id Dawson, as
they turned in for some broken sleep, "those poor fools up yonder
would get themselves shot in the streets. But I shall save them, and
in saving them I shall save the country."

* * * * *

It was the afternoon of the following day, just twenty-four hours
after Dawson had commandeered the resources of Chatham, and the scene
was a public hall in a big industrial city. In the body of the room
sat two hundred and thirty-four men--shop stewards and district trade
union officials--and their faces were gloomy and anxious. They had
come for a last meeting with the officers of the Munitions Dept, and
to declare that the men whom they represented were resolved not to
permit of any further dilution of labour. The great majority of them
were not unpatriotic, their sons and brothers and friends had joined
the Forces, and had already fought and died gallantly, but they were
intensely suspicious. To them the "employer," the "capitalist," was a
greater, because more enduring and insidious, enemy than the Germans.
Dilution of labour had become in their eyes a device for destroying
all their hardly won privileges and restrictions, and for delivering
them bound and helpless to their "capitalist oppressers." To this
sorry pass had the perpetual disputes of peace brought the workmen
under stress of war! Rates of pay did not enter into the
dispute--never in their lives had they earned such wages--its origin
led in a queer perverted sense of loyalty to the trade unions, and to
those members who had gone forth to fight. "What will our folks say,"
asked the men of one another, "when they come home from the war, if we
have given away in their absence all that they fought for during long
years?" When it was attempted to make clear that the lives of their
own sons in the trenches were being made more hazardous by their
obstinacy, they shook their heads and simply did not believe. "We can
make all the guns and the shells that are wanted without giving up our
rules. We value our sons' lives as much as you do. We love our country
as much as you do. The capitalists are using a plea of patriotism to
get the better of us." It was a pitiful deadlock--honest for the most
part; yet it was a deadlock which, as Dawson said, brought very near
the day when English artillery would be firing shotted guns in English
streets.

At a small table on a low platform at one end of the room sat three
civilians, and a few f