Philip Blackburn's meeting had not been advertised, for it was only in the small hours of the morning that a motor-bicyclist scaring the hares and herons in the marshes, had brought the news from Labour Headquarters that P.B. was bearing the Fiery Cross to Beachbourne in the course of a whirlwind pilgrimage of the Southern Counties. But the hall was crammed.
Philip Blackburn was a sure draw at any time. A Labour M.P. and stalwart of the Independent Labour Party, it was often said that he was destined to be the Robespierre of the new movement. Certainly he was an incorruptible. A cripple from his youth, and a fanatic, with the face of a Savonarola, in the House and on the platform he asked no quarter and gave none.
Half an hour later the dusty Ford car which bore the fighting pacifist was signalled panting down Stone Cross hill over the Levels: a half-hour the audience passed singing God save the People and The Red Flag.
A few minutes later he came limping on to the platform: a little man, of the black-coated proletariat obviously, with the face of a steel blade, keen and fine, and far-removed from the burly labour agitator, hoarse of voice, and raw of face, of a previous generation. His reception was impressively quiet. The man's personality, his courage, his errand, the occasion, awed even the most boisterous.
He looked dead-beat, admitted as much, and apologised for being late.
"You know where I come from (cheers) and where I'm bound for to-night. And you know what I've come about--Is it Peace or War?"
And he launched straightway into that famous Follow-your-leader speech, the ghost of which in one form or another was to haunt the country, as the murdered albatross haunted the blood-guilty mariner, all through the war, and will haunt England for generations still after we are gone:--
The danger long-preached was on them at last. It must be faced and fought. They must take a leaf out of Carson's book. The Conservatives had shown the way: they must follow their leaders of the ruling class. They must dish the Government if it proposed to betray the country just as the Unionists had done--by persuading the Army not to fight. They must undermine the morale of the private soldiers--just as the Tories had undermined that of the officers. They must have their agents in every barrack-room, their girls at every barrack-gate--just as the Tories had done. The men must apply the sternest "disciplinary pressure" to scabs--just as the officers had done. They must stop recruiting--as Garvin and the Yellow Press had advocated. The famous doctrine of "optional obedience," newly introduced into the Army by Tory casuists, must be carried to its logical conclusion. And if the worst came to the worst they must follow their leaders of the ruling class, arm, and "fight the fighters. Follow your leaders--that is the word."
He spoke with cold and bitter passion in almost a complete hush--a white-hot flame of a man burning straight and still on the altar of a packed cathedral. Then he sank back into his chair, spent, his eyes closed, his face livid, his fine fingers twitching. He had achieved that rarest triumph of the orator: beaten his audience into silence.
The Colonel stood up against the wall at the back. Peering over intervening heads he saw Joe Burt sitting in front.
Then a voice at his ear, subdued and deep and vibrating, floated out on the hush as it were on silver wings.
"Now, Joe!" it said, like a courser urging on a greyhound.
There was a faint stir in the stillness: the eyes of the orator on the platform opened. A chair scraped; the woman beside the Colonel sighed. There was some sporadic cheering, and an undercurrent of groans.
Joe Burt rose to his feet slowly and with something of the solemn dignity of one rising from the dead. Everybody present knew him; nobody challenged his right to speak. A worker and a warrior, who had lived in the East-end for some years now, he had his following, and he had his enemies. The moderate men were for him, the extremists had long marked him down as suspect--in with the capitalists--too fond of the classy class. But they would hear him; for above all things he was that which the Englishman loves best in friend or enemy--a fighter.
Standing there, thick-set and formidable as a bull, he began the speech of his life.
"Two wrongs don't make a right. Because the officers have sold the pass, are the men to do the same?"
"Never!" came a shout from the back. It was Ernie's voice. The Colonel recognised it and thrilled.
"We all know," continued the speaker, "that the gentry have put their coontry after their party. It's for the People to show them the true road, and put Democracy before even their coontry."
"Hear! hear!" from Philip Blackburn.
The speaker was growing to his task, growing as it grew.
"This is a great spiritual issue. Are we to save our lives to lose them? or lose them to save them? The People are in the Valley of Decision. God and the Devil are standing on a mountain-top on either side the way crying--Who is on my side?" His great voice went billowing through the hall, borne, it seemed, on some huge wind of the spirit. He was holding the audience, carrying them. The Colonel felt it: the man with the closed eyelids in the chair on the platform felt it too.
"Jaures, the beloved leader of our cause in France, has already made his choice--the first man to fall for Democracy. Shall he lie alone?"
It was a dramatic touch, and told.
"A have chosen ma part," the speaker went on more quietly. "A loov ma coontry; but there's something greater even than the fate of the coontry hanging in the balance now. Democracy's at stake!"
A roar of applause greeted the remark.
"It's the Emperors agin the People!"
This time the roar was pierced by a shrill scream,
"What about Russia?"
The booming voice over-rode the interruption as a hurricane over-rides a blade of grass that stands in its track.
"Look at little Serbia!--a handful of peasants standing up against a great militarist Empire. Look at Belgium!--the most peaceful nation on God's earth about to be over-run by the Kaiser's hordes. Look at France, the mother of Revolution, and the home of Democracy!--Could we forsake them now?"
"Never!" in a growing thunder.
"If so we forsook our own ideals, betrayed our past, turned our back on our future. Yea. The People must fight or perish."
"He's got em," sobbed Ruth, her handkerchief tight in her mouth. The Colonel could feel her trembling.
"The question to ma mind," continued the speaker, "is not whether we should fight, but whether the officers of the Army--who have failed us once, mind!--will fight."
The blow went home and hammered a few dissentients into silence.
"If not then we must find our own officers--roosset-coated captains who know what they're fighting for, and love what they know."
The words were lost in a hurricane of cheering.
"And ma last word to you," ended the speaker, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth, "is much that of the Great Apostle--Stand and Fight!" He flung the words at his audience with a power and a conviction that were overwhelming.
A great bell was tolling in the Colonel's mind.
"That's a great man," he found himself murmuring.
"Aye, that's Joe," came the deep voice beside him.
The heat, the crush, the tumult of sound, his own intense emotion proved almost too much for the Colonel. He leaned against the wall with closed eyes, but there was joy in his heart.
"Done it," he muttered. "That was England speaking." Then somebody led him out into the fresh air.
"They're all right, sir," said a voice comfortably in his ear. "Joe done the trick. Grand he was."
Some of the Labour extremists recognised him as he lolled against the wall, hat over his eyes, recalled his work for the National Service League, and gathered round for the worry.
"That's him.--Militarist!--Brought the trouble on us! He won't pay.--Leaves that for us to do!--Drunk as a lord!--On the blood of the workers."
The Colonel heard the words, but paid no heed. They fell on his mind like rain-drops on a sea which absorbs them unconsciously as it sways and drifts listlessly to and fro.
Then another voice, familiar this time, and strangely fierce, clashed with those of his would-be persecutors.
"None of it now! Want one for yourself, do you? Stand back there! Give him a chance to breathe! Ought to be ashamed, some of you."
The Colonel opened his eyes to find Ernie standing over him.
"Ah, Caspar," he said faintly.
Then Ruth came swiftly out of the dissipating crowd towards them. She was flashing, glorious, with tumultuous bosom. Swept by her emotion she forgot for the moment the undeclared war that was raging between this lean old man and herself: she did not even notice his distress.
"He's such a battler, Joe is!" she cried.
All that was combative in the Colonel rose desperately to grip and fight the same qualities in her.
"He's not the only one," he said feebly, and musing with a vacuous smile on the strange medley of vast world-tragedy and tiny domestic drama sank slowly into unconsciousness, Ernie's arm about him, Ernie's kind face anxious above him. "Watch it, Caspar!" he whispered. "Danger!"
He came round slowly to hear voices wrangling above him.
"I had to come to the meeting. I promised Joe," the woman was saying.
"What about the children?"
There was silence: then the man went on with a cold sneer.
"Little Alice, I suppose. Little Alice got to do it all these days."
"Little Alice is mine," the woman retorted. "If you're not satisfied with the way your--"
