reform — of "the spirit of the 
 time,** and the need for new democratic programmes. 
 In the same issue the current of past controversy ran 
 side by side with the newer current of democratic 
 thought. 
 
 The age, full of contradiction, reflected itself in the 
 press — self-contradiction became, unnoticed, the com- 
 monplace of the day. 
 
 The older political parties were being metamor- 
 phosed in all countries. Brushed forward by the drive 
 of the new democracy, the Liberal Parties of all lands 
 found themselves compelled to reach out to sweeping 
 reforms, or at least to pretend to reach out to them, 
 even sometimes to ally themselves incestuously with the 
 Labour Parties. Their historic opponents in all coun- 
 tries showed new tendencies, confused, contradictory, 
 now inclined to fuse with the more conservative of the 
 Liberals — ^now tending to develop new and democratic 
 programmes of their own. 
 
 The parliaments of the world, at least in the more 
 democratic countries, were fast developing into auction 
 marts where party auctioneers with big voices and en- 
 raged imagination, declaimed to the public the merits 
 of the goods in the shop-window. "Window-dressing" 
 became an accepted phrase in the political vernacular 
 
202 DEMOCRACY 
 
 of the time and was regarded as a legitimate perform- 
 ance. 
 
 And behind, Demos, insatiable. The watchdogs of 
 democracy having tasted power, ever demanded more. 
 "Sops to Cerberus" became the engrossment of the 
 politician, who now began to find that no longer could 
 Demos be satisfied with machine-changes of adminis- 
 tration — dazzled by promises — ^but clamoured for one 
 thing, and only one thing. Bread. Now he was even 
 demanding Roses, asking engarlandment to crown his 
 new-found power-drunkenness. . . . 
 
 Away in the spaces of middle Europe there came the 
 tap of a drum. In a moment, the nerves of Europe 
 had tautened, expectant. The drum-tap echoed across 
 the barriers of the nations. A single beat. Then a 
 silence. 
 
 Autocracy, its eyes bloody, sat up, waiting. 
 
 Democracy, self-satisfied, set itself down again to 
 peaceful, capture of power by orderly progress. Com- 
 placently, it looked upon its international understand- 
 ings — its growing voting power — the failure of its 
 enemies to dam back the red flood. But again there 
 came the beat of the drum — ^beaten from one of the 
 little peevish middle states — a state of no importance. 
 But this time the drum-beat came sharper, ever sharper, 
 in the staccato of anger. 
 
 In a moment the armies of Europe had stiffened to 
 attention before the blinded eyes of the Democracy. 
 The sun set redly upon the gleam of bayonet 
 Democracy was aroused. 
 
 Under the iron heel of Moloch the proletariats ran 
 hither and thither in the ant-heap of Europe. Meet- 
 ings sprang up in a night — meetings of protest — 
 
THE BIG DRUM 203 
 
 meetings that screamed incoherently whilst the sword 
 rang from the scabbard — that could scarce be heard 
 over the rattle of the drum which was rising, ever 
 rising. In every European capital, democracy, protest- 
 ing, inchoate, murmured in generalities against the 
 war-Moloch. But still that terrible drum beat insist- 
 ently on its ears, stifling, drowning. 
 
 In brute indifference, the war beast clambered out 
 of chaos. The captains of red battle, ready from a 
 boot strap to a shell, smiled contemptuous at the pro- 
 test of impotent democracy, which without war policy, 
 without leadership, found itself drowning in the beat 
 of the drum, which had now risen into a litany of hell, 
 through which the priests intoned their prayers for 
 victory to their national gods. 
 
 And through it all the crashing of national boundary, 
 the breaking of treaty, the ruthless crushing of a 
 little people, came to the ear of puzzled democracy. 
 The armies of Europe were moving on the fron- 
 tiers. The brassy call of Moloch went forth to help- 
 less democracy, demanding cannon food. And still 
 the drums of war raised their horrid cadence, pounding 
 out reason and thought. 
 
 Then the Democracy, blinded with anger against the 
 Masters of War, began to "see red." Confused by 
 the beating of drum and the blare of trumpet ; blinded 
 by the gleam of weapon ; remembering old lessons long 
 since forgotten, the traditions of ten thousand years 
 rose up and sent the blood beating headlong through 
 its arteries. 
 
 In a flash, the levelled barriers had been erected. 
 Europe was a series of closed fastnesses from the ram- 
 parts of which the flags of nationhood reared them- 
 selves, as the red flag of revolution fluttered down- 
 
204 DEMOCRACY 
 
 wards. The International was being pounded to frag- 
 ments under the beating of the big drum. 
 
 And now, the beating of the drum was mingled with 
 the crack of rifle and the dice-box rattle of machine 
 gun on the frontiers as the nations grappled. 
 
 The .world was to learn its lesson — the lesson that 
 the tie of the country was the closest, most indissolu- 
 ble, of all ties— closer than that of parent and child — 
 of friend and friend— of husband and wife. Love of 
 country was greater than love of woman. 
 
 The thing that men called "patriotism" — something 
 unrealised, intangible, yesterday, became to-day the 
 only reality. It needed the Internationalism of the 
 time to bring it out — the red, white and blue of the 
 tricolour and of the Union Jack and the eagles of Slav 
 and Teuton limning themselves against the scarlet of 
 the International. The International had to learn its 
 lesson over again. 
 
 This was the rising of that other red tide, lifting as 
 the other sank. The call of the blood was more in- 
 sistent than the call of the race. It was against civilisa- 
 tion as against ethic. It flaunted itself in the face of 
 religion as in the face of the intellect. It was Intuition 
 — the intuition of the Stone Age— of primitive tribal 
 man — that intuition which passes all barriers, reaching 
 back through the mists of the years to the fount of life 
 itself — that intuition which marked the first differ- 
 entiation, the first individualism, of the race — some- 
 thing as impalpable as the rays of the sun or the mists 
 of the morning and as powerful, as all-pervading. 
 
 At this call, the husband forgot his wife and child — 
 the priest forgot his robes. The mother forgot her 
 child — the harlot her trade. The scholar forgot his 
 philosophy — the theologian his God. 
 
THE BIG DRUM 205 
 
 The dude of yesterday became the warrior of to-day 
 who "scorned delights and lived laborious days." The 
 pasty clerk, who yesterday trembled at his master's 
 voice, stood to-day unmoved where the high-explosive 
 burst in the red mist of death. The man of millions 
 flung down his money bags and sought death at a 
 crown a day. The epicure who yesterday fumed at his 
 caviare and Chablis, to-day munched his stinking 
 "tommy" with joy. Editors threw down their pens 
 and took up the sword. Dukes donned overalls in the 
 workshops of the nation and took their wages meekly. 
 Nations found their souls in sacrifice. 
 ! The traditions of the centuries were in the melting- 
 pot of Moloch, something then unsuspected, and only 
 realised when, in the months that followed, politicians 
 wiped out competition with a sweep of the arm; the 
 Master had his profits limited by law; and the State 
 controlled the factory with its master and its man — 
 body and soul and bench, to secure national efiiciency. 
 It was only in the long afterward that the-man-in-the- 
 street sensed dimly the new world created by the genius 
 of war, when the newspapers called for the institution 
 of Socialism — for Democracy in being — a, democracy 
 in which duke and dustman, king and coal-heaver were 
 but units in the national machine; demanding a roll- 
 call for national service — for cooperation — the roll- 
 call that was to have preceded the Cooperative Com- 
 monwealth of the Socialist dream — ^now to usher in the 
 Commonwealth of War. 
 
 Democracy destroyed Democracy — ^national democ- 
 racy, international. This was that other red democracy 
 —the democracy of war. It was the final paradox. 
 
 In vain did Creegan and Destin now, in the first days 
 of war, try to make head against the rising storm. In 
 
206 DEMOCRACY 
 
 vain did they and their fellows raise their voices above 
 the scream of the maddened crowds: The beating of 
 the drum drowned them — and left them. The Syn- 
 dicalists of yesterday, the arch-militarists, became the 
 frantic nationalists of the day. Not only in the Latin 
 but in the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon countries, their 
 leaders had flung themselves into the firing line, yield- 
 ing up their lives with a smile on their lips and hatred 
 in their hearts. In a week, the work of a hundred 
 years had gone down. 
 
 Creegan, broken, despairing, sulking, turned his back 
 on the movement. The leaders of Democracy who 
 still held to their Internationalism hung their heads 
 and felt that all was over. The Internationalists of 
 yesterday who had declared that the International was 
 greater than the nation, now branded the dwindling 
 minority against the war as traitors, and like Herodias 
 of old demanded their heads on a charger. 
 
 The barriers of class as of caste went down under 
 the drum-beat. Liberal, Conservative, and Socialist 
 occupied the same platform — their presses gave the 
 same message, urging the masses of workers to fight 
 in the cause of culture and civilisation against their 
 fellows, who in other countries listened eagerly to a 
 like appeal. "Culture and Civilisation*' became the 
 battle-cry of the European democracies as Internation- 
 alism had been the day before. 
 
 Destin, for the moment broken under the stroke of 
 fortune, after the first rush was past, lifted his head 
 again. The brutal, stubborn, persistent spirit rose 
 once more in him as it had always risen. Defying the 
 authorities and the people of the time, he threw him- 
 self into the tiny movement which was trying to make 
 headway against the tide of war. Now hounded at 
 
THE BIG DRUM 207 
 
 the street corner, now threatened with prosecution, 
 travelHng through the length and breadth of the coun- 
 try, he found around him a nucleus of pacifists who 
 refused to be pacific. 
 
 He was now the real head of the remnants of the 
 Syndicalist movement, which however for the moment 
 was linking itself with the little band of politicals 
 and even of Liberals who had taken up the anti-war 
 attitude. His name, known fitfully in the previous 
 years, again loomed on the posters of Fleet Street — in 
 irony — in condemnation — in frank contempt. He was 
 held up before the nation as Creegan had once been 
 held up, as the incarnation of helpless democracy. In 
 the same column was laid to his door the lives now 
 flying out on the frontier. He it was who was stopping 
 the quick progress of the war. He it was who made it 
 impossible for England to be victorious over her ene- 
 mies. He became the Jesus Christ of the anti-militarist 
 movement. The people who followed him were cranks 
 and dreamers. Even democracy itself condemned 
 them. But Destin, over all, was the despised of the 
 people. He had no power, yet he was accredited with 
 limitless power. Always demanding a concrete figure, 
 the Anglo-Saxon mind saw in him the head and front 
 of the offending. 
 
 Now he was blasphemously trying to make anti- 
 militarism a kind of religion. He was preaching that 
 all war was murder, to the slogan of the new faith — 
 "War against War!" In vain was it thrown at him 
 contemptuously that the arch-apostle of French anti- 
 militarism had surrendered to patriotism and was now 
 in the firing line — in vain were the anti-militarists of 
 the Slav races shown also to have forgotten an aca- 
 demic Internationalism in the call of country and civil- 
 
208 DEMOCRACY 
 
 isation. Destin held his way, not a little dismayed and 
 not a little proud. He also was a crucified one. 
 
 Yet he had his moments of depression when all 
 seemed useless. 
 
 There was the day in Hyde Park where, despite 
 police regulation, the Syndicalists had called a war 
 protest meeting and where droves of inflamed young 
 men had turned up "to see the fun," where Destin 
 found himself facing a whitey bobbing mass of faces, 
 all agog and slavering with playful cruelty. He looked 
 so impotent there in the heat of the summer afternoon 
 that even the constables, whose helmets dotted the 
 crowd, forebore to interfere. 
 
 At this time Destin was exhausted. His face, whit- 
 ened and drawn, showed the story of the previous 
 month. His nerves were fighting mad. Cool enough 
 generally, he had, as Wildish put it, "gone past him- 
 self." 
 
 As he faced the mass of faces, the old sureness of 
 Trafalgar Square was gone, and in its place, for the 
 first time in his life, there was fear of the brute before 
 him, mingled with a sort of madness to throw himself 
 into the jaws of the animal and have it over. Hitherto 
 he had always controlled the mob — ^now for the first 
 time like a wild beast tamer who has lost his nerve, he 
 felt that it was beginning to control him. 
 
 Wildish was to be the other speaker, but at the hour 
 of the meeting, Wildish had not come, and as he knew, 
 Wildish with his fearlessness and humour was the one 
 man in England who could finish a difficult dangerous 
 meeting of this kind satisfactorily. That meant at 
 least half an hour's holding of the brute at bay, for he 
 well knew he could not depend upon police protection. 
 His meeting was lawless. He was outside the law. 
 
THE BIG DRUM 209 
 
 As the time went on, and the clamour around him 
 rose under the heat of the sun, his eye vainly searched 
 the gates of the Marble Arch for his colleague. His 
 thoughts began to wander. In a moment the crowd 
 before him had sensed his impotence, and the ironical 
 cheers had turned into jeers with an undertone of 
 something else. Destin smiled down at them, but it 
 was no longer his old serene smile, but a flurried, har- 
 ried contortion. 
 
 Then, as the growl of the crowd had risen to a snarl, 
 he caught sight of Wildish, who was forcing his way 
 through the crowd at the side of the platform. The 
 crowd at that moment began to sway — ^to sway in the 
 sickly movement he knew so well — the sway before the 
 rush. It was at this moment that he held himself up 
 to a supreme effort, determining to finish the meeting 
 then and there. Already he had checked the move- 
 ment beneath him, when he felt himself dragged back- 
 wards. There was a scream in his ears and a dense 
 mass of bodies, soft and steamy, with hoofs hard and 
 crushing, passed over him. 
 
 He struggled for a moment and then was conscious 
 of an opening in the crowd whilst a space gradually 
 cleared itself about him. It was in this moment, 
 struggling to hold his senses, that he was dragged to 
 his feet and heard coming from above him a clear 
 strong voice. 
 
 Standing on the platform, her head bared, stood the 
 Green-eyed Girl, her eyes flashing surely upon the 
 crowd beneath, which was gathering itself for another 
 rush. In burning, clear, accents, the brogue came 
 strongly to him — "Is it men that ye call yourselves? 
 Perhaps you would try and rush a woman ? Perhaps 
 you would like to push me off the platform and trample 
 
210 DEMOCRACY 
 
 me in the dust of the earth. You dirty, pitiful cow- 
 ards!" 
 
 The crowd was moving uneasily. 
 
 "Come on, you cowards!" came the voice over his 
 head. The slender boyish figure had drawn itself up, 
 the little hands clenched surely, on the platform edge 
 until the knuckles stood out whitely. The crowd was 
 silent. It was moving, but this time away from the 
 platform, whilst through it passed the levers of con- 
 stables with their irresistible — "Move on there — ^move 
 on there." 
 
 Somebody took him outside the Marble Arch gates 
 to a taxi-cab. He found himself sitting opposite the 
 Green-eyed Girl, her face white as his ovm. The taxi 
 pulled up quickly. In a dream he passed into his room 
 and saw himself in the glass, his coat flapping down- 
 wards where it had been torn, a thin stream of blood 
 hardening at the corner of his mouth. He sat there 
 stupidly, alone. 
 
 The door opened. The girl came into the room, a 
 little drawn, her mouth tightened, but the eyes shining 
 green and quenchless as ever. 
 
 He did not think of offering her his thanks, though 
 he knew it was she who had taken the platform at the 
 critical moment, holding the crowd until the police 
 could get to work. 
 
 "This is the end," he said, smiling sadly at her. 
 
 "No," said she, "it is the beginning," and she smiled 
 back at him inscrutably. 
 
 His bleeding mouth and blackened eyes she ignored 
 as something that was part of the struggle — inevitable 
 and not to be talked about. 
 
 "What are you going to do now ?" she asked. 
 
 "What can I do ? What can any of us do ? Creegan 
 
THE BIG DRUM 211 
 
 is sulking — we are without a head — without beginning 
 and without end. I don't even know that we trust our- 
 selves. The nationalists have been too strong for us. 
 Even the Government doesn't bother its head about us 
 — we are too weak and contemptible," He threw out 
 his hands despairingly. 
 
 "So that is how you take it?" she said. 
 
 He looked into the eyes that looked at his. And as 
 he looked he saw humour, contempt, assuredness — ^all 
 running through the greens and yellows — for two tiny 
 spots of yellow had come into them. 
 
 "What!" he said. "Do you mean to say that you 
 haven't given up hope?" 
 
 "Given up hope? What do you mean? I never had 
 any. You remember what I said to you the first day 
 we met — The democracy is mad, and good and bad 
 and weak, and the surest thing in the world and the 
 most uncertain.' " 
 
 "What do you think now ?" 
 
 "I think, when this war has spent itself, and the 
 blood-spilling has cleared the brains of Demos, there 
 is going to be a recoil. I think the swing of the pendu- 
 lum must come, and that there will be men's work for 
 men and women's work for women. At least, as you 
 know, every woman's proletarian organisation in 
 Europe has kept its head and declared against war. 
 There has been no exception. We are living in the age 
 of woman, and woman is coming to her own after the 
 war." 
 
 The boyish figure was leaning forward, with a tiny 
 wrinkle between the broad clear brows and the high 
 forehead. 
 
 "But that time is not yet," she added. 
 
 "Will you help me?" he asked. 
 
212 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "I will always help you if you will let me/* she 
 said simply. 
 
 She had drawn closer to him and looked into his 
 eyes strangely — fleetingly. 
 
 He looked back at her steadfastly. It was as though 
 he had heard the echo of something in her voice — 3. 
 lesson learned long since and forgotten. It was the 
 echo of bells in a far-off summer evening — of many 
 things half -remembered. There came to him the feel- 
 ing that all this had happened before, somewhere, long 
 ago — ^as though he had passed through the magic door 
 of yesterday. 
 
 But in that moment of passing, it was as if a veil had 
 been drawn away and he saw that the girl was won- 
 drous fair. He had always thought of her as an "in- 
 tellectual,** and though never unfeminine, still some- 
 thing hard and boyish. Now he caught the soft flush 
 of the ivory skin — the eyes and mouth that had soft- 
 ened and the beauty of the red-black hair that framed 
 the face — the face of a woman he had not seen before. 
 Even the lines of the figure had softened, and the 
 gentle rounded bosoms showed themselves faintly un- 
 der the stuff of the close fitting dress. 
 
 The woman that stood before him, her lips parted, 
 was another woman to the woman who had so often 
 angered him and whom he had distrusted and even 
 hated. 
 
 He was about to rise to his feet, curious of this new 
 revelation, wondering and confused, searching the face 
 of the girl before him for the thread of the forgotten 
 lesson, when there was a movement of silk and some- 
 thing had thrown itself at his feet 
 
 In that moment the thread of memory was broken. 
 
THE BIG DRUM 213 
 
 It was Vesta Craven who, finding the outer door 
 open, had entered unannounced. 
 
 "My poor Denis. . . ." The voice came with a 
 thrill underneath it. Destin stared at the fresh, sweet 
 figure — stupefied. 
 
 "I heard all about it in the Park. I came to the 
 meeting late and . . . er . . . Mr. Wildish told me, 
 so I .hurried here straight away. Have they broken 
 you up badly?" 
 
 The rounded arms, the lace sleeves falling back to 
 the elbows, were resting on his knees; the eyes, intent, 
 glancing upwards appealingly. 
 
 Destin was confused, for he knew that the girl had 
 not seen the Green-eyed Girl standing there in the 
 corner behind the door, a queer little smile on her lips 
 — the old, mocking smile which always puzzled and 
 grated on him. 
 
 "Oh it's nothing," he grunted. "There is . . . er 
 ... I don't think you have met before . . ." He 
 stood up awkwardly to make the introduction. 
 
 Miss Craven had risen to her feet in graceful self- 
 possession. She turned around and met the face of 
 the Green-eyed Girl, which was now expressionless. 
 The little mocking smile had fled. The two girls 
 searched each other out like two fencers about to en- 
 gage. Miss Craven made a step forward with a half 
 gesture to hold out her hand, corrected herself, and 
 bowed a little stiffly. The other girl might or might 
 not have bowed. 
 
 Destin was angry — angry with Vesta Craven — ^he 
 did not know why, but especially angry with the Green- 
 eyed Girl, who, dash it all ! might remember her man- 
 ners. There was no need to insult Vesta, who at 
 least had expressed some sympathy with him in his 
 
214 DEMOCRACY 
 
 damaged condition. He had not thought of it be- 
 fore. 
 
 "You will let me get some water and bandages . . . 
 Denis?" she lingered a moment on the name, which 
 she spoke like a challenge. 
 
 Miss Craven's eye was a little hard — ^her old sure- 
 ness a little forced. 
 
 Destin was about to refuse, but already she had gone 
 to the bell and called the landlady, with whom she dis- 
 appeared, after first glancing at the other girl. 
 
 "Dash it all!" said Destin a little rudely— "you 
 might be polite to her. . . . She means well," he added 
 half apologetically, as he caught the smile in the other's 
 face. 
 
 "She means too well," said the Green-eyed Girl. 
 "That is the trouble." 
 
 "Surely you're not . . ." he was going to say "jeal- 
 ous," but the word sounded too brutal and intimate, 
 so he changed it for "angry" — "surely you're not 
 angry because a friend acts the angel of mercy?" 
 
 "It is because she acts the angel of mercy that I 
 don't care about her," said the girl with simple direct- 
 ness. It was that occasional baffling directness which 
 so often non-plussed and angered him. 
 
 She was putting on her hat. 
 
 "You know my trouble is that I am not sympathetic 
 enough. Miss Craven will see to your wounds — it is 
 her mission in life." 
 
 She walked out of the room after nodding coolly 
 and a little sadly to Destin, who by now was very 
 angry. He half followed her to the door, but checked 
 himself as it closed in his face. 
 
 After all, she could go. She always unsatisfied him. 
 Why couldn't she be a little feminine — ^he was going 
 
THE BIG DRUM 215 
 
 to say "womanly," but somehow that did not seem 
 to fit her. 
 
 Vesta Craven came in, her sleeves rolled back, the 
 landlady's apron caught behind picturesquely. She 
 seemed nervous as she entered, but recovered herself. 
 
 As she made him take off his torn coat and collar 
 in frank comradeship, and bathed his face and neck 
 over a basin, and bound up a rather deep wound on 
 his head after washing it, Destin felt unbearably angry 
 — and a brute. After all, the girl was doing what she 
 could. Yet the touch of her cool fingers repelled him 
 — once they thrilled him. 
 
 But as the process of washing and bandaging went 
 on, he felt the old thrill come back again. There was 
 that fragrance which enveloped him, which seemed to 
 come from her body. The touch of the slender dex- 
 terous fingers was cool and grateful. 
 
 As she bent down close to his head to examine the 
 knot she had made, in a fit of impulse he drew the 
 dainty, proud little head down on his shoulder and 
 kissed the soft, cool cheek. 
 
 "Did you mean that . . . Denis?" Vesta's voice 
 had never sounded like that before. 
 
 Something passed before his eyes — ^something blind- 
 ing but intoxicating. He surrendered himself to it. 
 
 "Of course I meant it," he said. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE DIVINE RIGHT 
 
 Things were happening inside the Trade Unions. 
 
 At the beginning of the war, unemployment rose 
 fraction by fraction. The unemployment money 
 poured out. Day by day the officials saw the golden 
 stream go without any return. 
 
 War, the highwayman, was holding a pistol to the 
 head of Demos and demanding not only his money but 
 his life, for the Trades Unionists, who were the back- 
 bone of England's new armies, were being shot down 
 like pheasants in the battues of the frontier. 
 
 Destin drove this home with all his force. This was 
 what war brought the democracy. War meant the 
 death of organised labour. Would it not come out of 
 its nightmare and see that the enemy was inside, not 
 outside, its gates? Already, the man despised the day 
 before was beginning to be heard, when there was a 
 transformation. 
 
 The mounting figures of unemployment were held. 
 Then they began to decline, until, as Destin himself 
 knew from the statistics of thirteen of the principal 
 unions of the country, in eleven of them there was 
 scarcely a man out of work. It was only the "luxury 
 trades" which were hard hit. 
 
 The thing was incomprehensible. It pricked the 
 balloon of Socialist economics. 
 
 As he began to look into the causes, it burst upon 
 216 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT 217 
 
 him that with the volunteering for battle of hundreds 
 of thousands of workers who were withdrawn from 
 the labour market, more work was left for those be- 
 hind. Then the war contracts began to pour in. 
 Powder, steel, food, khaki — all had to be provided for 
 the men at the front, and the wear and tear of war had 
 to be made good. Every time a British battleship was 
 sent to the bottom, it meant high wages in the uncon- 
 scious ranks of the Engineers and Shipbuilders, for it 
 had to be replaced, and replacement meant work. The 
 shipyards were working day and night. War was 
 proving, as the militarists had always said, a blessing, 
 not a curse. 
 
 In vain did Destin try to make headway with his 
 peace propaganda. He was laughed to scorn. There 
 were the facts — in the face of the facts, those facts 
 always beloved of the democracy, he was powerless. 
 Everybody was laughing at him — ^his audiences — the 
 police, who treated him with tolerant and smiling 
 good-nature. 
 
 Democracy was even being officially recognised 
 through war, for a Coalition Government of all parties 
 had been formed, in which the plums of office had been 
 thrown to the Labour leaders. The truce which had 
 been concluded between Capital and Labour, every day 
 grew more permanent. The Unions had now volun- 
 tarily abandoned "the right to strike," after consulta- 
 tion with the Government chiefs, who had taken 
 Labour into their confidence in a series of joint con- 
 ferences. Some of the labour leaders had even agreed 
 to a sort of compulsory labour on war munitions, en- 
 forced by a semi-military control, and were now dally- 
 ing with conscription. 
 
 "God Save the King" had been sung in the House 
 
218 DEMOCRACY 
 
 of Commons, led by a one-time irreconcilable labour 
 leader, and as the casualties continued to roll up from 
 the Continental battlefields, the blood spilled flowed 
 over friend and foe alike, fusing them in a common 
 baptism — the baptism of blood. Labour leaders gave 
 their sons to the war, and with each sacrifice in a 
 common cause eroded the landmarks of class. Were 
 they not fighting for democracy itself ? 
 
 One of them, a prominent pacifist and lay preacher 
 in* the temples of Nonconformity, had made the fa- 
 mous "Graves of our Forefathers" speech, in which, 
 the tears streaming down his cheeks, standing as he 
 said, upon the graves of his fighting ancestors, he 
 called down vengeance upon the common enemy, and 
 demanded compulsory military service and the ending 
 of the class- war. 
 
 The thrash of the drum went on. The war-storm 
 had not yet reached its full height. As call after call 
 was made by the war-captains for more men, demon- 
 strations of patriotism, ever more intense, arose. It 
 was at this time that the sign — "More Men Wanted !" 
 appeared, in a certain street of infamy, in the bedroom 
 windows of those nationless women, who, like their 
 sisters, found themselves swept up by the common 
 flood of patriotism. 
 
 But the appetite of the War-Moloch grew as it fed. 
 Things that had once been men were now coming back 
 to fill the highways and bye ways of England. In the 
 grave of the near front, arms and legs protruded from 
 the distended earth, flatulent and noisome. But still 
 the cry came — "More Men Wanted!" 
 
 Compulsory Service was in the air. Even some of 
 the labour leaders, the anti-conscriptionists of yester- 
 day, now urged conscription — though they side-stepped 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT 219 
 
 the name. At last the measure was swept through 
 ParHament. For the demand was still for "More 
 Menr 
 
 When the war-wave had topped its height, breaking 
 whitely upwards in the night that was gathering over 
 Europe, and Destin was at last beginning to lose all 
 hope, silenced in the thunders of the guns and of the 
 big drum, War, the dramatist, loosed his curtain. 
 
 It was at the moment when the lines of men writhed 
 serpent-like in a death-grapple on the frontiers, and 
 when the war looked like continuing indefinitely, that 
 something snapped away back there in the welter. At 
 the moment when the struggle seemed interminable, 
 and the exhausted peoples were putting forth still 
 greater and final efforts, gold, not steel, decided the 
 war. 
 
 Europe was hushed. The boom of the last gun died 
 away in the graveyard of the Continent, echoing over 
 the valleys and plains where a whitened hand raised 
 itself despairing from its half -dug grave as though 
 in protest. The armies of Europe sank down ex- 
 hausted. 
 
 Then it was discovered that the war had settled 
 nothing. It had bound a tyranny, but it had loosed a 
 brood of new problems to be fought out in future 
 wars. The peace terms were signed. A paean of 
 praise ascended from the churches — drowning the 
 voiceless chorus of the widowed and fatherless. 
 
 The armies of men poured back to the blare of 
 trumpet and waving of flag. Then they looked around 
 them and went into the labour market for their work. 
 
 But the work was not there. 
 
 The commercial machine had stopped under the 
 stresses of war. In vain did the hungry millions 
 
220 DEMOCRACY 
 
 clamour for work and bread. There was no work and 
 no bread. The Government, already warned of the 
 danger, put into operation some half-hearted schemes 
 of relief. But still the chorus came, insistent — "We 
 want bread — we want work!" 
 
 Dumb, fearing, the heads of Government held them- 
 selves silent before the rising appeal. The workless 
 had now taken fire. The waves of rebellion had lapped 
 the Trade Unions and passed over them. Millions 
 were out of work. Millions were demanding bread. 
 
 It was the chance of the Syndicalists. Creegan came 
 out from his hibernation under the warm rays of the 
 rising sun of rebellion, his lethargy gone, aflame and 
 impatient. 
 
 The papers as a whole were silent. Not so the 
 Meteor, which flamed through the newspaper firma- 
 ment, astonishing friend and foe by its espousal of the 
 cause of Labour, and picturesquely demanding justice 
 for "the broken in our wars,** in terms as unmeasured 
 as those of the Syndicalists themselves. In fact, for 
 the moment, there was a kind of subtle alliance between 
 Creegan*s men and their old foe, with a third and still 
 more curious ally — ^the Craft-Platonists. 
 
 The Craft-Platonist Socialists, something like first 
 cousins to the Syndicalists, were a new and fashionable 
 off -shoot from the Craft Socialists, who in their turn 
 had developed from the Platonists — a middle-class and 
 aristocratic body on the extreme right of the move- 
 ment. It was the sectarian tendency of arm-chair 
 Socialism to hair-splitting, parallelling the splits in the 
 religious bodies. 
 
 Nobody, including themselves, seemed to know 
 exactly what they wanted, though, under the leader- 
 ship of Damascene, they seemed, like the Craft-Social- 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT . 221 
 
 ists from whom they had broken away, to want every- 
 thing taken over by the craftsman, as in the Guild 
 system of the Middle Ages — the coal mines by the coal 
 miners, the railways by the railwaymen, and even the 
 studios by the artists — all in some way as yet not ex- 
 plained, to be administered for the benefit of the gen- 
 eral public. Unlike the body from which they had 
 split, however, the one thing they did want was that 
 the transition of society from the capitalist to the guild 
 system should find its passage in bloody murder and 
 sudden death, a consummation which they set out with 
 picturesque violence. 
 
 Most of their adherents they drew from the study 
 and the studio — ^none from the ranks of the workers, 
 for whom they had a sublime love, which was returned 
 with a sublime contempt . . . when the workers knew 
 anything about them. 
 
 The Government officials professed no knowledge of 
 these things and shut their eyes and ears to the grow- 
 ing thunder in the streets — to the lightning that ran 
 along the ground. But Creegan, like Destin, felt that 
 all this agitation needed a head to give it signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 Finally Creegan suggested that they should take the 
 Victoria Hall, the one hall in London which ever 
 made the Government listen, and which held over ten 
 thousand. The difficulty was that the proprietors 
 would sooner cut their throats than lend it for such a 
 purpose. 
 
 Then Destin had an inspiration, and suggested that 
 they should call in the Meteor. So once more he found 
 himself in the whirl of the wheels in Bethlehem House, 
 treading the familiar corridor, and finding himself in 
 the presence of the man with the grey eyes. 
 
222 DEMOCRACY 
 
 As he unfolded his proposal to the man before him, 
 he was not conscious of the flicker of an eyelash. He 
 would have thought he had failed did he not know the 
 school of Bethlehem House, where all emotion, save 
 gargantuan, was forbidden. "You will hear from us" 
 was the editor's only reply. 
 
 And they did hear from them. The Meteor took the 
 hall, "for a political meeting," without specifying par- 
 ticulars, and with its reputation and the £1,000 guar- 
 antee paid down, got it without difficulty. 
 
 In twenty- four hours, London was flooded with red 
 posters announcing the great meeting, the speakers 
 being Creegan, Destin, Wildish, and Damascene, who 
 with difficulty had been cajoled into speaking so that 
 the Craft Socialists might be represented. But the 
 greatest difficulty had been with Creegan, who for a 
 long time refused to go on the same platform with 
 Damascene, but at last yielded to Destines persuasion, 
 who pointed out that his refusal would mortally offend 
 the Craft Socialists, who might be useful later in find- 
 ing the money for the Winter Unemployment Cam- 
 paign. 
 
 The chairman was to be the Duchess of Chillington, 
 of whom Creegan was a particular pet — whether he 
 liked it or not. 
 
 The Meteor, passing all its tradition of unorthodoxy, 
 came out boldly for the men, flaunting its rebellious 
 leaders in the face of the Government. In vain did the 
 proprietors of the hall seek to break the contract — in 
 vain did they offer its letting price as a fine for cancel- 
 ling it. Creegan and the Meteor, an irresistible com- 
 bination, grim and certain, held them to the letter of 
 their bond. 
 
 So it was that on the night of the meeting, Creegan 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT 223 
 
 and Destin had to fight their way from the masses they 
 had led in procession to the hall from Tower Hill and 
 the Embankment, a-bristle with the banners of revolu- 
 tion. As they walked on to the platform half an hour 
 over the time, led by the Duchess in an alarming 
 autumn hat from Paquin, he felt like a fly crawling 
 down there on that crescent of platform, with around 
 him tier on tier stretching into the spiral of the roof, 
 the pinky-grey mass of faces losing themselves under 
 the tented canvas that bellied itself downwards. 
 
 Behind them, the organ boomed out the "Marseil- 
 laise" and the new marching song of the workless — 
 "Bread and Roses." Little shivers of joy and fear ran 
 down his spine as the crowd took up the refrain, but 
 he quickly lost sight of the masses before .him in one 
 little, earnest, pallid face, on the corner of the rows 
 of seats behind the platform. It was the Green-eyed 
 Girl. 
 
 It seemed to him a challenge — ^nor was he comforted 
 by the sight of Vesta Craven who sat, freshly, in her 
 place at the end of the chairs aligned with the speakers' 
 in the front row. 
 
 The Duchess made quite a pretty little introductory 
 speech in which graceful hesitation was blended with 
 attack upon "the class to which I have the misfortune 
 to belong." The constant iteration of "my class" and 
 "your class" became a little painful, and, in spite of 
 the speaker's honesty, a little artificial. 
 
 The audience at any rate felt it that way, though, 
 with the politeness of the people, they did their best 
 to put their aristocratic comrade at her ease. How- 
 ever, behind her, holding a watching brief as "a revolu- 
 tionary political," Bowcher was encouraging with his 
 "Hear-hears," and "Quite corrects," Mathman by his 
 
224 DEMOCRACY 
 
 side crouching a little more over his stick, with a 
 scattering of other middle-class Socialists Destin had 
 met at the Chillington House reunion, which now to 
 Destin seemed to belong to another age. 
 
 Wildish was to be the first speaker — ^the speaker to 
 whip up the meeting. But Wildish was not there. 
 Wildish never was there. So Destin had to take his 
 place. 
 
 As he stepped to the front of the platform, he was 
 greeted by a mass of sound, confused, then finding 
 form, and reverberating around the bowl of the hall. 
 It was his welcome. The welcome of the people to 
 one of its heroes. 
 
 This astonished him, as these things always did 
 astonish him, for despite his self-assertion and even 
 appreciation, there was always a certain naivete which 
 made him surprised at recognition — which inspired and 
 unstrung him together. 
 
 He made his speech, which in its opening was not 
 different to the hundred and one speeches that were 
 being made at this time at a hundred street corners by 
 the orators of Syndicalism. But a difference showed 
 itself as inspiration breathed on the fires of speech, 
 and he passed almost unconsciously from the original 
 subject matter, from the "Bread" to the "Roses" of 
 life. 
 
 It was an experiment. Would the hungry democracy, 
 panting for bread and the substances of life, rise to 
 roses ? For a few minutes he went on in silence, and 
 then, developing his theme, he showed the democracy 
 that the bread-road was but a path to something else — 
 to the uplands where the roses grew. He determined 
 he would show the Green-eyed Girl that the democracy 
 whose materialism and lack of imaginativeness she had 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT 225 
 
 so often despised had in its head poetry as well as 
 bread. 
 
 The cheers which had greeted his opening sentences 
 had died away as he developed his argument. He 
 finished in a close, oppressive silence. Had they un- 
 derstood ? 
 
 His answer came. 
 
 A little Cockney, pale-faced and drawn, had jumped 
 to his feet out of the ruck in front of him. "Roses! 
 roses! roses! Roses! roses! for Christ's sake!" he 
 screamed, incoherent. It was Graney — a new Graney 
 startled out of his Cockaigne saturnity into poetry. 
 
 The cry was taken up about him ; part of the audi- 
 ence had risen. "Roses — roses!" echoed through the 
 hall, found its way muffled to the waiting thousands 
 outside. A woman of the people waved cltunsily a 
 flower, silent, her face set. "Roses — roses!" 
 
 He glanced defiantly at the Green-eyed Girl as he 
 had more than once glanced at her during his appeal. 
 Now she knew. 
 
 But she was not smiling this time. Her face had 
 other lights in it. 
 
 As Destin turned to take his place, he met Creegan's 
 eyes full. There was the glare of hate in them. What 
 had he done? Was Creegan ill? More than once in 
 the previous year he had feared a break-down, and 
 even coming in the procession to the hall his muttering, 
 lowering jowl had startled him. What was the matter 
 with him? . . . But Damascene was speaking now. 
 
 Damascene, as his narhe was called by the chairman, 
 came forward from the scented coterie of the Craft- 
 Platonists, where they lounged gracefully on one side 
 of the platform. In some of them Destin recognised 
 the feline young men he had seen that day at Vesta 
 
226 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Craven's. They seemed to purr their appreciation and 
 exclusiveness as their leader came forward to the 
 centre, his cloak flowing behind him, winging him with 
 crimson. 
 
 Damascene looked perfectly fresh — freshly mani- 
 cured and toiletted generally. It was said that for 
 these occasions Damascene had his face massaged and 
 made up. At any rate, to-night his eyebrows pencilled 
 themselves in two delicate crescents above the black 
 eyes. 
 
 He fixed his crowd with a monocle much as he would 
 have fixed his man if he had been fighting a duel. The 
 man was curiously, unnaturally, popular, for as he 
 came forward, his insolent smile blandly flirting the 
 crowd, it burst into a wild welcome — grimy navvies 
 cheering to him and winning from him a genuine smile 
 of appreciative recognition, and from the young men 
 behind him smiles of rather patronising friendliness. 
 It was one of the whims of democracy which Destin 
 had never been able to understand. 
 
 "Fellow-revolutionists" — ^he began, his smile sud- 
 denly giving place to impassivity. 
 
 "... I only appear on this platform to-night under 
 severe pressure. My friend Creegan will bear witness 
 to that, and I only appear now because, rightly or 
 wrongly, I — er — believe you fellows mean business this 
 time. Now — do you? do you really?" The voice was 
 purring and enquiring. 
 
 "If you will prove it by going out from this hall 
 and killing a king or a couple of kings, or failing that, 
 a brace of lords, I am yours now and for ever. But do 
 something. For God's sake do something. I am tired 
 of words. 
 
 "You know I am a Craft-Socialist. That means I 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT 227 
 
 want you chaps to take what you want. For example, 
 let my friends of the cast-iron corrugated trousers go 
 out from here and take the railways — let the miners 
 go down the mines, and stay there . . . and so on. 
 If you have a fancy to Buckingham Palace — don*t hesi- 
 tate — take it. Eh? Do you understand?" A crackle 
 of laughter ran around the place. 
 
 "Oh, but Fm in earnest. You know you smell so 
 dam dirty, if you'll excuse my saying so, that en route 
 you might take the Turkish Baths and the perfume 
 shops in Piccadilly. In fact it's your unpleasantness 
 that makes me a Socialist. 
 
 "I don't like sweat — do you? I like good dinners — 
 pate de foie gras and Chablis — don't you? I like 
 harmony — something you don't understand yet but 
 which your comrades of the Craf t-Platonists will teach 
 you. 
 
 "Then you know you believe in small wages and big 
 families — I believe in big wages and no families at all. 
 But all these things you can learn from us my dear 
 friends. We are starting our Immoral Instruction 
 classes at Marlington House, our headquarters, in the 
 autumn. I hope you'll come. 
 
 "Then, you know I don't believe in the People. I 
 never did. That is why I am a Democrat. I want to 
 abolish you." 
 
 The crowd was laughing and cheering and jeering 
 in front of him — ^a little uneasy . . . but who would 
 take that devil Damascene seriously? 
 
 "Now let us get this Augean stable business over 
 quickly. Use plenty of blood and brimstone for soap 
 and water. Let us have some burnings and hangings. 
 Don't be bashful. Put up the barricades, and when 
 you've done all this, why, then you can come to me to 
 
228 DEMOCRACY 
 
 lead you to the Land of Pale Desire, where there 
 shall be neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and 
 where man shall not live by bread alone, but by silks 
 and scents and sounds." 
 
 Damascene sat down amidst cheers and jeers and 
 laughter. Did it come from the audience or from the 
 young men who now were cooing over their hero, who 
 with a flirt of his cloak and monocle strolled off the 
 platform like a man who has done his work? 
 
 A figure was standing craggily in the middle of the 
 stage. This time there could be no mistaking the 
 feeling of the mass for the man. The roaring wel- 
 come, mingled with the slogan of an Irish contingent 
 which had marched to the hall with the pipes playing 
 and the green colours flying, could be heard rising un- 
 derneath. 
 
 Creegan's eye lowered, then lifted, and Destin saw 
 a haunting, almost insolent look. It was the gloating 
 of a king over his people. But the look had swung 
 to the corner of the platform. It was a triumphant 
 proof of something to someone. 
 
 Hoarse, almost inaudible, he started. He did not 
 dip his tongue in honey, but in vitriol. He told them 
 that all their sufferings were their own fault and 
 lashed them for the part they had taken in the war, and 
 especially "the blind, leaders of the blind," in Parlia- 
 ment, whom they had followed. 
 
 Accustomed to the man's methods, nobody resented 
 this at the beginning — "it was Creegan's way." But as 
 the minutes went on, there were one or two half-stifled 
 protests. These were ignored by Creegan, who held 
 on his way, thrashing them with a hail of words. But 
 ever through his attack there ran the moral that it was 
 because they had not listened to their Syndicalist lead- 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT 229 
 
 ers and to him in particular that they found themselves 
 in their present position. 
 
 The *T" began to get the upper hand, dominating 
 the "you" and the "we." 
 
 Then came an ugly sneer. "You cowardly whelps !" 
 burst from his lips in a stroke of ungoverned rage. . . . 
 
 " 'Oo are you a-torking to ?" came in a thin stream 
 corrosive as the speaker's own, and a pale little face 
 showed itself as it bobbed from the pack. It was 
 Graney again — grey with rage. 
 
 With an exclamation Creegan had sprung off the 
 platform, scattering the reporters, and had forced his 
 way through and over the table, and into the body of 
 the crowd where he lost himself for a moment, re- 
 appearing with a kicking, writhing something, which 
 he gripped in his powerful claws by neck and trouser 
 seat; carrying it foaming and screaming to the doors 
 which he swung open with a slant of his shoulder, and 
 flung the burden into the corridor. The crash came 
 dully to the hall. He waited for a moment. There 
 was no sound. 
 
 He made his way back to the platform, on which he 
 leaped like a man vaulting a gate. Once more he stood 
 there facing a silent crowd, his face white, the flash of 
 madness in his eyes. 
 
 "Any of you can have more where that came from," 
 he said quietly. Nobody moved. 
 
 The figure cranked itself out and over the thousands. 
 With a forefinger uplifted like a second Isaiah, he told 
 the story of the past, the present, and of that which 
 was to come. He spoke of the divine right of labour 
 and especially of the Syndicalist leaders of labour. He 
 chaunted a paean to power. 
 
 Power was the "Open Sesame** of the Democracy. 
 
230 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "Get power boys — ^power. Worship it. Fight for it. 
 Pray for it. Smash and hew your way into the Seats 
 of the Mighty. You know the words — *He hath put 
 down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the 
 humble and meek.* You were 'the humble and meek' 
 of yesterday — ^to-morrow you will sit enthroned with 
 the angels of God. 
 
 "What is it we want ? Is it a dirty tuppence an hour 
 more in wages? Is it another drink of beer in the 
 twenty- four hours? Is it beasts of the field that ye 
 are? 
 
 "No, boys. We don't want the beer nor the bread. 
 We want the earth ! and I'm going to get it for ye !" 
 He had turned to the corner of the platform — de- 
 fiantly. 
 
 The people stared at the speaker. Was he joking 
 Would he get it for them? A man laughed. 
 
 But the eye of the speaker as it came round to single 
 out the blasphemer showed itself in deadly earnest. 
 
 "I'm going to get it for you!" The words came 
 again, dispassionate as those of a god. 
 
 "Yes, and the moon and the stars if ye will. I 
 know what I know, and I have seen what I have seen. 
 Those things that came to me in the night watches, 
 when you were mouthing patriotism to heaven. Those 
 things that I cannot speak about here." And then, in 
 a final uncontrollable burst — 
 
 "I say these things by right ... by divine right . . . 
 by the divine right of democracy." 
 
 There was a sense of tremendous responsibility be- 
 hind the man's voice. He was giving a message of the 
 
THE DIVINE RIGHT 231 
 
 gods to the people. Again the head swung round to 
 the corner of the platform. Then Destin saw for the 
 first time where it looked — the person to whom the new 
 revelation had been made. 
 
 It was the Green-eyed Girl. 
 
 The mass, imperfectly understanding, caught the 
 words "Divine Right." Creegan might be a bit dotty, 
 but by God ! he was right there. "Divine Right." That 
 was it. And as Creegan ended in one of his whip-lash 
 perorations, saying that Labour could only come to its 
 own through blood and barricade — through the Gen- 
 eral Strike — the same roar came from the crowd that 
 Destin had heard that day in Trafalgar Square in the 
 now dimmed past. But this time it made him uneasy. 
 
 As he was making his way out of the dressing rooms 
 with his fiancee hooked on his arm, telling him how 
 splendid he had looked and spoken with the proud 
 voice of sweet ownership, he heard Creegan's voice 
 raised hoarsely behind a screen. "Yes — ^by God ! I'll 
 give ye not only the earth — ^but the sun, moon, and 
 stars on the top of it if ye but say the word. If it 
 was young Destin that stood in the way I would crack 
 his neck across me knee. Say the word, girl . . . say 
 the word, mavourneen. . . ." 
 
 Denis did not wait to listen. But he knew who the 
 woman behind the screen was as surely as though he 
 had seen her. It was the Green-eyed Girl. Perhaps 
 it was the shock of the thing that set his heart beating 
 so fast. 
 
 As they came out under the arc-lights of the winter's 
 night, a newsboy ran screaming past him. Coming 
 
232 DEMOCRACY 
 
 dimly to him from the flesh-coloured poster that clung 
 to the boy as he ran were the words : — 
 
 West-end Scandal 
 
 Mr. Damascene 
 
 Arrested ! 
 
 The lights swung round him in a flaunting circus 
 for a moment . . . now Damascene. The friends of 
 Syndicalism. 
 
 It was the opening of the winter campaign. 
 
XV 
 
 "paddy mac' 
 
 In the days which followed, Destin was once more 
 confronted by the problem of the Meteor, In the dark 
 days before the end of the war he had been boycotted. 
 Nobody wanted his articles or him. Now, with the 
 rising tide of revolution he found himself once more 
 run after and even courted. 
 
 His "Labour Thermometer" in the Meteor, which 
 had been stopped for the time, was resumed "under the 
 pen of our distinguished young contributor, who is so 
 rapidly making a name for himself with both pen and 
 tongue." Even one or two of the quarterlies had 
 asked him to contribute analytical articles upon the 
 causes of labour unrest, whilst a publisher, with a name 
 that ringed the world, had discussed favourably with 
 him the idea of a book to be called "The New Revolu- 
 tion." 
 
 Fortunately he had saved something in the time 
 before the war, and so was able to hold over the evil 
 days. 
 
 But through all this his father and mother stead- 
 fastly refused to see him. Even the magic of the 
 Meteor's name failed to remove the ban of his mother, 
 who for the first time in her life ceased to place the 
 Bible and the Meteor upon more or less co-equal 
 
 2ZZ 
 
234 DEMOCRACY 
 
 footing as inspired publications, and indeed began to 
 regard the Meteor since its association with Creegan, 
 as "not quite respectable/* He had caught a glimpse 
 of her one day in a Bath chair, the face now shrunken, 
 but the black fiery eyes as untamable as ever, with the 
 mass of snowy hair brushed high above. His father 
 was pushing it, the shoulders curved a little more. The 
 tombstone was following the fate of all tombstones — 
 it was falling over. 
 
 He had the impulse to go up to them, but at that 
 moment his mother turned her eyes with disgust upon 
 a tramp who, looking for cigarette stumps, slouched 
 verminous and brutalised in the gutter. That decided 
 him. His mother was of those who did not change. 
 Perhaps he drew his own will from her. 
 
 In the organisation of the winter unemployment 
 campaign, or "The Right to Live" campaign, as 
 they called it, Destin found his time fully occupied. 
 Creegan was useless for the organisation work, which 
 he himself disliked, but there was nobody else to do 
 it, as Wildish never touched this kind of thing, and 
 indeed now seldom appeared. 
 
 Here it was that he discovered a helper where he 
 least expected it. Vesta Craven had thrown herself 
 into the breach arduously, and was proving both coun- 
 sellor and consoler. She showed, as he had often 
 noticed amongst the women of the movement, a rare 
 talent for organisation, though until the appearance of 
 Pamela Priggle and her friends, this was supposed to 
 be woman*s weak point. 
 
 It was his fiancee who called order out of chaos at 
 
"PADDY MAC" 235 
 
 the new Direct Action headquarters, for the Syndical- 
 ists throughout the country feehng the need for co- 
 hesion and organisation, had taken a rambling old 
 building near the Mile End Road — Fraternity Hall. It 
 was she who marshalled a corps of woman helpers 
 from the ranks of her friends at the Hampstead flat, 
 choosing her women with discretion^ and distributing 
 leaflets, arranging the advertising of the public meet- 
 ings, and dealing with the Syndicalist correspondence, 
 which had outgrown the staff of Creegan's Union, and 
 had been transferred to the new headquarters. 
 
 Every day Destin felt a new respect for the girl 
 who came to him in the leaden hours to soothe and 
 comfort him. It was like a fragrant bath, when dis- 
 couraged and beaten out at the end of the day, the 
 girl whom at one time he rather regarded as a butter- 
 fly, put her arms about him and kissed him into new 
 hope. 
 
 A fresh annoyance had come. Annoyances were 
 always coming. In the first place the Damascene 
 scandal was found to have ugly ramifications, and be- 
 came, quite unfairly associated in the minds of the 
 public, with the Syndicalist movement and shadowed 
 itself in the mind of the-man-in-the-street as a sort 
 of octopus. 
 
 A sub-editor with ideas had chosen the title "The 
 Octopus ScandaF'for his heading, and the tentacles 
 of this grisly monster were found to have reached 
 widely, holding not only Damascene himself but many 
 of Damascene's most intimate friends, and those chiefly 
 Craft-Platonists. 
 
236 DEMOCRACY 
 
 A mud-stoftn burst over the S)Tidicalists from the 
 capitalist papers and even from the political Socialists, 
 who by this time had in Parliament developed a very 
 nice Puritanism, and were now, despite a protesting 
 minority, hob-nobbing not only with their former 
 Tory and Liberal opponents, but with the Churches. 
 
 To add to his worries, the articles of "Paddy Mac" 
 broke out again, but this time in another way. Be- 
 fore, they had flailed unmercifully the political 
 Socialist movement — ^now it was the skeleton of Syn- 
 dicalism they laid bare with the delicacy of a pen which 
 the writer used as a lancet, which tortured Destin 
 with doubt, made Wildish laugh, and drove Creegan, 
 whose temper at this time was uncertain, into a 
 frenzy. 
 
 Now he was reading in his rooms at Cress Street 
 (under his rising circumstances he had promoted him- 
 self to a couple of good rooms on the first floor) the 
 following: 
 
 "Whatever the faults of the political Socialists, who 
 have demolished their enemies by the easy process of 
 being assimilated by them, and who to-day are indis- 
 tinguishable from the greyness of Liberalism, one can 
 turn with even less hope or faith to the new Syndicalist 
 movement led by Mr. Creegan, who is rapidly becom- 
 ing the Christ of Labour, once more taking the posi- 
 tion thrust temporarily, at the end of the war, upon 
 his young lieutenant, Denis Destin, and in which the 
 divine right of the king is replaced by the new divine 
 right — the divine right of the democracy. 
 
 "I wonder if Mr. Creegan really knows the people 
 
'TADDY MAC* 237 
 
 who are associated with him in the march to the New 
 Jerusalem. Does he not know that 'grapes are not 
 gathered of thorns, nor figs of thistles/ to-day any 
 more than two thousand years ago? And does he, 
 himself a pure-souled visionary and dreamer, who we 
 suspect believes himself in communication with the 
 Deity, imagine that the gilt-edged rotces and Satanists 
 who have associated themselves with his propaganda, 
 have anything in common with his aspirations, which, 
 though wild and visionary, are at least pure ? Let him 
 ask his own confessor, who at least can tell him this, if 
 nothing else. 
 
 "But leaving aside the morals of the new revolution, 
 what are we to think of the rank and file who are 
 enrolling in the army? Does not Mr. Creegan, or at 
 least Mr. Destin, who is developing a very old head 
 on very young shoulders, know that the rag, tag, and 
 bobtail who are enrolling themselves so enthusiastically 
 under the banners of revolution were the enthusiastic 
 'blacklegs' of yesterday? Does the latter at least not 
 see that the older, wiser heads of the Socialist-Labour 
 movement like Jim McGraw and the Independent 
 Socialists (and I do not mean the orthodoxists who 
 are to-day anything rather than Socialist) are holding 
 themselves aloof? Do they not know that even if they 
 managed to stampede the harder-headed Trades 
 Unionists into the Syndicalist movement, which they 
 will never do permanently, they are making the most 
 fatal appeal that Labour can make — the Appeal to 
 Force? Is the secret history of the Great North- 
 Western conference to-day so unfresh that they can- 
 
238 DEMOCRACY 
 
 not see what must be the end of Labour's appeal to 
 the Big Stick? 
 
 "Let them remember that those who live by the 
 sword shall die by the sword." 
 
 Destin read and re-read the article, pulled between 
 fear and anger and something else he could not define. 
 That fellow was right after all. Yet he was also 
 wrong. "Those who live by the sword shall die by the 
 sword." Those were the words that burned them- 
 selves into his brain. 
 
 After all, the same thought had come to him many 
 times before. In the debate in the House ; at the Great 
 North- Western conference ; in a hundred public meet- 
 ings. . . . Force. 
 
 What was the Power that Creegan talked of ? Where 
 was the Power? Why, the Power of course was the 
 Big Stick, which Goring and the others waited to use, 
 and of which they, not the Syndicalists, gripped the 
 right end. Where would it finish? 
 
 Yet on the other hand the men who opposed direct 
 action, which after all meant the Big Stick in practice, 
 had failed and failed miserably. Paddy Mac, who 
 he was sure was Kisterling, was right there at least. 
 In his first series of articles he had shown the weak- 
 ness, or worse, of the politicals. Well, if you were 
 not a political, you had to be a direct-actionist. But 
 once the Green-eyed Girl had said there was a middle 
 way — ^that the truth did not lie in either camp. Was 
 she right, too? 
 
 But the thought of the Green-eyed Girl added to 
 his nervousness and uneasiness. She had always made 
 
'TADDY MAC 239 
 
 him uneasy and angry. She, Hke Kisterling, had 
 always been against Creegan's methods. She had 
 affected to be the Superior Person, looking down from 
 the heights of intellect. Yet what did she know — 3, 
 stranger — an onlooker? 
 
 Somehow that did not fit her, for she knew the 
 movement even though she did not understand tactics. 
 He had often seen the same curious contradiction in 
 others — in McGraw for instance. 
 
 Denis had to go down to Bethlehem House that 
 day about some angry letters which had been received 
 by the editor from subscribers who threatened to 
 withdraw their subscriptions because of his last "Ther- 
 mometer" article. He was about to leave when Vesta 
 Craven called for some instructions on her way to 
 Fraternity Hall. He pushed the paper towards her. 
 
 The little fair face flushed with anger as she read 
 the paragraph he indicated. 
 
 "Oh! but it is too shameful!" she said, throwing 
 the paper on the floor and stamping. It was one of 
 the impetuous, fascinating little ways she had devel- 
 oped since their engagement. But in this case it 
 annoyed him — it seemed too futile in face of the 
 article which brought it out. 
 
 "The man ought to be publicly whipped. It is all 
 a pack of lies." Her eyes were burning, her face 
 flushed, the little tendrils of hair that usually lay so 
 close to her neck seemed to crisp themselves. Lately, 
 she had developed a new capacity for resentment. 
 
 "But it is not all lies," Destin said. "There is some 
 truth in it." 
 
240 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "Not a word. Can't you see, Denis, that it is all 
 the malevolent stupidity of that Kisterling, who is in 
 no camp and cannot agree with anybody? I have 
 always suspected him. I'm sure he gets big money 
 for writing these lies against all Socialists. ... It 
 was all right against the politicals," she added inconse- 
 quently, "but this is too bad." 
 
 She walked with him to the Underground, squeezing 
 his hand tightly at parting to assure him of her 
 sympathy and understanding. Perhaps, after all, she 
 was right. He had a great belief in feminine intuition, 
 and especially in Vesta Craven's since she had proved 
 so helpful at Fraternity Hall. Of course they must be 
 chiefly lies anyhow. What could they do to make 
 that man Kisterling unmask? 
 
 He was still knotted over this as he waited in the 
 editor's room to see the chief, who had walked out as 
 he entered, saying he would return in a moment, and 
 leaving the door half open behind him. He heard 
 him say impatiently — "Well I can't help it. I can't 
 see her now. I am engaged." And then in reply to 
 a murmured expostulation, he broke out: "Insists!' 
 Why, confound it! Paddy Mac or no Paddy Mac, 
 she's not the earth. Who the devil is she that she 
 should insist?" 
 
 Destin sat up. Then "Paddy Mac" was not a man 
 but a woman. Who could she be? 
 
 In the conversation that followed he forgot all about 
 the incident, and having settled things more or less 
 satisfactorily with the editor, he took his leave. He 
 passed out through the anteroom, when he heard a 
 
"PADDY MAC 241 
 
 close, quiet little voice say — "Fm sorry, but I must 
 insist upon seeing the editor, who I know is in there." 
 
 "Insist." "Insist." 
 
 The truth broke in upon him. "Paddy Mac" was 
 the Green-eyed Girl. The writer with the pen like 
 a scalpel was a girl after all. Then he saw that the 
 writer could only have been the girl. It was her way. 
 
 So she was the traitress. 
 
 What would Creegan say? That was the difficulty. 
 Should he tell Creegan now? If he told him the man 
 would do something rash, for he knew Creegan. If 
 he did not tell him, the attacks would continue. But 
 in any case the attacks would continue. This girl was 
 not easily stopped. Detestable as he now knew her to 
 be, at least he could not deny her that. 
 
 Drawn between many minds he determined to put 
 it before Vesta Craven and to trust to her woman's 
 wit to get him out of the difficulty. This he did upon 
 reaching Fraternity Hall, where he found his fiancee, 
 charming and flushed, directing operations amongst 
 her satellites. He called her into his own room and 
 put the matter before her. 
 
 Her face was very still as he spoke. He was sur- 
 prised to see her take it so quietly. 
 
 "What would you do?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh," she said almost indifferently, "you will of 
 course not say a single word to Creegan about it. If 
 he knew the real story of the traitress" (there was 
 spume in the word), "if he knew how she had been 
 taking blood-money to paint his Syndicalism with a 
 dirty brush, he would — ^yes, Fm sure he would — 
 
242 DEMOCRACY 
 
 strangle her. And we must have no more scandal just 
 now. We have enough. The movement is bigger than 
 the man. Some day you shall tell him, after we have 
 come to our own, but not now." 
 
 Denis Destin listened to her with a feeling of doubt. 
 But after all, he saw the soundness of her advice. 
 Creegan was uncertain. If Creegan got within the 
 law to-day the new movement would go to pieces. 
 Better keep quiet. 
 
 All the same, there was a strained feeling at his 
 heart as he turned to his work. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE GRAND INTERNATIONAL 
 
 The idea had been buzzing in Creegan's bonnet for a 
 long time. It was the idea of his life — the great cul- 
 mination of the fight for freedom which should usher 
 in the new age. The Grand International Trade Union 
 of all trades and industries, which should see the end 
 of craft Unionism — the One Union idea — the break 
 down of the old sectional Unionism — the Union 
 which should ultimately absorb all other Unions, 
 bringing them under one central control. This was to 
 be the true army of Labour. 
 
 The membership of the new International Union, 
 which he intended should give effect to the interna- 
 tional combinations and understandings of Labour 
 and spread its meshes over Europe, holding Capital- 
 ism in its grip and smothering it, had its nucleus in the 
 men of the Transport Union. To this was now adding 
 the leaping figures of that inchoate mass of labour, 
 molluscous, swept hither and thither, uncertain and 
 purposeless, which in times of stress poured into its 
 Unions and after the stress ebbed again. This mass 
 was now, under the impulse of the crisis after the war, 
 pouring into the Grand International. 
 
 Unfortunately, as yet, the rank and file of the ordi- 
 nary Unions showed no signs of linking up with the 
 
 243 
 
244 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Grand International. A few here and there came out, 
 but the mass remained behind; not from any special 
 love for the old methods, but through natural obtuse- 
 ness and lethargy. "The Trades Unionist," McGraw 
 had once said, "was a sleepy beastie. There was noth- 
 ing he asked so much in life as to be left alone." 
 
 Satalia had again appeared on the scene, flying over 
 the Channel at the signs of the new revolution, her 
 scarlet bodice glimmering the press of Britain, for 
 revolution drew her as the flame draws the moth. 
 
 She had started a new tour of the country, urging 
 the Trades Unionists into the new Grand International 
 camp, though Destin had been opposed to her coming 
 into the fight, for he feared the effect of her Latin fire 
 upon the temperament of the Anglo-Saxon, which it 
 chilled instead of warming. But Creegan overrode 
 him. A pretty thing indeed to throw cold water upon 
 the first response from their brother Syndicalists 
 across the water, who one day should form part of 
 the Grand International. 
 
 Then the labour troubles took a more definite phase. 
 Even the politicals were forced to abandon their atti- 
 tude of neutrality and discover the fact that the work- 
 ers were starving; all except Steltham, who with one 
 or two others depreciated the use of force, but were 
 overruled by McGraw and the growing militant minor- 
 ity which now was forming behind him on the Labour 
 benches. 
 
 The orthodox Trade Unions had compelled them 
 to action, for once more, with the masses of workless 
 coming on their books again, the remnant of their 
 
THE GRAND INTERNATIONAL 245 
 
 funds was being still further eaten away. With the 
 siren voice of Syndicalism in their ears, some of the 
 Trade Unionists even threatened to decamp to the 
 Grand International if new methods were not adopted. 
 
 To Creegan's assurance came the news that with the 
 object-lesson of the hundreds of thousands of work- 
 ers now in the Grand International and the necessity of 
 unity, the orthodox Unions had been compelled to 
 enter into an alliance with the Syndicalists to force the 
 Government to action. At a Conference of the Ex- 
 ecutives of the Trades Unions Federation, to which 
 the mass of the Unions were now affiliated under the 
 new stress, and of the Grand International, certain 
 working terms were drawn up, which committed the 
 parties to nothing but a temporary alliance until better 
 conditions were obtained and work provided by the 
 Government. 
 
 "Bread, Work, or Revolution !" was now the cry. 
 
 It was decided to force the hands of the Govern- 
 ment by a national strike of all trades and industries, 
 the first attempt in Britain to bring the General Strike 
 proper into action. 
 
 There was blood in Creegan*s eye as he and Destin 
 walked from the conference. "We have them now 
 where we want them," he said. He raised one hairy 
 paw above his head. "Who was it said that Direct 
 Action was played out? Where are the politicals to- 
 day? Necessity has shown them that the strike is 
 the only weapon. 
 
 "Did ye see how I walked over Manby?" he asked, 
 his temper rising. "Did ye see me go through John- 
 
246 DEMOCRACY 
 
 son? Where was Jim McGraw when I got to work 
 on him?" There was brutal jubilation in his voice. 
 
 "They all have to come to Brian Creegan when 
 they want something done. They all have to come 
 to me." 
 
 He laughed. There was something boyish and joy- 
 ful in it. In the hard sunshine of the March morning, 
 his cheroot jutting from the corner of his mouth, his 
 sugarloaf hat slanting over his hard, keen face and 
 steel-grey hair, his eyes skinting bluely into the sun, 
 he looked a beautiful untamable animal. 
 
 "Listen, Denis boy. They say I am an autocrat. 
 They say I am too hard. Why wouldn't I be hard — 
 why wouldn't I have me way when I know what is 
 best for them?" He was arguing, not with Destin, 
 but with some invisible third person, and then, as his 
 companion remained silent: — 
 
 "Ye don't doubt me — do ye?" 
 
 The face had changed — ^he was looking close, pierc- 
 ingly, at his lieutenant. 
 
 "Denis boy — I love ye, but by Christ ! if ye stood in 
 the way of the people — of the Cause — I'd think no 
 more of choking you than I'd think of choking Gor- 
 ing's bull neck." 
 
 Destin, in spite of himself, felt afraid. All this talk 
 of omnipotence — ^yes, of the physical violence itself — 
 frightened him. Where was it going to end ? But he 
 had to answer. This man would not be denied. 
 
 "Of course I don't doubt you, Brian," he said, try- 
 ing to feel it, "but all the same I'm a bit afraid some- 
 times." 
 
THE GRAND INTERNATIONAL 247 
 
 "Afraid! Afraid! What right have you to be 
 afraid if I'm not? What are ye afraid of?'* 
 
 "Well Brian, you saw the Big Stick at work at the 
 Great North-Western. And those fellows mean to 
 fight. You know that." 
 
 "Fight! of course they'll fight — ^but so will we. 
 And we are twenty to one. We'll raise a Citizen Army. 
 You know we've commenced already. Captain Mc- 
 Bride has hold of the men and the authorities daren't 
 stop us. 
 
 "I tell you, the people will never come to their own 
 through the milk and water of Parliament — ^but only 
 over the barricade. . . . God! ... to die in the 
 street!" 
 
 He had dropped his cigar and was staring at it on 
 the ground. 
 
 "Denis, it's good to be alive, boy. And maybe some 
 day we'll all be happy. Some day." — His voice had 
 changed — "Maybe Denis boy I'll have a wife and little 
 gossoons and little girls about me before I die." He 
 was standing in the busy London street, this time look- 
 ing above the housetops as though he saw a vision. 
 The blue eyes had pierced the envelope of another 
 world, seeing things the other did not see. 
 
 He shivered a little. "It's quare Denis, but there's 
 someone walking over me grave. Do ye believe in 
 them things?" 
 
 "Nonsense Brian," the other replied. "But there's 
 a long way to go before the little gossoons come to 
 
 us. 
 ft 
 
 'Maybe not so far as ye think. I've a great mind 
 
248 DEMOCRACY 
 
 to tell you" — ^he put his grip deep on Destin's shoulder 
 until it hurt. 
 
 "There's a girl Denis, maybe ye know her . . ." he 
 broke off and muttered — "No, not now, not now. . . ." 
 But Destin knew of whom he spoke and something 
 hurt him. Perhaps it was the thought of what he 
 knew about the girl and of what the man didn't know. 
 
 "But Brian — v/hat are we going to do if we win? 
 What is the future to be ? It is what I am often ask- 
 ing myself." 
 
 "Damn the future ! let the future look after itself," 
 replied Creegan. He strode on. 
 
 They were passing along the Strand, when Creegan 
 suddenly stopped and wheeled Destin round square to 
 the roadway. 
 
 "Look Denis— look!" 
 
 On a poster were the words — "Great Strike — 
 Vienna Aflame !" 
 
 "It's coming boy — it's coming." 
 
 He bought the paper and turned to the "Stop News" 
 column. "A great strike has broken out in Vienna 
 with the demand for work by the unemployed, who 
 are parading the city in thousands. The shops are 
 menaced and looting has already commenced." 
 
 It was the recoil of war. 
 
 The evening papers told of strikes in Berlin. Within 
 the week, Milan, Parma, and Rome had taken fire, 
 with Paris trailing behind them. In the stoppage of 
 the commercial machine following the war and the 
 inpouring of the millions from the front, strike wave 
 after strike wave was running lambent over the Con- 
 
THE GRAND INTERNATIONAL 249 
 
 tinent. It was as though some telepathy existed be- 
 tween country and country. It was Paris yesterday 
 — what would it be to-morrow ? The hounds of labour 
 were hot on the trail, the blood-scent running strongly 
 in the nostrils. It was International Trades Unionism 
 in excelsis. It was the justification and apotheosis of 
 the Syndicalist movement. 
 
 Creegan's temperature rose with the news. The Day 
 of Armageddon which he had so often prophesied was 
 approaching. Labour was coming to its own at last 
 by the Direct Action route. 
 
 "Where are the politicals now Denis?" was his cry. 
 "Where are they?" 
 
XVII 
 
 THE APPEAL TO FORCE 
 
 The secret had kept. The day of the General Strike, 
 the throw of the dice upon which organised labour had 
 placed everything, was known to nobody save the few 
 at the head. 
 
 There was perhaps a certain tension in the air — ^an 
 oppressiveness — ^but nothing determinate. The Gov- 
 ernment was quiet. There had been rumours of the 
 movements of troops from Alder shot and the strength- 
 ening of the police in the cities, but nobody really be- 
 lieved them. Everything went on as before. 
 
 Creegan it was who threw the match into the pow- 
 der magazine. Three red rockets were to be the signal, 
 sent up from Fraternity Hall and taken up from centre 
 to centre — to pass from city to city. 
 
 It was an April afternoon of bellying thunderclouds, 
 which shut out the sun, steeping London in a ghostly 
 twilight. Destin was coming back to the Hall in the 
 brooding silence, when there came to his ears a dull 
 boom. Startled and forgetful he thought it was the 
 opening of the thunderstorm, when he saw, stabbing 
 themselves upwards into the night, each following the 
 other, three fiery serpents which hissed as they mount- 
 ed, spitting malignantly as they burst into a shower 
 
 250 
 
THE APPEAL TO FORCE 251 
 
 high over the red flag that broke itself out from the 
 roof. Standing underneath it, the halyards in his 
 hands, the gaunt figure of Creegan, who, his hand to 
 his eyes, followed the fiery trail uo there in the storm- 
 skies. 
 
 The silence had fallen again. Then the stir of feet 
 coming through the shadows. 
 
 Now the streets were full of people. Close by, the 
 gates of a jam factory opened, emptying into the 
 street a flock of girls white-aproned and hatted, who 
 jigged a sort of Carmagnole in the road. A railway 
 train that ran below him stopped, and he saw the driver 
 climb oflF his engine, leaving it standing there. From 
 an adjacent signal box he watched the signalman, his 
 hat on his head, in his hand a glazed black bag with 
 his empty lunch things, walk soberly down the stairs. 
 
 It was the General Strike. The dream become real- 
 ity. 
 
 That night Fraternity Hall was ablaze with lights. 
 So was Bethlehem House, which, however, finding by 
 this time that the animal they had spurred had taken 
 the bit in its teeth, now wanted to pull it up. All night 
 the machines roared — all night the motor-cars and 
 newsboys streamed the streets. The Underground sta- 
 tions were crowded with masses of City men wanting 
 to get home and finding no trains. Motor buses lay 
 about the streets like stranded leviathans. The shop- 
 keepers, timid, were putting up their shutters, fearing 
 something behind this silence. A mass of people 
 thronged the incline to the Great North-Western, curs- 
 ing the strikers. Some of the suburbanites had even 
 
252 DEMOCRACY 
 
 started to walk along the deserted metals — deserted 
 save for the lines of trains which blocked the ways. 
 
 The Meteor leader in the morning was sententious 
 and responsible. 'Whilst Labour had been content to 
 demand the natural things of life in a natural way, they 
 had been satisfied, serving all classes, to help it to get 
 what it wanted and so allay labour discontent. But 
 now that the brutal General Strike had been loosed, 
 now that Democracy had started on its crimson march 
 to power, they had no option but to stand on the side 
 of law and order." 
 
 The other papers, whether Liberal or Conservative, 
 followed suit. The Olympian frankly stated that the 
 temporary Coalition War Government of yesterday 
 was the forerunner of the permanent Coalition Gov- 
 ernment of to-day — ^another sort of War-Government, 
 forecasting the time when they would only Jiave two 
 parties in Great Britain, the Socialist and the anti- 
 Socialist. "We even go so far as to say that we shall 
 find in the ranks of the newer and more permanent 
 Coalition many of our old-time opponents in the ranks 
 of Labour, who will give Labour that sane representa- 
 tion it needs." 
 
 Creegan was contemptuous. "What did I tell you?" 
 he asked triumphantly. *T am always right. Now we 
 shall know who are for us and who against. Labour 
 must stand on one side or the other of the Syndicalist 
 fence — ^no more sitting on it now." 
 
 Destin, although he had anticipated it, yet felt chilled 
 when he saw the new combination. If they were ap- 
 pealing to force, it was a case of all the machinery of 
 
THE APPEAL TO FORCE 253 
 
 force welded together through the centuries against the 
 weapon of yesterday, which might snap in their hands. 
 
 Now, Nonconformist and Churchman had sunk 
 their differences, financial and theological, in the face 
 of the common enemy. Destin, like Creegan, had re- 
 garded the churches as spent forces. Now they were 
 undeceived — ^at least Destin, for nothing could shake 
 Creegan from an opinion once taken. 
 
 The nonconformists and the high churchmen of yes- 
 terday who had been flirting with the rising democracy, 
 now came out as sanguinary lambs of Christ. The 
 Right Hon. Sir Jasper Noah, President of the Free 
 Church Assembly, was announced to speak at the 
 "Magog" to the members of the Free Churches, and 
 Destin, through the kindly office of Bread, the noncon- 
 formist journalist, managed to get a ticket of admis- 
 sion. 
 
 He recalled the older meeting of the years before 
 which had ushered him into the movement. Now he 
 found himself listening in the same hall to Sir Jasper, 
 a splendid looking patriarch of some seventy winters, 
 whose flowing beard and leonine head might have 
 stepped out of the Book of Genesis. The grey-coated 
 men before him, who seemed to be doing their best 
 not to look like clergymen, listened to him with grave 
 attention and appreciation. His speech, which was 
 flaslied over the wires the same evening, was direct: ^' 
 
 "Let us not make the mistake, friends, that 
 Christianity excludes the exercise of force. Behind 
 the promises of Christianity there are always the pen- 
 alties — ^the sword of God uplifted to smite down the 
 
254 DEMOCRACY 
 
 sinner. The Divine Word itself is full of warnings, 
 and even utters its last comforts beneath the lurid sun- 
 set of Revelation. 
 
 "Force is hell we are told, but hell itself has its 
 function of purification. Christianity is not only a 
 religion of mildness — it is also a religion of blood. 
 Christianity is not merely evolutionary — it is catas- 
 trophic. All government rests upon force — ^behind the 
 judge there stands the soldier with ball cartridge and 
 the hangman balancing his noose. 
 
 "In these days, no man can serve two masters. You 
 who listen to me are either for Society or against it. 
 The seductions of a spurious democracy no longer must 
 find a place in your hearts. You must tear out the 
 evil thing before it shears you of your strength as 
 Delilah shore Samson. The thunders of the pulpit 
 must be followed by the thunder of the guns. If we 
 have to slay this hydra-headed monster of Syndicalism, 
 the sooner the better. You are lambs of Christ — ^but 
 lambs that can bite and tear." 
 
 Yet even here as in that other "Magog" meeting, 
 there was the enemy within the gate. 
 
 "Shame! Shame! Sir Jasper." 
 
 It seemed the echo of his own voice from the past. 
 Once more he saw the thrust of nec*k — the intentness 
 which turned and craned to get a view of the 
 speaker. 
 
 But this time there were other cries. 
 
 "Hear — ^hear!" came from a dark-faced young 
 clergyman, with the saucer hat of the High Church- 
 man. Here and there were spatters of "Hear — hears !" 
 
THE APPEAL TO FORCE 255 
 
 drowned in a rising though orderly growth of "Dis- 
 graceful!" "Traitors!*' 
 
 "Who says 'Shame'?" asked the patriarch of the 
 platform, dignified, holding up a strong white hand. 
 
 "I do." 
 
 In the centre of the hall, within a few chairs of the 
 place where he himself had raised his protest before, 
 there rose a slender figure, clothed in grey. The face 
 was the face of a child, crowned however with snow 
 white hair. The eyes luminous. The mouth small 
 but firm. The whole figure vibrant. 
 
 The figure was known to every man there, including 
 Destin. That was Trent, the man who had left his 
 Nonconformist church and started a church of his 
 own in East London: '"The Church of Christ — Social- 
 ist," taking with him half his congregation. "Social- 
 ist Trent," scholar. University man, and fanatic. 
 
 Each Sunday the reporters of the London papers 
 crowded to the church of the man who preached Christ 
 the Socialist. Every Sunday the curious, half fearing 
 blasphemy, crowded his doors. Self -advertiser or 
 zealot — ^vulgar, tub-thumper or saint — ^hypocrite or 
 martyr. So the people spoke of him. 
 
 "I say 'Shame!' Every word of your speech, Sir 
 Jasper, is a blow in the teeth of the Crucified One. 
 The Church of Christ is not the church of noose and 
 rifle but the church of love." 
 
 "Rot !" "Humbug !" The cries were coming from 
 the grey-coated men about him. 
 
 "I tell you. Sir Jasper, it is you and people like you 
 who have twisted the churches from their true path 
 
256 DEMOCRACY 
 
 and the Word of God into a bye word for the-man-in- 
 the-street. It is you who are emptying the churches 
 of Christ, from which you have driven the Spirit of 
 God. It is because of you that the masses of the people 
 outside the Churches are following that Spirit to its 
 refuge elsewhere — in the democratic movements of the 
 day. You are a disgrace to your high position. You 
 are no Christian. , . ." 
 
 "Throw him out! Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" 
 
 Destin knew the signs too well to make any mistake. 
 All mobs were the same, whether navvies or parsons. 
 He saw the blood coming to the eyes that turned them- 
 selves upon the speaker. 
 , "I tell you, Sir Jasper, that God . . ." 
 
 The figure came violently forward. In a moment 
 there was a surging group of which he was the centre 
 — the white hair and grey eyes struggling over the top. 
 Two muscular Christians had seized him — one of them 
 a bald-headed man with a bull neck and eyes that 
 stared themselves apart. They hoisted him up bodily 
 and dragged him to the central aisle, where, to the cry 
 of those left behind, they broke with him through the 
 swing doors. 
 
 There was a subdued tumult as the steps receded. 
 Then all was silence. 
 
 Sir Jasper Noah was not again interrupted. The 
 lambs of Christ had done their work. 
 
XVIII 
 
 THE GREEN-EYED GIRL 
 
 As the General Strike developed, Society developed 
 with it. As each railway was hung up and the wheels 
 of industry came to a standstill, Society showed itself 
 outraged but resolved, sinking all differences before 
 the wolf in the fold. 
 
 The tramway and railway companies were making 
 half-hearted attempts to keep their trams and trains 
 running, importing little trembling "black-leg" clerks 
 or burly poHce inspectors, who brought confusion 
 wherever they pulled the unfamiliar lever. To break 
 the strike, the Workers' Freedom Society had been 
 called upon to supply the millions of "free labourers" 
 about whom it had always boasted, but was only able 
 to supply a handful, and that of doubtful quality. 
 Some of the submerged, attracted by the new and 
 princely wages, had come out of their slums, but, 
 untrained and unfit, could not keep the giant wheels 
 turning. 
 
 There had been some talk about calling up the con- 
 scripts to the colours, but this was regarded as a last 
 resource, as the authorities were doubtful about the 
 effect upon the people if they used the conscription of 
 yesterday as a strike-hreaker. 
 
 In the meantime Creegan every day grew more 
 confident. Each morning saw him entrenched behind 
 
 257 
 
258 DEMOCRACY 
 
 a bulwark of newspapers, from where he threw his 
 challenges to Destin, who daily became more uncertain 
 as success seemed within their grasp. 
 
 One morning, as Destin came into the inner room 
 at Fraternity Hall, Creegan showed him a caricature in 
 Punch, representing him as a sort of revolutionary red- 
 capped navvy, wielding a pickaxe over the head of 
 Society, which cowered under his feet. 
 
 "Do ye know who that is?" he asked, triumph in 
 his eye. "The fellow that drew that, knew his busi- 
 ness — ^but there's something about it too that I don't 
 like — it's too . . . too humble. When the people want 
 a leader, they want a leader. I'm not a navvy any 
 longer." 
 
 It was the old touch of omnipotence. The blue eyes 
 were a trifle more imcertain — a trifle more wavering. 
 
 Whilst they were speaking, a London docker, an 
 undersized sandy little man, came into the room and 
 without apology interrupted with a question. 
 
 "What do ye mean by coming in that way for?" 
 scowled Creegan. "Have ye no manners? Maybe 
 you'll knock in future before ye come into a private 
 room." 
 
 The look he bent upon the little man frightened him, 
 and he scuttled out with a muttered apology like a 
 startled rat. "We'll have to teach these fellows 
 manners, Denis," said he. 
 
 Destin looked at him, with something on his lips. 
 But one look at the man was sufficient. He. was silent. 
 Most people were silent before Brian Creegan. 
 
 "We are dead sure of victory now, my boy. No 
 
THE GREEN-EYED GIRL 259 
 
 more peaceful progress backwards by the vote. The 
 strike! The strike!" 
 
 As they were speaking, the door opened and the 
 Green-eyed Girl came in, looking, Destin thought, a 
 little wan, with shadows under her eyes and in the 
 hollow of her cheeks as though cobwebs hung there. 
 At the sight of "her his gorge rose. The traitress had 
 actually the insolence to come into the camp of the 
 man she was betraying. 
 
 But Creegan had hurried to her side and was im- 
 pulsively shepherding her to the caricature. She did 
 not seem unwilling, and smiled and praised it. Destin 
 forced himself to a distant greeting, and was taken 
 off his balance by hearing the girl say coolly to Creegan 
 — "You know, Brian, I want you to tell me your plans 
 — something I can write on in the Meteor/' The inso- 
 lence of the girl passed belief. 
 
 Destin came forward quickly. He was going to stop 
 that at any rate. 
 
 "You know, Brian, I don't agree with everything 
 you do," the full voice went on, "but all the same I 
 like to know what you're doing." 
 
 "You don't agree with me, girl. Ah, that's because 
 ye don't know what you're talking about. Now listen 
 here." 
 
 He ran off into a violent explanation in which he 
 used arms, eyes, and even his cheroot to emphasise his 
 points. But they were all general. As a matter of 
 fact, Destin remembered with relief, Creegan him- 
 self had no clear idea of their plans, which were 
 gripped only by himself and the other members of the 
 
260 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Strike Organisation Committee, upon which Creegan's 
 Tiame appeared, simply because he could not be left out. 
 Organisation had little interest for Brian Creegan. 
 
 The girl came straight towards him. "Why do you 
 avoid me, Mr. Destin?" she asked smoothly. "Are 
 you afraid of me ?" 
 
 There was a rough answer upon his lips, but some- 
 how he could not be rude to the girl in that moment. 
 
 "I ? Vm afraid of nothing — ^not even of you," he 
 laughed, a little uneasily. "Fm only afraid of Brian 
 Creegan there," he said ironically. 
 
 "You have reason to be." The little voice had sunk 
 earnestly. "You remember what I said to you that 
 day at the Circester Congress — 'Brian Creegan will 
 break his heart some day.' Well, he is going to do it 
 unless we save him." 
 
 "We." "We." It seemed mockery. She, the girl 
 who was attacking him anonymously. She, the girl 
 who hated the Syndicalist movement. 
 
 "Who are *we'?" he asked brutally. 
 
 "Why, you and I of course," the girl replied simply. 
 In spite of himself there was something that touched 
 him in the association of his name with hers. 
 
 But at that moment Vesta Craven came into the 
 room, a sheaf of correspondence in her hand. 
 
 She did not seem to see the other girl, whom she 
 ignored as she came forward. She slipped her arm 
 through Destines, with her charming air of proprietor- 
 ship, as she showed him the papers. It vexed him. He 
 made a half mechanical movement and loosed it. Vesta 
 Craven's pink had taken a deeper shade. 
 
THE GREEN-EYED GIRL 261 
 
 Then he felt ashamed of himself, and almost osten- 
 tatiously he put his arm through hers as though he 
 had moved only to make the change. But the Green- 
 eyed Girl was talking again to Creegan, her slender 
 figure, clothed in a little short grey-blue jacket and 
 skirt, plain and close fitting, setting off the Indian stone 
 necklace she wore. Destin glanced at her once and 
 then turned away. He hated to look at her. 
 
 She pretended to have come to warn Creegan and 
 the Strike Committee of the preparations that were 
 going on behind the scenes. Creegan called to Destin, 
 who left Vesta Craven's side. She seemed reluctant 
 to leave the room, but having got the information she 
 wanted, finally went out. 
 
 "Come here, Denis," he said, "and listen to this 
 story. It'll amuse you." 
 
 "I'm only warning Brian that it is a case of Brian 
 Creegan versus the British Empire. If you think that 
 Society can be terrorised into submission by even a 
 complete General Strike, you are making a great mis- 
 take — a vital mistake. Call off the dogs before it is too 
 late. The man they are holding up is a dangerous 
 man — ^he is armed to the teeth — ^his pocket and his 
 beliefs are being threatened — and he is a little fright- 
 ened. Frightened men are dangerous." 
 
 "Frightened," growled Creegan. "By Christ! we'll 
 tear the throat out of him. We'll empty his pockets. 
 It is a case of 'stand and deliver' now." 
 
 "But, Brian, you don't know — ^you really don't." 
 She had put one little hand on the great arm and was 
 looking up into the blue eyes that towered above her; 
 
262 DEMOCRACY 
 
 looking up tenderly, it seemed to Destin. The woman 
 was a Delilah. A moment ago he had been willing 
 to listen to her — ^now that look banished all considera- 
 tion from him. She was treacherous. 
 
 "Let me ask you a question— only one," she went on 
 as he broke away impatiently. 
 
 "Have you got hold of the policeman? have you got 
 hold of the soldier? is the navy in your hands? Is 
 every redcoat and every bluejacket a Syndicalist? Is 
 he even a Trade Unionist?" 
 
 "No, of course not. You know that as well as I," 
 replied Creegan. 
 
 "Then call off the dogs. All Society rests on force. 
 Until you get the force on your side you are challeng- 
 ing something you cannot tackle. Come, Brian. You 
 had once a name as a fighting man. What would you 
 think of going into the ring with your bare fists against 
 a man armed with a revolver?" 
 
 The little voice was immensely pleading. Where 
 was it that he had heard those words before? "All 
 Government rests on force." It was Sir Gilbert Gor- 
 ing speaking again. 
 
 "I will tell you something else," the girl went 
 on speaking low and more rapidly. "At the mo- 
 ment . . ." 
 
 The door opened. They turned round impatiently. 
 It was Miss Craven again, who with forehead creased 
 was bringing in some more papers. 
 
 "Not now. Miss Craven," said Creegan. 
 
 "No, Vesta, go away now," said Destin perempto- 
 rily. Nor did he notice the angry look that came into 
 
THE GREEN-EYED GIRL 263 
 
 the girVs eyes. She went out, her head a trifle high, 
 but the others had turned their backs on her. 
 
 ". . . At the moment," went on the girl, "do you 
 know that the masters are making overtures to the 
 *key' unions so as to break the strike? Do you know 
 they are following the American method? — I saw them 
 doing the same thing some years ago in the United 
 States. They simply take certain key unions like that 
 of the locomotive men, the men they cannot run a Gen- 
 eral Strike without; they pet them, give them high 
 wages and short hours, and get them over against 
 their comrades. When this strike has run a few weeks 
 they will get them over. You are playing against 
 loaded dice, Creegan." 
 
 Creegan walked over to the table and picked up a 
 Meteor. With a heavily ditched forefinger he pointed 
 downwards at a tiny paragraph. . . . "It has been 
 ascertained that nearly all the locomotive drivers are 
 out." 
 
 "There's your answer," he said, the old triumph in 
 his voice. "It isn*t Brian Creegan that doesn't know 
 his material. I tell ye this strike is different to all the 
 others. I tell ye." 
 
 The girl, her voice a little unsteady and pleading, 
 after glancing at Destin, looked at the man she 
 addressed as a mother might look at a child, and went 
 on — "But there is something else. I cannot speak of 
 it now, but it is coming. The masters I tell ye will 
 draw the men to beat you from your own ranks. I 
 tell you." She had unconsciously repeated the end of 
 her sentence like Creegan. "There are such things as 
 
264 DEMOCRACY 
 
 'private braves.' Did ye ever hear tell of the braves 
 in the Colorado Mine Strike?** 
 
 "Ah, don't be tellin* us those old wives* tales. That 
 is old history. This is the strike of to-day — ^not of 
 yesterday. We are after a hell of a war I tell you. 
 Do ye think labour is the same to-day?" 
 
 "Yes. . . . To-day as yesterday," said the girl 
 turning to go. She stopped at the door. 
 
 "But I tell you, you will meet death in the noonday. 
 You will fall, the life shot out of you. 
 
 "I tell you — ^you two who will not listen to me be- 
 cause I am a woman — I tell you. You have appealed 
 to the sword. You will fall by the sword." 
 
 The little figure had passed out through the door, 
 leaving Destin and Creegan staring at each other. 
 
 "She's cracked, Denis boy, she's cracked I tell you." 
 
 Creegan had broken into a high hard laugh. 
 
XIX 
 
 THE CITY THAT ROSE IN THE NIGHT 
 
 The strike, silent, sure, had been on for three weeks. 
 Industry was touched as though by the finger of fate. 
 The nerves of commerce were paralysed. "A paralytic 
 stroke, Denis. A stroke!'* Creegan, high, assured, 
 threw the words at his friend, as he came in one morn- 
 ing to his work. 
 
 From underneath came the marching and counter- 
 marching of men with hoarse cries of command. 
 "Listen to 'em, Denis. It does your heart good. 
 Listen to 'em drilling. If the Government wants peace, 
 we'll fight them that way. If they want war — ^by the 
 holy Cromwell ! they shall have war. Listen to them." 
 
 The high clear voice of the officer in command came 
 through the door of the room. It was from the son 
 of a General in the English Army, himself a V.C., who 
 had won his honours on the battlefield and who had, 
 in the challenge of the new democracy, thrown over 
 allegiance to friends, to church, and, deepest of all, to 
 class. "By the right there! Form fours! Quick 
 march !" The words came in a high staccato. 
 
 Creegan's Invincibles. 
 
 "And we've better than those Denis. We have the 
 finished article — the men from, the Navvies' Brigade 
 who were drilled in the Great War. 
 
 265 
 
266 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "Let lis go out into the streets, Denis, and talk 
 things over," said Creegan, lighting a cheroot at the 
 end of the stump in his hand. "We'll have a walk in 
 the Victoria Park." 
 
 They went out into the silent streets. "General" 
 Strike held the city in his grip. As they passed along, 
 Creegan was greeted by the women and children, the 
 little ones running to catch his legs. It was strange 
 to see how the man changed as he felt the clutch of 
 tiny hands. He bent down, picked them up, taking a 
 child on each shoulder — and so they passed on their 
 way in triumph to the greetings of hard-faced navvies, 
 of dockers, and to the less responsive smiles of the 
 women, who, hunger-hollowed, crowded the doorways. 
 
 He set his load down gently as they came to the 
 park, and they walked through the gates. But where 
 were the children who usually dotted the grassy 
 spaces? The park was empty. Creegan stood stock 
 still in the middle of the path, shading his eyes with 
 his hands. "Be Jasus ! they've started," he said under 
 his breath. 
 
 As far as the eye could reach, bell tents paralleled 
 the grass. Wherever the eye turned were tripods of 
 arms, the smoke of fires, and the movement of khaki- 
 clad figures — each moving surely — purposeful. 
 
 A town had risen in the night. 
 
 Denis looked, and as he did, his heart leaped and 
 failed him. For a moment the white tents limned 
 themselves on the green grass and then lost themselves 
 in a mist. 
 
 He was not a coward, but this orderly certain array 
 
THE CITY THAT ROSE IN THE NIGHT 267 
 
 presaged the beginning of the end. It was Trafalgar 
 Square once again. Society was not going to take the 
 strike lying down; it was not coming to the men cap 
 in hand asking for settlement by arbitration. This was 
 its reply. 
 
 Some soldiers passed, scarcely glancing at Destin 
 and Creegan. Then one of them checked himself and 
 said something to his companions. They turned tlieir 
 heads towards Creegan and Destin and. laughed. There 
 was contempt in that laugh, the contempt of the dis- 
 ciplined man for the undisciplined. Yet the men were 
 of the working class. An officer, his smart, leathered 
 legs shining in the morning sun, walked indifferent 
 past, the men springing to the salute. Nobody inter- 
 fered with them as they moved along the paths. So- 
 ciety did not trouble about them . . . yet. 
 
 'Tfs come, Brian," said Destin at last. 
 
 "Yes, thank God! it's come. If they want blood 
 they shall have blood." The voice was confident, yet, 
 for one moment, Destin. could have been sure he saw 
 a shadow hanging there over the clear, certain eyes. 
 Creegan wheeled. They walked out of the path back 
 to Fraternity Hall, watching on th.e road a company 
 of Guardsmen, automatic figures, moving to the word 
 of comrnand on the roadway. 
 
 Inside they heard the voice — "By the right there! 
 Form fours! Quick march i" 
 
 Creegan's eye glistened as they went down to the 
 flagged cellar beneath the hall, which they were using 
 as a drill room. Before them were a couple of hundred 
 corduroyed men, of all sizes, moving uncertainly to the 
 
268 DEMOCRACY 
 
 word of command coming from a tall, soldierly, clean- 
 faced young man, who, as they entered, gave the word 
 --"Ready! Present!" 
 
 The ranks before him raised the staves they carried 
 instead of guns, raggedly. 
 
 "This is the real thing V* said Creegan. 
 
 A messenger ran down the steps into the cellar. 
 "The railway stations are full of soldiers," he said, 
 breathlessly — "they've been sleeping in the waiting 
 rooms all night. They wouldn't let me go down the 
 slope to the Great North- Western.'* 
 
 The telephone rang upstairs. Creegan ran up the 
 steps into his room, followed by Destin. He took up 
 the receiver, listening, his eye defiant, as though he 
 were challenging some invisible foe. . . . "Well, 
 anyhow, they can't shoot us down in cold blood for 
 doing nothing — ^but if they want war they can have it. 
 
 "Here Destin — ^they've put the soldiers guarding the 
 British Museum and Westminster Abbey — ^as if we 
 wanted to hurt their dirty tabernacles." 
 
 Destin took a sudden resolve. 
 
 "Lister^, Brian," he said, a new note in his voice. 
 "Listen to me. Do 3nou know what all this means?" 
 The other read the message in his face. 
 
 "What, are you going to turn white-livered? Has 
 the girl that came here the other day turned your heart 
 to water — she that couldn't turn mine?" He spat 
 contemptuously into the empty grate. 
 
 "No, but the lives of these men rest on your shoul- 
 ders and mine. We've got to be careful, desperately 
 careful. We are walking on a tight rope a thousand 
 
THE CITY THAT ROSE IN THE NIGHT 269 
 
 feet high with a noose around our necks: a slip and 
 we are finished." 
 
 "Well, what is your life or mine to the Cause?" 
 asked Creegan. 
 
 "You must listen, Creegan." The voice was hard 
 now, so hard that Creegan looked at him in surprise. 
 "If we fling our people against the soldiers, it is the 
 end of us, of the strike, of the people's cause. This 
 strike will go down in bloody, helpless, murder. Do 
 you hear?" He was speaking to Creegan as though he 
 were a little child. 
 
 "The girl was right. TTes, I don't like her and I 
 don't agree with her, but she was right. We're up 
 against something stronger than we. If we can carry 
 through the strike peacefully, well and good. But I 
 am thinking they won't let us. And how are we going 
 to hold our fellow^ back?" 
 
 From underneath came the staccato — "By the right 
 there ! — Hold up your heads!" and the confused stamp- 
 ing of hobnails on the stone floor. 
 
 "'Hold them back/ Who's going to hold them 
 back? We are going to launch them at the soldiers — 
 at the Governmenjt — at Society. I, Brian Creegan, say 
 so, and God help you or any man that tries to spoke 
 our wheels now." 
 
 But Destin did not blench. 
 
 "Call them off, Brian," he said quietly. "Call them 
 off. The girl was right." 
 
 "Blast the girl and you too!" Creegan's face was 
 slowly empurpling. " 'Call them off.* No — ^not if I 
 rain blood over England. 'Call them off.' No — ^not if 
 
270 DEMOCRACY 
 
 they shoot us all down where we stand. Better be dead 
 and free than living and slaves." He added slowly, 
 pausing between each word: 
 
 "Never ! so — help — me — God !" 
 
 Destin looked at him. He knew in that moment he 
 was facing something that could not be changed — ^like 
 so many other things. He put on his hat, suddenly 
 resolved, and walked out of the room. 
 
XX 
 
 J POWER 
 
 What he had set his mind to do was distasteful, but 
 there was no other way. He knew the girl he was in 
 search of generally did her writing in the reading room 
 of the Independent Socialists, and there he found her, 
 the little head with the square-cut dark hair now bend- 
 ing earnestly over the manuscript before her. 
 
 She felt him come in, for she turned round sharply. 
 Destin, in his own direct way came to the point. 
 
 "Listen. IVe come to make an appeal to you. 
 Creegan is mad. He believes he is Almighty God and 
 he will plunge London and perhaps England into a 
 blood-bath within the next twenty-four hours unless 
 you can stop him." 
 
 "What do you mean?" she asked. 
 
 "He is dead set on this strike. That means he is dead 
 set on murder — on massacre without a chance of retali- 
 ation. I cannot see those fellows down there, who 
 would follow him into the pit, go like sheep to the 
 slaughter — ^to their deaths before the soldiers. It is 
 too horrible. And Creegan will lose his life too." He 
 looked at the girl narrowly. 
 
 "Please be plainer," she said shortly. 
 
 "Well, you know as well as I that Brian loves you 
 271 
 
272 DEMOCRACY 
 
 better than anything else — except, perhaps, the move- 
 ment. For the movement is his first love, his wife and 
 children. But you are the only living being with any 
 sort of power over him. I have seen him look at 
 you — ^mutter about you — ^and he loves you to the last 
 hair of your head." 
 
 He took a kind of savage pleasure in saying this 
 over and over again. "He loves you to the last hair 
 of your head." 
 
 The girl had taken a newer pallor. 
 
 "So you want me to use his love, or whatever you 
 call it, for me to take him from what he considers his 
 duty," she said, a strain of bitterness creeping under 
 her voice. 
 
 "I want you to save him from himself — ^and with 
 him the lives of many others. It will be a holocaust, I 
 tell you. Have you seen the soldiers in the park? 
 They are ready to the last cartridge." 
 
 "Oh yes, I know all about the soldiers. I know all 
 about everything — it is my business," she said simply. 
 She looked then, as always, irritatingly sure and 
 confident. 
 
 "Then you will go to him ?" asked Destin. 
 
 "I will do nothing of the kind," said the girl with 
 heat. "Do you think Fm going to drag myself in the 
 dust before Brian Creegan — ^to be spurned — and for 
 nothing?" The girl's love for the man and the pride 
 behind, seemed to show itself in every syllable. But 
 once he had thought she did not love him. Yet this 
 made her conduct the more incomprehensible. 
 
 "So you put your dirty pride before the lives of men. 
 
POWER 273 
 
 women, and children — ^yes — even before the life of the 
 man you love ?" 
 
 "How dare you say that?" The girl had come close 
 to him, whispering the words low in his face. Destin 
 stepped back as he felt the hot breath. 
 
 "How dare you say that?" she repeated. 
 
 " *Dare.' *Dare,' " he said. "I dare anything — ^and 
 you know it's true." 
 
 The girl did not speak. "You must go to him now," 
 he said, his angry courage coming to him in the face 
 of the woman before him. 
 
 " 'Must!' I will not. I have finished." 
 
 The girl had turned her back on him and was read- 
 ing her manuscript as though he were not there. The 
 sight of the little bare neck where the ivory of the skin, 
 softly flushed, ran downwards into the shallow V of 
 the green frieze dress, caused something to snap in 
 his brain. 
 
 "You won't. You won't. . . . Listen ... I know 
 all about you. Do you hear? I know who Taddy 
 Mac' is. Do you hear?" He stood back waiting the 
 result of his thrust. 
 
 "Do you hear me? I know who 'Paddy Mac* is. 
 I know who the traitress is that used the love of a good 
 man to get her dirty information with which to stab 
 him in the back and to stab the movement he repre- 
 sents. . . . You are the traitress that wrote those 
 articles in the Meteor." 
 
 "Of course I wrote the articles and would write them 
 again. You say I love Creegan. If I loved him better 
 than life I'd criticise him — only because I loved him. 
 
274 DEMOCRACY 
 
 And you, who know so little about me, know that. I 
 have never pretended to be a Syndicalist. And now 
 perhaps you'll tell me what secrets I have disclosed." 
 The girl was perfectly cool. 
 
 Well, what secrets had she disclosed? And it was 
 true. He knew this girl. There was a contrary devil 
 in her — he had it in himself — which would make her 
 criticise her own lover just because he was her lover. 
 
 He searched vainly for the intensity of his resent- 
 ment — the criticism was brutal — ^but was it? He him- 
 self had often been a* brutal critic of the politicals — it 
 was the word they always* applied to him. . . . But 
 it was unfair. Yes, that was the word, it was "unfair." 
 
 These things ran tumultuous through his brain. The 
 girl was smiling at him — a little dose smile. It un- 
 nerved him. His control went. 
 
 "If you don't agree at once to go and stop Creegan, 
 ril tell him who you are." He was speaking quietly 
 enough now. 
 
 The girl's face showed no signs of emotion. She 
 was putting her writing materials carefully into a long 
 leather portfolio. Her little round helmet straw she 
 put on her head. She had picked up her gloves. 
 
 "What are you going to do ?" he asked. 
 
 "I'm going to tell Brian Creegan now that I am 
 'Paddy Mac' That's all." -She walked out of the 
 room leaving him staring at the closed door. 
 
 He hung in the wind a few moments, when the door 
 opened, and his fiancee walked in. "They told me at 
 the Hall, Denis, that you were coming here, where they 
 could telephone you if you were wanted. I felt I had 
 
POWER 275 
 
 to come along at once to talk over one or two things 
 with you." 
 
 Destin, still dazed, looked at her. "What do you 
 want to talk about?" he said, a little ungraciously. 
 
 "Now, my dear boy mustn't be like that," she said, 
 passing a little firm arm through his, and looking 
 pleadingly into his face. She did not see the hard look 
 in his eyes. 
 
 "I have come, Denis, to save your life/' she began 
 mysteriously. 
 
 "To save my life ? What do you mean ?" 
 
 "I am a girl at heart you know — I can be hard, but 
 I have my soft moments — ^and I am frightened." 
 
 "What has frightened you?" 
 
 "I am frightened of what is coming. Oh ! listen to 
 me, Denis." She had clasped his arm convulsively to 
 her breast. "If Creegan sends the strikers into the 
 street, the soldiers will kill them. And you can't turn 
 Brian Creegan." 
 
 "Why don't you try?" he asked, bitterly. 
 
 "I ? Oh ! Denis, you know Creegan hates me. Now 
 he is mad — is he not? And you are not obliged to 
 follow a madman. Everything has changed in the last 
 forty-eight hours. The streets are full of police and 
 soldiers and they mean trouble. Don't you see how 
 it is?" 
 
 "What do you mean?" he asked roughly, "speak 
 plainly if you want me to imder stand." 
 
 "Well, Denis, I want you to protest against this use- 
 less bloodshed. I ... I want you to stand out from it 
 all. I'hey will shoot you, Denis — ^they will shoot you" 
 
276 DEMOCRACY 
 
 — the voice was trembling — "or they will put away my 
 beautiful, strong Denis for ten years — ^perhaps for 
 life." 
 
 "You want me to desert the men in the hour of their 
 need?" 
 
 "No, not that. I want you to protest. Once I could 
 have faced your going through.'with it, but not now. 
 You have turned me into a woman." The girl was 
 clinging to him, frightened, her beautiful eyes tear- 
 drenched. 
 
 But this emotion roused the contrary spirit in her 
 fiance. He loosened her hold on his arm and said 
 quietly: 
 
 "Make your mind easy. I am not going to fall in 
 the street shot like a dog. I have protested, and what 
 is more, I have left the Syndicalists and joined the 
 politicals. I am a member of McGraw's wing 
 of the National Workers' Party — the Independent 
 Socialists." 
 
 "Oh ! Denis, is that true ?" Her hands were clasped 
 in thankfulness. "I am delighted." A look of pain 
 passed across his face. 
 
 "I hope you don't think it is too easy," he said iron- 
 ically. "I have turned my back on the best man in 
 the world and on the movement in which I fleshed my 
 virgin lance. I have become what people will call a 
 turncoat. I have gone over to Creegan's nearest 
 enemies." 
 
 "But, Denis — Syndicalism is not what it was. Dam- 
 ascene made it all seem so different when he first ex- 
 plained it. Now that it comes to the actual brutal 
 
POWER 277 
 
 struggle, it is not the same thing. And Denis," she 
 added as an afterthought, "y^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ M.F. 
 now." 
 
 Destin's heart leaped in spite of himself. He had 
 not thought of that. The appeal to Parliament — the 
 great sounding board of Westminster — ^the megaphone 
 voice — the chance to make himself heard — all these 
 things came sweetly to him, especially as what he had 
 done he had done conscientiously. It meant Power. 
 
 And it was natural after all that his fiancee should 
 wish him to have a bigger arena for his talents. It was 
 a woman's way. 
 
 He put it from him with- an effort. He had not done 
 this, thing for the flesh-pots of Parliament. 
 
 But the girl before him had seen the effect of her 
 words. "Now they will have to listen," she said. "No 
 more reports in little tin trumpets like the Bugler, but 
 in the great dailies. Denis, you 'were marked for big 
 things. I saw it the first day I met you at Chilling- 
 ton House, The Duchess saw it. 
 
 "And now, dear, I am going to be very hard and 
 businesslike." She had linked herself to him again. 
 "I am going to be unmaidenly or whatever the Philis- 
 tines call it. ... I want you to marry me soon. Every- 
 thing goes so well with you, and now will go better. 
 I want you to be my husband soon." 
 
 There was infinite seduction in the voice of the 
 young girl. The warm-cool touch of her arm that 
 came to him through the muslin of her dress — ^the 
 aroma that freed itself from her body — ^all weakened 
 him. 
 
278 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "T»1 
 
 T\\ marry you when you like," he said; "next 
 month if you will." 
 
 It was one of his rare bursts of emotion. All these 
 things with Vesta Craven were called up in bursts of 
 emotion. 
 
 The girl placed her little red lips full on his. It was 
 the first display of passion he had ever seen in her. 
 "It is a bargain," she said. "Now let us go to Damas- 
 cene's trial." 
 
XXI 
 
 damascene's last appearance on any stage 
 
 Damascene was to be tried that morning. The Octo- 
 pus Scandal had drawn in its tentacles and with them 
 the net of iniquity was full. 
 
 When they passed into the courts, the atmosphere 
 was stifling with the sweat of bodies, mingled with the 
 perfumes that streamed from the clothes of the society 
 women who sat there sunning themselves before the 
 fires of sin. The Duchess of Chillington, her great 
 dusky fez crowned by a hat on which perched with 
 outstretched wings a white dove, dominated the pro- 
 ceedings with a large fan of black ostrich feathers. 
 
 As they entered the court at the tail of the queue 
 where they had stood ,f or an hour, the judge was re- 
 questing that all women should leave the court. "I do 
 not insist that they shall do so, but all ladies, I am sure, 
 will," he added, almost coyly. "As we near the end 
 of the case, the details are most unsavory." 
 
 Evidently there were no females of the type speci- 
 fied, as not a woman stirred. Vesta Craven snorted 
 as she clung to Destin's arm — "Just think of that old 
 fuzz-wuzz trying to treat women as delicate pets who 
 must not have their little ears contaminated, whilst the 
 rude male brutes can wallow in it." She rubbed one 
 little pink ear absently. 
 
 279 
 
280 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Vesta Craven had always a fine contempt for the 
 conventions. 
 
 It had been rumoured that Damascene would not 
 surrender to his bail, but that he would fly the country, 
 and it was even ^supposed that in order to save drag- 
 ging in the mire some of the greatest names in Eng- 
 land, this was what the authorities hoped. 
 
 At any rate, if that were so, they were disappointed, 
 though not the public, who watched the familiar figure, 
 with the scarlet cloak, despite the intolerable closeness 
 of the court, falling behind the perfect-fitting clothes 
 —the monocle set squarely in the eye, taking in every- 
 body there, and the face, lineless and fresh, exchanging 
 a nod with one or two people, ifowever, it was no- 
 ticeable that most of the audience who knew Damas- 
 cene were careful to avert their gaze when he turned 
 the lighthouse of his eye. The Duchess of Chillington, 
 however, with the sang froid she had made her own, 
 deliberately returned the bow, to the disgust of her 
 peers. It was the Duchess's boast that she "never went 
 back on a pal." 
 
 Courcy was there, propping his lathy form against 
 a bench, whilst scattered through the crowd, purring 
 their acknowledgments, were the young men Destin 
 had already seen at the Hampstead flat and in the Vic- 
 toria Hall meeting. They at least were not ashamed of 
 their hero. There seemed to be a sort of secret under- 
 standing — superior, comfortable, and vain-glorious — 
 between them and the man in the dock, whose hair, 
 Destin noticed for the first time, was streaked with 
 grey. 
 
DAMASCENE'S LAST APPEARANCE 281 
 
 "Damascene might have made his 'hair up/* mur- 
 mured one of the young men near them, a man with 
 prominent eyes and slavering, sweet mouth. "It will 
 only give the barbarians occasion to scoff, and it is so 
 dreadfully eccentric." 
 
 As the case went on to its close, the indictment 'drew 
 its slimy length around the man in the dock. But 
 Damascene smiled imperturbably, returning a suave 
 and always good-humoured denial to everything; and, 
 when opportunity offered, running off into little discur- 
 sions upon art with the cross-examining counsel, the 
 ignorance of whom he seemed to take a malicious de- 
 light in exposing. 
 
 "I have no God but art," he said. "There is nothing 
 but art. Art is life — the absence of art is death — 
 something, my lord, I fear the gentlemen of the jury 
 will not easily understand." 
 
 It was impossible to dislike the man — ^he was resist- 
 less. He established a sort of art-fellowship with 
 friend and foe — an understanding which was delicately 
 flattering. But still, those coils wound themselves 
 closely, ever more closely, around him. The men of 
 his own class might smile with him — might admit him 
 into the camaraderie of class — ^but they were ruthless 
 as boa constrictors, and the kneading before the final 
 deglutition went on. 
 
 The crowd, and especially the fashionable portion of 
 it, appraised the man in the dock as the torturer 
 appraises the victim. The'y were driven by a horrid 
 curiosity to see whether he was "game" — as a sport- 
 ing gentleman in a pair of ballooned riding breeches, 
 
282 DEMOCRACY 
 
 standing near Destin, expressed it. But the man in the 
 dock gave no sign, save that occasionally with a hand- 
 kerchief of magenta silk he wiped away some invisible 
 moisture from his forehead. 
 
 Now, however, the heat of the place was telling on 
 him. The eyebrows sagged — the cheeks patched them- 
 selves — ^until little by little the man began to sink 
 together. But still through the grimace into which his 
 face had turned, he smiled. Drawn out to the minutest 
 details, he returned constant denial backed by witticism 
 and counter. But as the shadows of the afternoon 
 drew down, the man in the dock changed. He was 
 becoming an old man. 
 
 The jury retired. The place was breathless. Dam- 
 ascene was taken out of the dock to await the verdict. 
 The minutes dragged themselves. There was a move- 
 ment, and the twelve honest citizens, expressionless, 
 presumably shocked out of all consciousness, came 
 back. The judge took up his place, and Damascene 
 was brought into the dock — but a changed Damascene, 
 freshly manicured and polished. The cheeks firm once 
 more — the eyes black and sparkling. The man had 
 been born again. 
 
 The judge had no need to ask the question. Every- 
 one saw "Guilty" on the faces of the twelve men. 
 Damascene saw it and placed two plump white hands 
 on the dock rail, a great emerald on the first finger of 
 the left hand shining greenly in the half-lights. 
 
 "After a fair and full trial," the judge began senten- 
 tiously, "you have been found guilty, Sydney Dama- 
 scene, of the most unnatural of crimes." The people 
 
DAMASCENE'S LAST APPEARANCE 283 
 
 were all looking one way — ^not at the judge but at the 
 man. 
 
 After a homily, edifying and horror-stricken, justice 
 concluded — "I can only hope that the mass of mis- 
 guided people who call themselves Syndicalists — allied, 
 I believe, to the Socialists — ^are not as a body tainted 
 with the germs of a vice, which springs as inevitably 
 from its culture-bed of political and mental distortion 
 as the germs of disease spring from ill-regulated and 
 ill-ordered houses. It is the sentence of the Court that 
 you be confined for the term of twenty years." 
 
 "Hahet! Hahet!" Destin saw it in every face 
 there. 
 
 How would he take it ? The face was smiling — im- 
 perturbable — as ever. The voice was asking permis- 
 sion to speak, which was given. 
 
 "I congratulate a sapient jury upon their judgment 
 of a crime of which doubtless they have an extensive 
 and peculiar knowledge. My crime, my lord, is the 
 only crime that counts in England — the crime of being 
 found out. If you care to make up a register of what 
 you call 'unnatural vice,' you will find written in it 
 some of the great names of the well-regulated and well- 
 ordered Society which I have outraged — perhaps even 
 of your own noble profession. And now that I have 
 been found out, I am happy to confess not only to what 
 you call my guilt, but my blasphemous belief that there 
 is no such thing as vice and virtue — good and evil. 
 The only vice is the vice of not agreeing with your 
 fellows — the only virtue that of following your in- 
 clinations. Your inclination and that of your fellows 
 
284 DEMOCRACY 
 
 turns to the unnatural things of the licensed harlotage 
 which you call 'marriage* — mine — to other things 
 which you are pleased to call 'unnatural/ 
 
 "I am sure the public who have been fortunate 
 enough to obtain seats for this performance will be 
 gratified at the finale, as this, my lord, is my last ap- 
 pearance on any stage." 
 
 He passed his hand quickly over his lips, placing 
 something in his mouth, smiled, and collapsed like a 
 balloon that has been pricked. Two warders ran for- 
 ward, but it was too late. 
 
 It was, as he had said, Sydney Damascene's "last 
 appearance on any stage." 
 
XXII 
 
 THE BLINDED GIANT 
 
 Despite the time, heavy with event, Denis Destin was 
 forced to work day and night on the proofs of his book 
 "The New Revolution," which, in view of his fiUing 
 the eye of the public at the moment, was being hurried 
 forward. For even so conservative a house as Mc- 
 Clinton's did not disdain the sweet uses of advertise- 
 ment. 
 
 What made the strain all the greater was the fact 
 that he had to revise much of the latter stages of his 
 book in view of his — ^not "change" of view, but of his 
 realisation of the change that had been going on inside 
 him for many months. 
 
 The book was ambitious. It was a retrospect of the 
 labour forces throughout Europe within the immediate 
 past, with a forecast of the future, and particularly a 
 projection of those giant problems now dimly material- 
 ising on the screen of time — ^problems of which the 
 rank and file of the European democracies were almost 
 entirely ignorant and which their leaders, generally, 
 lacked the imaginative power to grasp. 
 
 Now the advance copies had been sent out for re- 
 view, and morning after morning, he scanned the 
 columns with the eagerness of those early days when 
 he had drawn first blood. Seasoned as he was by now 
 
 285 
 
2S6 DEMOCRACY 
 
 to praise or blame — this was something different — 
 something to make his heart beat faster. 
 
 The capitalist press, to his surprise, was, generally 
 speaking, if not enthusiastic, at least recognisant. The 
 old Olympian even gave him a quarter column all 
 to himself, for, as always, anything in the nature of 
 expert work appealed to it, and it even "recommended" 
 its readers "to buy a copy to put on their bookshelves 
 for reference, in these days when so much that is 
 superficial or deliberately misleading is written about 
 the Labour movement." The Nonconformist Liberal 
 dailies were not exactly hostile, but patronising, with a 
 sort of conventicle snuffle about some of their criti- 
 cisms. 
 
 The Meteor had apparently ignored him, which 
 depressed, for he knew that the selling of his book 
 largely hung on the Meteor with its "largest circula- 
 tion." 
 
 With more assurance he turned to the Socialist 
 papers. Here for the first time, he met the blast of 
 adversity. The Tocsin, as a red-hot Syndicalist organ, 
 poured out the vials of its wrath upon "the windy 
 theories of the politician," for the Tocsin knew by now 
 of his change. It even said — "Ambitious men of the 
 Destin type, for we will not pretend not to know the 
 antecedents of the author of The New Revolution,* 
 are the curse of the revolutionary movement and in- 
 variably stray into the pastures of the politician where 
 the lush-grass grows and where they browse, until, fat 
 and stodgy, they rise to the 'Right Honourables' or 
 something of the sort." 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 287 
 
 The political-labourist papers were on the other hand 
 heavily indifferent to that part of his book which 
 dealt with the growing power of Syndicalism amongst 
 the Latin races, and turned with avidity to the part 
 dealing with the advance by political action. The 
 powerful analysis of psychology in relation to tactic, 
 which to Destin was the heart of his book, they simply 
 ignored, either not understanding or not caring to 
 understand. The problems of the future were, with 
 the exception of the Leader, the organ of the Inde- 
 pendent Socialists, and the Trumpet, the organ of the 
 unattached, relegated to the upper air, to the land of 
 "Castles in Spain." Socialism was too much occupied 
 with the immediate to trouble about the abstract. Let 
 the future take care of itself. 
 
 A few days later, as he opened the Meteor to see 
 about the strike, on the fourth page — ^the famous 
 Meteor fourth page — he saw in big letters — "Denis 
 Destin on *The New Revolution,' " with underneath a 
 whole two columns of the precious Meteor space, en- 
 thusiastic and critical, with the initials of the editor 
 himself at the bottom. 
 
 The big letters of his name was his franking into 
 the ranks of men who mattered in the opinion of the 
 Meteor, even when they were enemies. As always, the 
 Tory organ rose above party when it came to the real 
 thing. It praised and blamed — it scorched and soothed 
 ' — ^but it gave the book the advertisement it needed, as 
 was shown by the climbing figures of the sales and the 
 satisfaction of his publishers. Men and women ran to 
 buy it at the bookstalls, and were usually disappointed 
 
288 DEMOCRACY 
 
 when they got it. Wildlsh had said it would be 
 "caviare to the general," and it was.. 
 
 It was the atmosphere of revolution in which they 
 were living which gave the book its final impetus. That 
 atmosphere which made itself felt in the parks where 
 there grew up silently in the night the mushroom-tents 
 of the soldiers. In the tramp-tramp in the streets. In 
 the silence which brooded over the city ways. 
 
 Yet the authorities made no sign. Everything was 
 being done "decently and in order." 
 
 Only in Fraternity Hall was there the feverish ebb 
 and flow of life — with ever -coming up from the stone 
 floor of the cellar the high clear voice — "Form fours ! 
 By the right there !" But now there came the metallic 
 stamp of rifle-butt. 
 
 The sound came, to him as he walked in the May 
 evening to the Hall, there to face the special meeting 
 of the Syndicalist Executive, who had demanded from 
 him an explanation of his change of politics and of his 
 resignation from the Direct Actionists, which was now 
 being used by the capitalist papers as a proof of 
 division amongst the Syndicalists themselves, v^ho by 
 now had broken away from the Strike Organisation 
 Committee, as the Trade Union leaders, fearing the 
 movements of troops and the rising temper of the 
 men, were trying to open negotiations with the 
 employers. 
 
 "By the right there ! Form fours ! Quick march !" 
 and the tramp-tramp of nailed feet, but now not so 
 scattered — ^more orderly. 
 
 Creegan, who was standing near the window of the 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 289 
 
 committee room on the first floor, where the executive 
 met, and was looking out into the afternoon shadows, 
 gave him the slant of his shoulder as he came in. Now 
 Destin knew for the first time the meaningless "cold 
 shoulder." In these days of awakening he was always 
 finding new meanings. His attention was minute — 
 scrupulous. 
 
 Every man there had been his friend in the years 
 that were now gone for ever. Little Graney,. who in a 
 burst of temper at the slowness of the Parliamentary 
 leaders had joined the Syndicalists some two months 
 before, sat in the corner gnawing his moustache and 
 looking hard at Creegan, who had his back to him. 
 Red Fitz, ex-prizefighter, sat back in his chair, his 
 warped hands a-straddle on his knees as though wait- 
 ing for the call of "Time!" to do battle, the light blue 
 eyes peering out from, under their red bushy arches on 
 either side of the twisted flattened nose. Below him, 
 Mac, the dwarfish, beady-eyed, black-haired tailor, his 
 tie shouting revolution, his toes crooking themselves 
 around the legs of his chair. At the head of the table 
 a little coal-grocer, who in the day served his customers 
 like any petty bourgeois, but at night mouthed de- 
 fiance to the stars from the top of a box at the street 
 comer, who was now being elected to the chair. Stolid 
 and fiery — fair and dark and mottled. These were the 
 lights of London Syndicalism — the Junta before which 
 he was to make good — if he were able. 
 
 "Now, gents, if you're ready," said the chairman, 
 "I'll ask Mr. Destin to explain his position. It is not 
 for me to stand between you and the . . . er . . . 
 
290 • DEMOCRACY 
 
 lecturer ... no, I mean the accused ... no, I don't 
 mean that — I mean the object of the meeting. ..." 
 He stammered and broke down. 
 
 Destin pushed back his chair. In this moment, he 
 was shorn of his strength — the strength which came 
 from his hatred of the enemies of labour. These were 
 his comrades of yesterday — might be his comrades to- 
 morrow. Hostile he felt them, but the anger that 
 sent him flaming and tempered and cold-hot against the 
 capitalist was absent here. The powerful head, with 
 the growth of wavy hair brushed back, with the grey 
 hairs now showing through it, was set, not a trifle back 
 as at the Magog meeting, but came a trifle forward — a 
 little sunk. These were the men he loved — to whom he 
 felt, though so much younger, a protector who wished 
 to save them from themselves. 
 
 But Creegan, who had now taken his seat next the 
 chairman, was staring at him in a way he had never 
 seen before. It came to him like a douche — it nerved 
 him for the ordeal. He began to speak, scarcely 
 hearing his own voice, until the machinery of tongue 
 began to move. 
 
 He started — "Comrades — " ("Not comrades," mur- 
 mured Creegan). "I said 'comrades* " — Destin looked 
 round defiantly — this was the whip he needed. No- 
 body looked at him, but nobody resented it. 
 
 "Comrades — there is no man here who can say I 
 have ever been anything else than a good comrade — 
 a staunch comrade." ("Hear-hear!" piped Graney.) 
 "When I entered the movement, I threw in my lot with 
 the Syndicalists because, like you, I believed the only 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 291 
 
 path to power was, in the long run, over the barricade. 
 Like you, I saw and see the weakness of the right 
 wing of the poHticals. I have not come here to make 
 excuses either for myself or for that right wing. For 
 the other, the militant-political wing led by" McGraw, 
 to which I now belong, I offer no excuse. There is 
 none to offer." 
 
 " 'Militant-politicals.' 'Ear 'im," sneered a voice 
 from the table. 
 
 "To-day I believe in the strike, in direct action, still," 
 went on Destin ignoring the voice, "but only as the 
 left hand of Labour. I believe the strike alone is a 
 two-edged sword which may or may not hurt the em- 
 ployer, but which in its back-swing is capable of lop- 
 ping the head of Labour itself. I have been coming to 
 this for many months. I fought, God knows, against 
 the new ideas as hard as any Conservative — we are all 
 conservatives at heart. The realisation came to me 
 the morning Brian Creegan and I walked in the park, 
 where we saw the city that rose in the night — ^the city 
 of soldiers. It was the lift of the Big Stick. 
 
 "I had seen it before twice. Once at the Great 
 North-Western Conference, where the stick was held 
 over our heads. Once before that in the Trafalgar 
 Square protest meeting about Joe Lanthorne, the en- 
 gine driver, where the orderly, deadly forces of the 
 law breakwatered* the mob ; where every buildmg was 
 the hiding place of the police ; and where in the back- 
 ground at the barracks, the redcoats waited to be loosed 
 at the signal. 
 
 "It was Force's reply to Force. 
 
292 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "Those things pulled me up— -scared me — ^but I put 
 them on one side. I belonged to the revolutionary, 
 not to the evolutionary school. (Many men damn 
 themselves, and others, for a word.) The proletariat 
 was going to march to victory, and in the twinkling of 
 an eye would seize the reins of power and change 
 everything — would beat the armed forces of the law 
 to the ground and bring Society around to its side 
 and make Society good by Act of Parliament whether 
 it liked it or not — would in fact force its views upon 
 Society — ^that Society against which it rebelled be- 
 cause it wished to force its viewS upon the Democracy. 
 Where is the difference?" 
 
 He turned to look at the faces before him. They 
 were all listening closely, but were silent. Only 
 Creegan kept his face down as he stabbed the table 
 before him with the blade of a clasp knife. 
 
 "Now you are about to make your final appeal to 
 force in the supreme end of Syndicalism — in the armed 
 General Strike. Look at the facts and let us forget 
 that we are either Syndicalist or Political. Look at 
 the facts." It was Destin's Irish persuasiveness — the 
 persuasiveness that none could resist. 
 
 "Supposing you could count upon the four millions 
 now out on strike — supposing you could count on them 
 to the last man — and you can't — you would still be 
 beaten. If the employers would let the strike proceed 
 by passive resistance — would let you hang up indefi- 
 nitely the national machinery — well and good. Sooner 
 or later, to save itself from bankruptcy, and always 
 providing you yourselves could hold out long enough. 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 293 
 
 the Masters, that is the Government, would have to 
 give in. But the Masters will do nothing of the 
 kind. 
 
 "To-day I learn — it doesn't matter how" — (Creegan 
 bad straightened himself and was looking closely at 
 the speaker) "that the troops you have seen are to 
 line the streets of London — thirty-five thousand of 
 them — to convoy food handled by 'blacklegs' from the 
 docks. That was Winterhurst's idea if it is any satis- 
 faction to you, and Winterhurst doesn't do these 
 things without thinking everything out to the last 
 hair." 
 
 "Winterhurst's not the world," said Creegan, jerk- 
 ing sullenly into his speech. 
 
 "No," replied Destin, "but he's a good big slice of 
 it at the moment." He went on: 
 
 "If you still remain passive — well and good — ^you 
 will not be brought into conflict with the armed forces 
 of the law — ^but in that case your strike has failed. If 
 you resist the transport, you bring the Big Stick down 
 on you in a moment and we shall have battle, murder, 
 and sudden death in our streets." (He paused to see 
 the effect of his words — there was something painful 
 in the way his audience were listening now.) 
 
 "Now, even if all the four millions throughout Eng- 
 land unite in resisting by force the army, navy, and 
 police — will they win? You know — I know — the ofB- 
 cer below there whose words come to us here, knows, 
 that they will be dispersed like foam of the wave — 
 scattered before the death-rattle of the rifle and the 
 Maxim, You know— even Creegan there really knows 
 
294 DEMOCRACY 
 
 — they will fire on us. If they are called on to shoot, 
 they will shoot with just as much compunction as a 
 well-drilled machine — no more and no less. The con- 
 science of the mass is another conscience than the 
 consciences of the individuals composing it. Creegan 
 ought to know that.'* 
 
 "It is a lie/* said Creegan. "They won't fire. They 
 are our comrades. They are bone of our bone and 
 flesh of our flesh." The voice cut raucously across the 
 speaker's. "I know my class." 
 
 "Destin is right," came a voice in thin irony from 
 the bottom of the table. "I know my clawss." It was 
 Graney. Somebody laughed. 
 
 "Can you fight the British army? Can you fight 
 the British policeman? Can you fight the British 
 navy?" Destin went on passionlessly. Even Creegan 
 was silent. 
 
 "And you can't depend upon four millions. You 
 can't depend upon four hundred thousand. You can 
 only depend upon the Grand International with its 
 three hundred thousand and upon the flotsam and jet- 
 sam of the city streets who will come up like dirty 
 scum upon the tide of revolution. For, as you know, 
 the Strike Organization Committee has decided to 
 ask the men to keep out of the streets whilst they open 
 negotiations with the employers." 
 
 "The Masters have refused to negotiate," said Red 
 Fitz, heavily. "They say — 'Go back or be bashed' " 
 
 "We are going on alone," boomed Creegan. 
 
 "Now, gents, let's get on with the business of the 
 meeting," said the little grocer in the chair. "No back 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 25?7 
 
 talk." He looked very fierce. Something like a smile 
 trembled on Creegan's face and flickered out. 
 
 "We are discussing matters of life and death," the 
 chairman went on sententiously. 
 
 "Of death, you mean," said Graney. 
 
 "Shut your lip, Graney," said Creegan menacingly, 
 "or ril give you some more Victoria Hall." 
 
 "Afride of you, Creegan," said the little man com- 
 ing to his feet like a bantam cock. "Afride of you, 
 you bullocky Irisher !" 
 
 "Now, gents," said the chairman, pounding the 
 table, "this isn't a night at the National Sporting you 
 know. Sit down, Graney." There was fire in his eye. 
 Graney resumed his seat, scowling at Creegan. 
 
 "And you, Brian Creegan — Fm ashimed of you, 
 leading up to a breach of the peace." Creegan sat 
 abashed like a great child caught in some naughti- 
 ness. 
 
 "Now to get back to business," went on Destin, who 
 had stood unruffled through all this. "Where does 
 this leave us ? 
 
 "It means that Democracy is thrown back on the 
 vote as its chief road of advance, using the strike only 
 to hamper the capitalists as opportunity offers, to dis- 
 locate business, and never to prolong it long enough to 
 bring the forces of the Crown into operation — to bring 
 the Big Stick." 
 
 "Don't quote from your 'New Revolution,' " 
 growled Creegan. "You talk like a book, not like a 
 red-blooded man." 
 
 Destin, unmoved, went on. "These are the facts. 
 
296 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Can they be set aside? If they can, I am willing to 
 change my mind." 
 
 "You are an adept at changing your coat or your 
 mind," sneered Creegan. 
 
 Destin ignored him. "That means that we must 
 grasp the reins of power-— of political power — of Par- 
 liamentary power. We can only do that by educa- 
 tion — people always get the Government they deserve. 
 No government, even if it would, can advance one inch 
 beyond the educational status of the democracy. Yet 
 democracy itself is the great educator and must be the 
 educator because it is the nursery of Government as 
 of all other things. 
 
 "You revolutionists think," said Destin, gradually 
 passing from defence to attack, "that all the proletariat 
 has to do is to man the barricades, defeat the armed 
 forces of Society, take over the reins of Government — 
 that Government which you hate, because all govern- 
 ment means politics — and in some unexplained way, 
 revolutionise Society, making it happy and contented 
 whether it will or no. All this without intermediate 
 stage — without that education which is the essential of 
 all progress. You imagine that because the Govern- 
 ments of the time are ignorant — painfully ignorant — 
 like the democracy which elects them, and that because 
 you come brimming with ideas and ideals, you can 
 change everything, again always forgetting that the 
 Governments are elected by the people and that the 
 people get always the government they deserve. 
 
 "Can you not see that the political battle is the 
 eternal battle — ^that when you have entered the New 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 297 
 
 Jerusalem, there will always be revolution in her streets 
 — in the golden ways, and that as the Socialists seize 
 the reins of power, they in their turn become the Con- 
 servatives of party embattling themselves with the 
 newer and younger spirits who wish for new roads and 
 new methods? This is the eternal battle between the 
 right and left wings, even after Socialism becomes an 
 accomplished fact. 
 
 "Have you not learnt" — (Destin was now the ac- 
 cuser) "have you not learnt that new and tremendous 
 problems have been loosed over the democracies of the 
 world by the recent war — ^and this long before Society 
 reaches the communist or co-operative stage? In the 
 forefront is the question of militarism. Have we any 
 unity upon that ? Is the whole European International 
 of one mind? Has it been decided in every country 
 that never again shall the representatives of the pro- 
 letariat in Parliament or Reichstag or Chamber of 
 Deputies, vote a halfpenny for war or war material? 
 Are we even agreed upon the quest io.n of universal dis- 
 armament? Have we even a war policy — the most 
 essential of all things for organised Social Democracy? 
 Are we for or against colonisation and the absorption 
 of small nationalities? Are the Socialist parties of the 
 world agreed unanimously that it is or is not right for 
 Socialists to sit in Capitalist ministries? 
 
 "Or, taking something of the very immediate pres- 
 ent, with the swing of Latin Syndicalism towards 
 militarism and nationalism since the outbreak of the 
 recent war, are the Syndicalists themselves agreed?" 
 
 He had stopped. The faces of the men before him 
 
298 DEMOCRACY 
 
 showed doubt, anger — even fear. Graney was holding 
 the edge of the table in his hands, craning to each 
 sentence. It was a new earth that Destin was opening 
 to them. 
 
 "But passing from the present — how many of you 
 who speak glibly of the new revolution — who talk 
 about abolishing all competition and substituting co- 
 operation — ^have thought of the newer, fiercer competi- 
 tion that co-operation will unloose? Of the competi- 
 tion, not for the bread and butter of life, but for the 
 fountain of life itself — the arts, sciences, yes, even in 
 the realm of the super-physical? when the minds of 
 men are freed from the moil and toil of the bread- 
 battle — the fight for that bread which will be manu- 
 factured automatically by the machinery of those 
 days — when man has conquered the machine, instead 
 of being conquered by it? 
 
 "Or have you thought of the race problems now 
 expanding before the gaze of a half-awakened Europe? 
 What about the challenge of the East — of the eight 
 hundred millions of yellow and brown men — which 
 has already begun— of a 12-hour day worked for six- 
 pence against an 8-hour day worked for an5rthing from 
 eight shillings to forty as you take the European or 
 American wage-standard? 
 
 "Do you know that even now the Masters have 
 threatened to bring the first of the yellow flood to break 
 your strike as they did in South Africa a generation 
 ago? Do you know anything of the preparations now 
 being made in China and in her schoolmaster Japan, 
 to drive European goods out of the market by sheer 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 299 
 
 fiumber and endurance-force — a challenge to be backed 
 when the time comes by the bayonet and bullet? 
 
 "And are you Syndicalists, who have cut and dried 
 everything, decided how organised White labour will 
 meet the new challenge, when you cannot even decide 
 to admit coloured men to your Unions in those White 
 countries where they live ? How are you going to keep 
 up the White Life-Standard before the coming Yellow 
 and Brown invasion? 
 
 "And with these terrific problems confronting you, 
 you wish to throw away the little you have so tortu- 
 ously won and have been losing, for the statistics prove 
 beyond question that allowing for certain municipal 
 schemes, the European workers' life-standard has de- 
 clined within the twenty years before the war — ^you 
 propose to put your unprotected head in the lion jaws 
 of Society. You wish to invite the whiff of grape 
 which will not only leave you but Europe helpless in 
 the face of the Yellow Shadow. 
 
 "But whether you Syndicalists invite the avalanche 
 —whether the present strike is stamped out by the 
 red hobs of Society and the Democracy of to-day goes 
 down in blood and tears — Democracy itself is death- 
 less. Once more — a hundred times more — it will lift 
 itself from its belly and raise its blinded eyes towards 
 the light. Democracy is bigger than Syndicalism — it 
 is bigger even than Socialism — it is the biggest, the 
 most certain thing in the world — it is Evolution itself 
 with the Will behind." 
 
 Destin sat down abruptly, his face flushed, his fight- 
 ing spirit roused. He had passed from the position of 
 
300 DEMOCRACY 
 
 accused to that of accuser. Some of the men before 
 him were breathing hard as though they had been 
 running — some stolid — some imcomprehending. 
 
 Creegan stood up. 
 
 "You coward!" he said. 
 
 "I am no coward," said Destm, "but I am frightened 
 all the same." 
 
 "You're a traitor. You've sold the pass," went on 
 Creegan. "Now listen to me." 
 
 He reached upwards, the end of his extinguished 
 cheroot forgotten between his lips. He remembered it 
 and spat it out on the floor angrily as though it stopped 
 his free expression. 
 
 "You all know what I stand for — force — physical 
 force. You know 'tis for the bullet I stand and not the 
 ballot. You know that I believe, and all history has 
 shown it, that the classes will never yield to the masses 
 by intellectual persuasion. If we ever got hold of the 
 Parliamentary machine, I tell ye, if they could not 
 crook it from us they would shoot it from us. Let 
 our trial of strength come now. I don't believe the 
 soldiers will fire on their own comrades. 
 
 "If they shoot, let them pay the price, and 'tis a 
 terrible price they'll have to pay. Let us meet them 
 now in the streets. Let us commence sabotage as 
 Madame Satalia has suggested. Like our French and 
 Italian comrades, let us wreck the railways and the 
 public buildings. Let us lay their towns in ruins and 
 out of the ashes and the blood let us build the fair city 
 of to-morrow. Let us have hell and bring heaven out 
 of it. 
 
THE BLINDED GIANT 301 
 
 "My own people, the Irish, will fight. I can pledge 
 myself on them. Faith 'tis they that have more revolu- 
 tion to the square inch than the whole of the rest of 
 the United Kingdom. They are the boys to lead a 
 revolution. When the Grand International gives the 
 lead, it is little the Trades Unionists outside will heed 
 the voices of their coward chiefs. Victory is ours. 
 We'll go full steam ahead. If Society is knocked into 
 smithereens, so much the worse for Society. 
 
 "We have four millions of men out. Can they fight 
 four jnillions? Not a man has black-legged on us — 
 ratted on us. The mass of the workers will follow us 
 and not the political scally-wags who have pulled down 
 the red flag. And anyhow, the Government cannot 
 move its troops or get supplies to them. 
 
 "Oh it's true that here and there men can rat from 
 us — like that man there" — ^he turned contemptuously 
 towards Destin — "but the mass are true. Each for all 
 and all for each! 
 
 "Before he talks of yellow Chinese let him explain 
 his own yellow heart — before he talks of challenges, let 
 him examine his own challenge to his old comrades. 
 The soldiers will not fire I say — if they do, we have 
 their answer for them below there." He pointed down- 
 wards to the cellar, from where came the tramp of 
 men. 
 
 That was the right spirit. The men before him could 
 understand these concrete things — they hated abstrac- 
 tions. Of course it was all moonshine. Let Destin 
 stick to his books — ^they were dealing with facts, not 
 printed words. "To hell with theory !" Red Fitz said. 
 
302 DEMOCRACY 
 
 But little Graney from the end of the table said — 
 "No blighted fear. Destin has the dog by the right 
 end — ^the business end. We have the brute by the 
 tail." 
 
 Creegan spat on the floor. 
 
 A wave of uncertainty passed over the faces of the 
 men at Graney' s remark. After all, Graney was a 
 level-headed little devil. There might be something in 
 it. And Destin had been all right until this political 
 business had got hold of him. . . . On the other hand, 
 Creegan ought to know. He had always been right. 
 
 The men were wavering, when the windows rattled. 
 There came the boom of a distant drum to their ears 
 in the gathering shadows. . . . Now cutting through 
 it plaintively came the pipes. It drew closer until the 
 space before the Hall was full of people, the place 
 hollow to the beat of drum and the skirl of the war- 
 pipes. 
 
 In front came the fife and drum band of the Invin- 
 cibles, the long-legged drummer twirling his sticks as 
 though possessed, the red flag of revolution carried at 
 the head. Behind strode half a dozen pipers, the green 
 ribands from their pipes flying in the breeze. The 
 waves of people who hung on their heels were dirty 
 and ragged, but they cheered deafeningly for "The 
 Revolution." 
 
 The others had run to the window at the drum, save 
 for little Graney, who still sat hunched in his chair, 
 leaving Destin there, forgotten. 
 
 Destin passed out of the room alone. 
 
XXIII 
 
 THE BIG STICK 
 
 WiNTERHURST, as Home Secretary, had placed Lon- 
 don in a strait jacket. The first convoy of food from 
 the docks, handled by the labour "black-legs," was to go 
 through this fine May morning when Destin and Mc- 
 Graw, still hoping to hold back the people from the 
 armed men, walked down past the Bank of England 
 towards Fraternity Hall. 
 
 Winterhurst*s grip was everywhere. The announce- 
 ment of the convoy had been made quite openly in the 
 papers of the previous day, when "all law-abiding 
 citizens" were warned to keep away from the route to 
 the city. They walked in the centre of a fairway lined, 
 as though for a Royal procession, with brown, hard- 
 faced young men, some of them boys, who marked the 
 curbstone in khaki intervals. Winterhurst had said — 
 "The Government deprecates the use of force and 
 indeed believes that no force will be necessary — but 
 the food is going through/' 
 
 "The food is going through." It was "Winter hurst's 
 way," which the-man-in-the-street had come to know 
 and admire. 
 
 They heard the tramp of feet, and a regiment of 
 Guardsmen, crimson, black, and steel, moved past, led 
 by a distinguished-looking man, whose bearskin passed 
 
 303 
 
304 DEMOCRACY 
 
 high over the heads of the men on the curbstone, the 
 broad scarlet stripe of the leg moving evenly beside the 
 narrower stripes of the men. It was the perfection of 
 the man-machine. 
 
 *Winterhurst's Invincibles," said McGraw in his 
 dour Scottish way, taking his curved briar from his 
 mouth for the moment to say it. 
 
 They found themselves stopped at the entrance to 
 Leadenhall Street — stopped by a cordon of police who 
 seemed to have come up out of the ground. The 
 moment before the way had been free. Now the big 
 men, their capes rolled at their sides, barred the road 
 impassively. 
 
 Forced to detour, they walked down Gracechurch 
 Street, but on coming out opposite the Monument, the 
 top a sheaf of burnished spears in the quiet sun of the 
 early morning, they saw another line of policemen 
 straddling Eastcheap, with a couple of files of men in 
 khaki in the background, their boy-officer passing 
 slowly up and down before them as though the affairs 
 of empire lay heavily on him. 
 
 "There come the other Invincibles," said McGraw, 
 pointing the smoking stem of his pipe the length of 
 Eastcheap. 
 
 As Destin turned, something thrilled on the morning 
 air. The windows of the office near him rattled. Then 
 the beating of a drum and the piercing notes of the 
 fifes playing "The Night that Larry was Stretched," 
 the marching-tune of the Invincibles. 
 
 "Atten-shun !" 
 
 The men in khaki had stiffened. 
 
THE BIG STICK 305 
 
 The little body, uniformed with green caps and green 
 sashes, at their head a red flag, swung along the empti- 
 ness of the street. Fringing them on either side was 
 a floating rabble, a little boy, with tow-coloured hair, 
 strutting in front of them. The long-legged, red- 
 headed drummer whom Destin had seen a few days 
 before opposite Fraternity Hall, was still twirling his 
 sticks in fancy swings, now under, now over, the 
 handles glittering as they turned. 
 
 The space had narrowed to a hundred )rards, but 
 still they came on. Now they were playing "The Red 
 Flag," marching with a slower, steadier gait, singing 
 as they came: 
 
 "With heads uncovered swear we all 
 To bear it onward till we fall. 
 Come dungeon dark or gallows grim 
 
 This song shall be our parting hymn. . . ." 
 
 Behind, a chorus had swelled as though the dia- 
 pasons of a great organ had been drawn out. But it 
 was a disciplined chorus, bursting from thousands of 
 throats together. It came from something back there 
 they could not see. 
 
 The soldiers made no sign, contenting themselves 
 with standing in the middle of the way. 
 
 The drum took a deeper note, the fifes a higher. The 
 space was narrowing, when McGraw took a quick 
 resolution. 
 
 "Now or never !'* he said. "There will be ugly work 
 in a moment if we can't stop them. Come on.'* 
 
306 DEMOCRACY 
 
 He ran forward at the double through the lines of 
 blue and khaki like a young man, with Destin behind 
 him. As they ran, they heard cheers breaking out 
 raggedly from behind the band and caught the gleam 
 of the sun on something shining back there in the 
 blackness of people that flowed down the channel of 
 the street like storm-water. 
 
 "Where is Creegan?" panted McGraw as he came 
 up with the man carrying the red flag. 
 
 "Stand out of the way McGraw V* He threw it at 
 him over his shoulder as he passed. 
 
 They were almost on the police, who passing through 
 the khaki lines had loosened their batons, when Destin 
 saw Graney trying to reach him out of the press. 
 
 "Graney, stop them for God's sake! The soldiers 
 are waiting for you." 
 
 Graney, with an exclamation, ran to the head, and in 
 the last twenty yards turned to face the oncoming 
 multitude, holding his sparse arms, scarecrow-like, to 
 stop them, and seizing the staff of the flag. The lead- 
 ing files seeing Graney's badge as marshal hesitated a 
 moment, but the big drummer, by this time maddened, 
 took another flourish of his sticks as the music petered 
 out. In a moment Graney had run between the two 
 foremost men and had clutched his arm. 
 
 The big man shook him off as though he had been 
 a rat and raised his drumsticks. "On boys!" he 
 shouted, and brought the sticks down one after the 
 other. The fifes took up the tune again and on the 
 crowd rushed, surging around them from both sides 
 like a wave that overruns a rock in the ocean. 
 
THE BIG STICK 307 
 
 "Open out!*' It was Creegan. 
 
 The bandsmen opened out, leaving a thin channel 
 between them. Something ran along the channel — a 
 long line of powerful men who broke through the thin 
 blue line of police without feeling them and were into 
 the khaki line before the officer knew what was happen- 
 ing. They brushed on and over them, forming steadily 
 on the other side to the word of command as they came 
 out, whilst behind them the pressure grew. The crowd 
 came on, unseeing. 
 
 Now they were passing down King William Street. 
 Destin had been swept off his feet, helpless, and as they 
 broke through he had found himself mingled with the 
 head of the column as it formed itself under the quick, 
 high command of Creegan. 
 
 The band coming at the tail of the rush, re-formed, 
 the scattered police and soldiers not trying to stop 
 them. Again the boom of the drum and the scream 
 of fifes rose on the air, and for the first time Destin 
 saw that each man of the Invincibles was armed with 
 rifle and bayonet. 
 
 Creegan walked before, breaking step, his figure 
 dominating the crowd, his hat set at a ferocious slant. 
 His face was the face of the new Creegan — the omnip- 
 otent Creegan before whose blast the walls of Jericho 
 should go down. 
 
 But Destin made a last attempt. "Brian ! Brian V 
 He had managed, battered as he was, to reach him. 
 
 "Stop it, Creegan ! Stop it ! The soldiers are wait- 
 ing at the Bank. They are waiting." 
 
 Creegan wheeled and lashed at him. It caught 
 
308 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Destin fairly on the side of the jaw. He felt his senses 
 going and his mouth filling with something which came 
 salt to the taste. He reeled on to the first rank which 
 threw him from man to man like a foam bubble until 
 he was on the fringe of the human wave. 
 
 With a vague idea of stopping the thing that was 
 coming, he strove to keep up with the crowd. The 
 drum was beating itself out against the walls of the 
 high offices, the fifes shrilling, the sweating faces of 
 the men blowing downwards as though to blow on the 
 fires of hate. The crowd swept on behind, not seeing 
 and not knowing where they were heading. Only 
 movement — ^movement — ^movement. Oil! It did not 
 matter where. But on ! 
 
 He felt the pressure relax — found himself forced 
 outwards into a sort of eddy where the corner of King 
 William Street lapped Lombard Street. 
 
 Somebody was half-edging him, half-carrying him 
 out of the rabble. He found himself against a ladder. 
 "Now," came a high voice. It was Graney. 
 
 "Up 'ere — 'ere !" it came in sharp command. Destin 
 felt himself half -dragged, half -climbing the ladder of 
 a scaffolding which reared itself against the house on 
 the Lombard Street corner. As they threw themselves 
 on the first staging, the ladder by which they had 
 climbed was swept away by the crowd. 
 
 "Thort I knew what to do," said Graney trium- 
 phantly. "I 'ope Creegan gets 'is bloomin' 'ead broke 
 for this morning's work," he added vindictively. "I 
 came along with 'em to try and stop 'em, but it was 
 fail arskin' for it." 
 
THE BIG STICK 309 
 
 They climbed the high stages until they found them- 
 selves looking down from the height of the fifth storey 
 at the people who swarmed like bees beneath them. 
 
 Destin cleared his eyes and his mouth, spitting a 
 stream of red blood on the boarding. "He caught you 
 orl right, mate," said Graney. "That bullocky Irisher 
 can 'it. I know — I've 'ad some. 
 
 "Now there's going to be 'ell with the lid off," he 
 said, sententiously, looking down. 
 
 Destin for the first time understood the weight of 
 the rush behind Creegan. In front, marching in fairly 
 good order, Creegan, unarmed, leading them, strode 
 the Invincibles, whose only regimental was a band of 
 red around the left arm. There were perhaps a couple 
 of thousand of them. They were armed with all kinds 
 of rifles from Sniders to Martini-Henrys, seized chance 
 and Creegan alone knew where, the needle bayonets 
 sticking out incongruously. Behind them came that 
 maddened band, the drummer still twirling the sticks, 
 the reverberations coming upwards to where they 
 crouched. 
 
 But behind — ^behind was the mob, stretching down 
 to the Monument and beyond — sl human torrent that 
 grew under the eye, and from everywhere, without 
 cohesion or purpose. Each side alley vomited its con- 
 tribution to the ruck. Sprinkling it were women and 
 children, the shrill cries of fainting women coming out 
 of the heart of the press which fumed upward to them. 
 Already the very scaffolding on which they lay was 
 shaking under the impact of the stream. 
 
 In places, the crowd had packed itself immoveable. 
 
310 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Cries from the front made the crowd sway backwards 
 a moment, only the next, to gather volume and rush 
 forward once more like the crest of a wave dragged 
 by an undertow. 
 
 Then his eyes passed to the open space before the 
 Bank of England which held itself grey and peaceful 
 in the light of the morning sun, like some old rock 
 against which the elements spend themselves vainless. 
 Before the main entrance the Guards regiment he had 
 seen was standing in ruled lines. Policemen were 
 marching in like automata. On the entrances to Princes 
 'Street and Cheapside and Queen Victoria Street 
 cordons of khaki held the ring clear as though for a 
 public spectacle. 
 
 As he looked, he saw a figure come out on the steps 
 of the Mansion House in cocked hat and robes. It 
 held a paper before it and moved its lips and head and 
 then disappeared. 
 
 He was looking at a marionette show with some 
 invisible power working the strings. 
 
 As he disappeared, Destin saw Creegan throw up 
 his hand. The men halted. There was a stiffening of 
 the Guardsmen. Before them a doll-figure nodded its 
 head quickly as though the unseen mouth was mov- 
 ing. The men had brought their rifles to the ready. 
 Another movement of the head, and they had brought 
 them to their shoulders. Now, Creegan^s men had 
 debouched into three lines, the front lying down on the 
 macadam, the second kneeling, and the third standing. 
 As something inconsequent but particular, he noticed 
 that one man was lying in a pile of dung. 
 
THE BIG STICK 311 
 
 The place was silent. The shouting of the crowds 
 behind broke thinly as though against some invisible 
 barrier as it reached the open space. 
 
 Then as the hand of the doll rose stick-like, ready 
 to fall with the signal to fire, he saw a woman break 
 from the crowd at the side and run between the oppos- 
 ing lines of men, her hands outstretched as though to 
 stop the slaughter. The hand seemed to tremble, then 
 fell unwavering. A crackle came to his ears. 
 
 The girl's hands had come down convulsively at the 
 first spatter, as she turned and fell in the roadway. 
 From the ranks of the Invincibles poured a scattered 
 fire. Then the people fell shadow-like on the roads, 
 flecking the macadam. A woman at the side tumbled 
 over on her face screaming in a high piping voice like 
 a wounded hare, clutching her belly with her hands 
 as though to staunch the life-blood of her unborn child. 
 The lines were converging at the double, the bayonets 
 gleaming. A figure had broken from the ranks of the 
 Invincibles as they swept up. 
 
 Destin was holding to the edge of the boarding, 
 staring at the speck that lay between. 
 
 The sleek dark head and white neck had fallen 
 brokenly forward in the dust, where he caught the 
 emerald green of the dress. 
 
 It was the Green-eyed Girl. 
 
 In that moment the scales fell from his eyes. 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE BURSTING OF THE BUBBLE 
 
 Destin lay on his scaffolding throughout the day, 
 waiting for Graney, who had slipped down to bring 
 back the news. 
 
 He had seen the bayonets of the Guardsmen glit- 
 tering, the lifting of the Invincibles, and the impend- 
 ing clash over the body of the girl. There was the 
 roar of waters in his ears as darkness fell about him. 
 
 When his senses came to him, the sounds of battle 
 were already dying away in the distance — there was 
 an occasional rifle crack, and once he even thought, 
 the stutter of a machine gun. Now, at the end of the 
 day, as he craned over the parapet, he saw the space 
 below him deserted, with the flare of the arc-lights 
 setting out the shadows— or were they something else ? 
 — ^that lay here and there on the white macadam. The 
 irregular triangle was deserted save for the soldiers 
 who bivouacked across Princes Street and Cheapside. 
 
 It was nearly midnight before Graney, his coat 
 bulging, came back with his news. 
 
 He groped and pulled out a loaf of bread and a 
 bottle of something which he gave Destin, who drank. 
 The taste nauseated him, but he felt the blood once 
 more flowing through his parched body, whilst a 
 mouthful or two of the new bread, once he had over- 
 
 312 
 
THE BURSTING OF THE BUBBLE 313 
 
 come the pain of mastication with his stiffened jaws, 
 now set in a mask of blood, put fresh strength into 
 him. 
 
 Graney did not speak, but watched him eat in silence, 
 crouching by his side on the planking. 
 
 "Well?" said Destin dully. 
 
 "We've got it in the neck this time and no error, 
 mate," said the little man biting his moustache. 
 
 "Is , . . is she dead ?" he asked, the thing coming 
 to him suddenly. He had forgotten the girl down 
 there as though she were something with which he had 
 no concern. 
 
 "She.^" asked Graney, puzzled. "Oh! the girl. 
 No, she isn't dead. Not as I know on. They didn't 
 'arf mangle her with their bloody gunfire — I don't 
 fink. She's a plucked 'un, she is. Got the guts ! 
 
 "You couldn't stop the Invincibles," he went on, 
 "but Creegan ran out before them and picked her up, 
 breaking his way back through the first rush. They 
 tell me he's been shot through the shoulder — anyhow, 
 he's disappeared with the girl." 
 
 "I must go," said Destin, half-rising. 
 
 "Wot are yer a-torking abaht? Are you balmy, 
 mate? Do you know they're running in the leaders 
 right and left, and there's a hue and cry after Creegan 
 fit to raise the dead. If you walk dahn that ladder 
 you'll walk into the arms of a copper — ^that's what 
 you'll do, and that'll be the end." 
 
 "But I didn't lead them — ^maybe more shame to me," 
 said Destin. 
 
 "That don't matter. It was you and me wot brought 
 
314 DEMOCRACY 
 
 them tip to the scratch, wasn't it, even though we 
 cleared out at the last moment ? and Winterhurst's net, 
 blast him ! is big enough and bHnd enough to swallow 
 everything. All's fish that comes to his net to-day." 
 
 Destin lay back again. Graney was right. 
 
 "You- know," went on Graney, "I'm a little feller — 
 I sneaked back here like a shadow — but you're a 
 bullocky big bloke — a. regular Irisher." 
 
 "You're sure she's not dead?" asked Destin again. 
 
 Graney stared at him. "Well, mate — she's a rare 
 plucked 'un and all that, but she's not the only pebble 
 on the beach. There are others. W'y Gawd bless my 
 soul — do ye know wot's been going on dahn there?" 
 He pointed vaguely over the edge. "They've knocked 
 a hundred of our fellows cold — with a few women and 
 kiddies who got in the way, as a makeweight, and 
 Gawd knows how many *ave slunk away to die in their 
 *oles. The Invincibles fought like hell, but the Maxims 
 were too much for them, and o' course the politicals, 
 like wise men, stayed at 'ome. They've done in nearly 
 half a hundred of the sojers, and they tell me that the 
 remainder of them, left be'ind to fight the food convoy 
 at the docks, 'ave a couple of thahsand buck navvies at 
 work throwing up entrenchments acrawss the streets 
 leading to Tower Hill, and 'ave filled the 'ahses with 
 armed men. They 'ave a terrible lot up there wiv them 
 —every crook and cutthroat aht for to see the fun, and 
 their 'ands fair itching for the pickings afterwards. 
 They did send the coppers agin them but they ate up 
 a score of 'em in a jiff. They'll wait for the sojers. 
 
 "But it was in the West that hell broke loose. The 
 
THE BURSTING OF THE BUBBLE 315 
 
 capting, *oo was In charge of the West-end contingent, 
 was shot through the head the first rush. Some of 
 the mob broke awye dahn the Embankment and uf) 
 Northumberland Avenue. They started a-bashing of 
 the clubs and the peelers, and the West London Syndi- 
 calists broke loose to meet them. They've made a fair 
 china shop of Kensington and Piccadilly. It was all 
 that brute Goring. 
 
 'T seed that fellow with Winterhurst directing the 
 men in grey from a balcony in the hoperations at 
 Hoxford Circus — ^but that was at the hend of the 
 dye." 
 
 Seeing the look of puzzlement on Destin's face, 
 he added — "Didn't you know? Goring and the Em- 
 ployers' Defence Union had armed their private braves 
 — ^middle clawssy blokes who carried a pen in the day- 
 time and at night a bloomin' gun. Seems they had 
 Government powers. Ccnserkently, every factory and 
 every private 'ahse was packed to the doors with the 
 boys in grey. 
 
 "We'd 'ad the boys in blue and +he boys in red and 
 khaki — ^now we're up against the boys in grey. Tork 
 abaht fightin' the British Hempire. 
 
 "Some of the Invincibles had got through from the 
 fight arahnd the Bank and tried to join up with the 
 West-end lot, but they were lined up and shot aht o' 
 'and when cort wiv the firearms smokin' in their *ands. 
 But even had they 'eld together they 'adn't an earthly. 
 The whole place began to vomit men in blue and khaki 
 and grey — and there was Winterhurst, with Courcy by 
 his side, directing the business as cool as Christmas. 
 
316 DEMOCRACY 
 
 "Well, as I was sym', Goring on a *orse, looking 
 like a potboiler, was a-urgin' on the boys to the work 
 with the Big Stick. Gawd! it fair sickens me w'en I 
 fink of it. You should sl 'eard the nuts go under the 
 batons — ^like filbers cracking in a door- jamb. 
 
 "And the worst of it was, three-fourths of the mob 
 were no more Syndicalist than you ... or I for that 
 matter," he added. "They were just the hold-ons of 
 the back-blocks — the scum that rose on the top of the 
 others, aht for plunder. And nah there's no plunder 
 but bloody murder. Some of them are swearing to 
 revenge themselves on Creegan for bringing them into 
 it. Even some of our own men are savage agin him. 
 If he showed hisself nah, I believe they'd do 'im in — 
 some of the worst on 'em. 
 
 "But I seed Courcy and he was a torkin' earnestly to 
 Winterhurst in the balcony. 'E didn't like the dirty 
 work and when the Maxims began to play and the 
 crowd to fall under the bullets, I sor 'im turn awye 
 like this 'ere" (Graney buried his face clumsily in his 
 hands) "as though he couldn't bear the sight. But 
 that devil Winterhurst smiled and went on puffing his 
 long cigar, looking on as though it were a bloomin' 
 circus — ^and Goring below raging through the press 
 like a mad bull, for by that time ^e'd got off the balcony 
 — ^he thort they weren't a-doin' of 'em in fast enough. 
 
 "This has fair put the kybosh on Direct Action. 
 Syndicalism — phaugh!" Graney snapped his fingers. 
 They cracked hardly under the cold lights. "Direct 
 Action! The barricade! Arter wot 'appened be'ind 
 the barricade at the top of Regent Street, you won't 
 
THE BURSTING OF THE BUBBLE 317 
 
 'ear much tork abaht barricades — ^not from yours truly, 
 any'ah. 
 
 "They hedged the mob into Hoxford Circus, and 
 then I tell you the Maxims got to work in a flaming 
 circle. Then they played on 'em — they played on 'em. 
 The men cursed and some of 'em 'eld up their 'ands, 
 but they went dahn all the same in swathes like the 
 Fuzzy- Wuzzies at Omdurman — I was aht there under 
 Kitchener, you know. . . . Direct Action !" Graney 
 spat over the parapet. 
 
 The sounds of distant firing came to them like the 
 crackle of summer lightning. 
 
 "I reckon that's the platoon work," said Graney, 
 facing towards the sound. "They're putting 'em up 
 against the wall at the back of the Nelson Column.. 
 
 "There it goes again." Once more the spatter came 
 to their ears like the breaking of surf upon some distant 
 beach. 
 
 "Graney — I'm going down," said Destin, picking 
 himself up from the boarding and going to the edge 
 where the top of the ladder showed itself. 
 
 The docker looked at him hard a moment, opened 
 his mouth to speak, and then shut it again. 
 
 "You're mad — but if you go — I go," said the little 
 man. 
 
 They passed silently down the reaches of the ladder- 
 way until they came to the last stage where the ladder 
 had been swept away. 
 
 "Better slide the pole," said he. Gently they let 
 themselves over the edge and slid to the ground. 
 
 "Who goes there!" 
 
318 DEMOCRACY 
 
 A figure had stepped forward and something was 
 glimmering under the arc-lights. 
 
 "Run for Christ's sake!" 
 
 Graney had scuttled off down the street, Destin 
 sprinting by his side. There was a rush of footsteps 
 and a report. A bullet sang past. Then another and 
 another. But they had darted down St. Swithin's 
 Lane into Cannon Street. 
 
 "Direct action!" said Graney. 
 
 He spat again on the pavement. 
 
XXV 
 
 DEMOS 
 
 They passed by devious ways to Graney*s lodgings in 
 a street in the Mile End Road district, listening as they 
 went for sounds of firing from Tower Hill ; but it was 
 silent over there. 
 
 "Waiting for reinforcements I reckon/' said Graney. 
 "They'll wait till they've finished the West and come 
 East to-night. Make a clean job on it I reckon, 
 Winterhurst's way." 
 
 As they mounted the rickety stairs, Graney muttered 
 — "Wot the 'oly Moses 'ave we 'ere?" 
 
 He struck a match. Before him, crouching on the 
 stairs, was a little boy, whom Destin recognised as the 
 boy he had seen in the morning strutting before the 
 Invincibles. 
 
 "Nah then, young shaver, wot do you want?" 
 
 "Are you Mr. Graney?" the boy asked. 
 
 "I am that gent," said Graney solemnly. 
 
 "Then I was to give yer this — that's all." He 
 fumbled in his open shirt and drew out a piece of 
 paper. 
 
 Graney unlocked the door of his room and walked 
 in. They heard him strike a match. The room, a 
 little East London lodging with a bookshelf in 
 
 319 
 
320 DEMOCRACY 
 
 the corner, showed itself bare to the eye. The light 
 from the gas lamp outside came in wanly through the 
 window. 
 
 He read the paper, which he handed to Destin. 
 
 He knew the writing, the heavy, even writing of the 
 Green-eyed Girl: 
 
 "If this reaches you, will you please find Mr. Destin 
 and bring him at once to the place which the bearer will 
 show you. Come now." 
 
 "Were is it sonny?" asked Graney. 
 
 "A couple of streets away," said the boy, "in Love 
 Lane." 
 
 "Gor lummy ! wot next," said Graney. "Love Lane. 
 That's a nice place to bring up." 
 
 They followed the boy down the stairs and made two 
 or three turnings, coming out of a greasy alley-way 
 into a London rookery. A crowd of men and women 
 had collected in the place, some of them looking 
 upwards at the dilapidated fa9ade of the house 
 where the boy had led them, mouthing threats and 
 curses. 
 
 The child took them up several flights of stairs, and 
 saying " *Ere y'are," vanished. 
 
 "Red Fitz*s," said Graney. 
 
 Destin knocked. He pushed open the door and 
 found himself in a little whitewashed room, lighted by 
 a single candle, that glimmered from its sticky bed on 
 the window ledge, showing some flesh-coloured pic- 
 tures of boxers on the walls. 
 
 Lying on a meagre sofa before the window, covered 
 by a shawl, was a girl. 
 
DEMOS 321 
 
 He went over, Graney following him, curious. 
 
 "Is that you?" said the deep voice he knew so 
 well. 
 
 "Yes," said Destin. "IVe come." 
 
 The girl half raised herself and looked at him so 
 strangely that 'he dropped his eyes. She seemed to be 
 asking him some question. 
 
 "He is there." She pointed through the wall. 
 Destin knew whom she meant. 
 
 "He carried me out of the press and then went down 
 — collapsed, but Red Fitz and another had followed us 
 and brought us here." 
 
 "Are you hurt?" asked Destin remembering. It 
 seemed as though these things were unreal. He was 
 constantly waking into something he had forgotten. 
 
 "They shot me through the calf." She looked at 
 him and smiled. "Not very romantic, is it? It brought 
 me down, but it is merely a flesh wound. It is bound 
 up and a little painful. But Creegan has it." 
 
 "Where is it?" 
 
 "He got it through the chest. It seems a piece of 
 bone is pressing on the lung. He must be operated on 
 if we are to save his life, but the only doctor I could 
 trust in London — my friend Doctor OTlaherty, who 
 has seen him — says he must not stay here. He cannot 
 operate in this place. . . . Listen to that." 
 
 The growl in the courtyard came up to their ears — 
 with now a harsher note in it. 
 
 "You know some of the people down there have 
 been in the fighting and a couple of men have been 
 killed. Somehow or other the rumour has got about 
 
Z22 DEMOCRACY 
 
 that Creegan is here and they're talking of making him 
 pay for it all. I am afraid for him." The girl's eyes 
 were wide and distressed as she went on: 
 
 "The doctor says he will take him into his own 
 house on the other side of Tower Hill and chance the 
 authorities, as he has often chanced them before. He 
 is an old Fenian you know. So I sent for you to 
 help me. 
 
 "He" (she nodded towards the next room) "has 
 been delirious all the day off and on, and has made his 
 last confession to a priest. 
 
 "Fitz says he thinks he can get a lorry to take him 
 away, but it cannot come nearer than the piece of 
 waste ground at the end of the Lane. We must carry 
 him there in some way before the break of day. The 
 lorry will be waiting." 
 
 A knock came to the door, which was filled by Fitz. 
 
 " 'E's a-goin' off his rocker, miss, but 'e's come to, 
 now, and he wants to speak to yen He's like a 
 bloomin' byby. Won't be satisfied but he must see 
 you." 
 
 The girl looked at Destin. "I must go to him. I 
 must go to Brian." 
 
 Of course the woman must go to her lover — to the 
 man who had saved her. That was natural. But he 
 felt chilled. 
 
 As the girl rose stiffly from her couch, resting her 
 body on the crook of his arm, he caught the fragrance 
 of her hair. It seemed like an old -memory — a memory 
 of something he had known in the long past, but it left 
 a dull pain behind it. 
 
DEMOS 323 
 
 She limped to the door and went out into the dirty 
 passage, pushing open the door of the next room. 
 
 The man was lying in a sort of long black box — so 
 like a coffin that for the moment she stopped. It was 
 Red Fitz's bed, knocked together from the boards of 
 soap-boxes and painted black. 
 
 The May moon was the only light there, flooding the 
 room and lighting the face of Creegan into a glistening 
 pallor. 
 
 He made an unavailing gesture to the little upturned 
 butter-box near the bed. She sat down. 
 
 "YouVe come." 
 
 "Yes," she said, the ivory of her face showing clear 
 in the moon rays, "I've come. What can I do for you 
 Brian? You must be good now and come with us — 
 for a little operation that will cure you." 
 
 "Listen," said the man on the bed. "Fm. dyin* of 
 something that the doctor can't cure — I'm dyin' of 
 what the people call a broken, heart. I usen't to believe 
 in that sort of thing — I thought it was a way of 
 speakin*. Now I know different. I know so many 
 things different," He turned wearily, his eyes large 
 and bright. 
 
 "Now don't be thinkin' I'm raving — for I have me 
 senses all right — I am not dark. But all the same, I 
 didn't think to die like a rat in a hole." 
 
 "You shan't die Brian," she said, taking the hand 
 that lay, listless, over the rough edge of the box. 
 
 "Hush alannah !" He spoke as he might to a child. 
 "My time has come. There isn't a Creegan that didn't 
 know it. Ye ought to know as an Irishwoman that we 
 
324 DEMOCRACY 
 
 have 'the sight/ Me time has come, but I don't want 
 to pass over before I say something. . . . 
 
 "Ye know long ago when. I was a little gossoon in 
 Ireland I used to have me dreams of a time when 
 everything would be beautiful on earth. I saw the 
 'good people' everywhere— on the moonlight nights 
 they used to come to me in through the window of the 
 old tenement house. I saw them things like a 
 child. . . . 
 
 "When. I grew to a man — I saw the Vision — ^but it 
 was a man's vision. The Voices used to come to me 
 in the night, and sometimes the Things. ... I tell ye 
 I have seen them many a time plainer than I see your 
 face there foreninst me. And they told me of the 
 things to come — ^yes, and sometimes they told me of 
 this . . . but I wouldn't listen to them. I heard them 
 that day in the Strand when I left the meeting which 
 decided the Strike. Denis Destin was with me that 
 day — Denis . . . him that once I loved better than all 
 things but one. 
 
 "And they showed me the time when all men and 
 women should be free — when the angels of God would 
 walk the earth and not stay up in heaven — when the 
 golden kingdom would come down to men. They 
 showed me the time when the common people — the 
 poor people, of the world would rise — when the graves 
 of the past should give up their dead to cast off their 
 shrouds and stand upright in the sun of the morning, 
 fearless before the new day and the new age. But 
 they didn't show me the way. 
 
 "But I saw the way. I saw the red flag and the 
 
DEMOS 325 
 
 barricade and the rifle. I saw that force must be met 
 by force — ^that the people must rule those others who 
 would hold them chained. . . . And I saw that other 
 vision — the streets running with blood — the blood of 
 the martyrs — with the blood of their enemies — ^and out 
 of the fusion a new world rising fairer than the old. 
 
 "And then you came. . . ." The man's voice had 
 sunk very low. "Then you came, and the spirit had 
 taken flesh, and the first of the Vision fulfilled was 
 shown to me. 
 
 "I tell ye now — it is my last confession that I am 
 makin* to you — that I loved ye from the moment I saw 
 ye walk into the Transport Workers. And to me you 
 were my mother and sweetheart and friend. And even 
 once, had you asked, I would have given you the moon 
 and stars — ^have plucked down the planets from their 
 courses to light you to glory and honour. . . . But that 
 is over now. 
 
 "And sometimes I thought — sometimes — one time — 
 that maybe you would look on me, Brian Creegan, and 
 that together we would lead the hosts of the people 
 through the gates of the New Jerusalem — into the city 
 of light — ^that you would — God forgive me — ^be the 
 queen of heaven on earth, as Mary is of the heaven 
 above. 
 
 "But you would not . . . and you will forgive me 
 that." 
 
 The girl was bending very close to him. The voice 
 had taken a higher, a feverish, note. The eyes had 
 brightened. 
 
 "But that is all finished now . . . that is all finished. 
 
326 DEMOCRACY 
 
 When I was a little boy playing 'The Bould Sea Rover' 
 and 1 am the King of the Castle' and the other ould 
 games — God be with the times ! — and me mother would 
 say — 'Brian, why is h alannah that your pinny is 
 dirty?* or may be . . . yes, but your dress isn't dirty 
 alannah . . . what is it I am sayin'? What is it? . . . 
 Listen. I hear the Voices again. . . .** 
 
 The man tried to sit up, but fell back. The girl put 
 out her hand to wipe away the sweat that had gathered 
 on his face, on which two great tears fell as she bent 
 over him. 
 
 He had lifted himself again and was staring through 
 the window at the white moon. 
 
 "The Voices! . The Voices! . . . Yes boys — over 
 the barricade! Yes, give it to them! Now all to- 
 gether ! . . . God strike you ! What is it you are doin* 
 there, Patsy! Now boys, together ! . . ." Again he 
 fell back. 
 
 The girl ran into the passage. "Get him out of the 
 place quick. It's time. The day has broken." 
 
 "How will we lift him ? How can we get him away 
 from here with those bloodhounds downstairs and the 
 police watching for him?" 
 
 She looked despairingly around the room. Her eye 
 fell on the box. 
 
 "Listen," she said. "I have it. The bed he's in is 
 like a coffin. We'll cover it with something and take it 
 down the stairs. If we are stopped, we can say that 
 he's dead — that his corpse is in it." 
 
 "But suppose the police stop us?" asked Destin. 
 
 "Not much fear of the cops," said Graney. "They've 
 
DEMOS 327 
 
 taken nearly every cop in London for the work dahn 
 there." He pointed out through the window. "If we 
 can get through that little lot in the court, we're pretty 
 safe." 
 
 "We have to chance something if we're to save 
 Creegan's life," added the girl. "Where can we get 
 something black like a pall ? A shawl would do — ^any- 
 thing." 
 
 Fitz ran out of the room, returning with the big 
 black shawl which had covered her on the sofa. She 
 took the shawl and laid it over the now unconscious 
 man who lay there stiffly. 
 
 "Now," said Destin shortly. 
 
 They lifted up the box and carried it to the door, 
 Fitz at the feet and Graney and Destin at the head, 
 lifting it with ropes they had run underneath. 
 
 It was heavy. They struck every angle of the stairs, 
 in one place carrying away a yard of the crazy 
 bannisters. 
 
 As they came out, they saw the crowd of people in 
 the court had increased. 
 
 "He's dead," said Destin. "Make way there." 
 
 The crowd parted sullenly. But one woman, her 
 hair streeling down her face, stuck a red arm on her 
 hip and said — "Blarst 'im ! serve *im right ! It's he that 
 'as sent my Jim to 'is death this day afore the sojers." 
 
 "Stand back !" said Fitz, "and if one of you follow, 
 strike me white if I don't paralyse 'im — or 'er" he 
 added significantly. "Do we want every bloody peeler 
 in the place after us?" 
 
 They marched on with their burden, the girl limping 
 
328 DEMOCRACY 
 
 by the head of the box, keeping the cloth raised so that 
 the man might breathe. Nobody followed them 
 now. 
 
 As they came out on the piece of deserted ground, 
 they saw the lorry standing there, the driver waiting 
 by the horses* heads. 
 
 They slid the box on to the straw in the bottom and 
 climbed in. 
 
 "We carn't go the strite wye along the Aldgate High 
 Street and dahn the Minories — weVe got to go through 
 to Fenchurch Street and cut acrorst," said Graney. 
 "They've got the sojers firing from the Tower, Fitz 
 says — ^not many, for the authorities never thort of 
 strengthening the guard till it was too late to get in 
 more men. But we're not takin* chawnces. Better 
 keep away from the mob too as much as we can — ^we 
 must go rahnd by Bleak Street." 
 
 Slowly they rumbled along the Mile End Road and 
 Whitechapel Road, each moment fearing to be stopped, 
 but the streets were deserted. They had just passed 
 Leman Street, when an undersized man, a kind of 
 stained dishclout about his head, scuttled past like a 
 frightened rabbit, his head and ears back, shouting — 
 "The sojers! the sojers!" Vainly Graney asked him 
 what he meant, but he ran on shouting mechanically — 
 "The sojers! the sojers!" 
 
 The tramp of men came to them. "Turn!" cried 
 Graney, wrenching the horses round. "Dahn Whelk 
 Lane — it's our only chance." 
 
 The horses were sent at the hand-gallop back along 
 the main road and down the next lane. They had gone 
 
DEMOS J29 
 
 half its length, when a man who was passing cried — 
 "Go back Fitz — they're working round the back down 
 there to get behind the men on the Hill." 
 
 "We've only one way out," said Graney. "We must 
 go strite for the 'ill and fice the music there. We may 
 get through yet." 
 
 They reached the approach to Tower Hill without 
 hindrance, but across the face of the sun, now rising 
 crimson and angry over the roof-tops, there came the 
 sound of firing, which rapidly became a fusillade, in- 
 cessant and furious. 
 
 As they drew nearer, there was a buzzing in the air, 
 and past them, flying singly, came ragged, pasty-faced 
 men, some with their heads and arms bound up — one 
 of them scuttering along silently, his hand over his 
 face, the blood trickling between his outstretched 
 fingers as he ran. 
 
 "More direct action," said Graney, twisting his 
 mouth into a smile. 
 
 The man in the box began to stir uneasily as the 
 shots came to his ears. "Turn back," Destin called to 
 the driver. "Get out of this." 
 
 It was too late. The crowd streamed past them ever 
 more thickly. Now there were women in it. 
 
 They fought their way to the opening on to the Hill, 
 where soijie men and women were beginning to throw 
 up a barricade across the street to meet the soldiers 
 coming round behind. But as fast as they reared it, 
 they and it were swept away by the rush of the crowd, 
 which packed the clearing of the Hill. 
 
 The houses lining the approaches on the other side, 
 
330 DEMOCRACY 
 
 held by the mob, were vomiting flame from behind 
 their boarded windows, whilst they could see the men 
 lying behind the barricades which had been erected 
 across the streets, loading and firing irregularly at the 
 invisible enemy. Men were even firing from the roof 
 parapets, and they could see the flakes of mortar drop- 
 ping silently under the impact of the bullets from 
 underneath. 
 
 The streaming movement had checked. Now they 
 were jammed in the mass which, for some reason, was 
 beginning to press back on them. Destin stood up to 
 look for the cause, when "The sojers ! the sojers !" was 
 shouted from behind. "We're trapped! Trapped!" 
 The cry ran along and surged about them. 
 
 "Trapped ! Trapped !" 
 
 From where he stood in the lorry, he could see the 
 faces about him, pale with anger and terror — the eyes 
 turning this way and that — seeking escape. A whisper- 
 ing came to them, which quickly rose to a scream. 
 
 The man in the box began to call out and struggled 
 upwards, Destin and Graney trying to hold him down. 
 But he fought the cloth away. "Christ ! take it away — 
 do you want to smother me? Holy Virgin! take it 
 away," he screamed. The girl soothed him for a 
 moment. 
 
 "There's Creegan's donah!" a man cried, pointing to 
 the girl. There's the bloody woman whose man drove 
 us on to the sojers' bayonets. W'ere's Creegan?" he 
 screamed. "Creegan !" 
 
 "Creegan ! Creegan ! Creegan !" was taken up. 
 
 "There's Destin! Where's Creegan? Where's the 
 
DEMOS 331 
 
 bloody traitor that led us into this? Creegan! 
 Creegan !" 
 
 The crowd halted at the cry, being blocked in the 
 place with the lorry. 
 
 "Who calls me?" shouted Creegan. 
 
 In vain did Destin and Graney, with Fitz, try to 
 hold him down on his bed. He sat up like a dead man 
 resurrecting himself, the shawl hanging about him 
 shroud-like. 
 
 "Here I am boys. The Invincibles for ever!" he 
 cried and collapsed. 
 
 But the crowd had caught sight of iiim. 
 
 "There's the whoreson who led us on to this. Be 
 Christ ! he ought to be crucified !" 
 
 The cry came from a red fury of a woman, her bod- 
 ice half torn from her shoulders, showing the yellow 
 of her bosom. 
 
 "Crucify him ! Crucify him !" screamed the crowd. 
 
 The word ran along the packed masses in the street, 
 who shouted, without knowing why. 
 
 "Crucify him! Crucify him!" 
 
 The rush had come. Destin and the girl went down 
 under the first onslaught. Graney and Red Fitz with 
 the driver were swept over and into the crowd. The 
 black box was dragged out and carried shoulder-high 
 towards the stone plinth on the hill, leaving the man 
 and the girl together. 
 
 In a moment two black shutters had appeared, with 
 hammers and nails, taken from the barricades. The 
 sound of hammering was heard, and, pinioned there, 
 Destin and the girl saw what was to come. 
 
332 DEMOCRACY 
 
 The shutters, in the form of a Maltese cross, were 
 laid down on the stones and the man, now quiet, was 
 taken out of his shell and placed on the cross. They 
 heard the crushing, beating sound, and the cross was 
 upreared on the plinth in the crimsoning sun. 
 
 The great gaunt figure hung there, the hands nailed, 
 the feet lashed. 
 
 The grey head hung over — ^the eyes looked down- 
 wards on the upturned faces. 
 
 Once the great chest lifted itself away from the 
 cross, the head turning upwards. Then again. . . . 
 Once more the head had risen and then had fallen into 
 the shadows of death. 
 
 Destin, his arms about the girl, stood there, his eyes 
 on the plinth. The girl had clung to his neck. 
 "Denis, Denis," she said. . . . 
 
°Ay AND TO »..00 ON T„% ^^L"""""™ 
 OVERDUE. ^"^ SEVENTH DAY 
 
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 988^69 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY