ent, shame--a huge,
helpless, muddle-headed anger.

I had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners; I did not see
how the government could have any courage for them. And I had no courage
for the dockers, or for what could be expected of the dockers. I did not
see how Lord Devonport could have any courage for them.

I repeated their prayer to myself.

The dockers were cowards. I was not going to try to sympathize with
them, or try to be reasonable about them. It was nothing that they were
desperate and had prayed. Was I not desperate too? Would not the very
thought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make any
man desperate? It was as if I had stood and heard fifty thousand beasts
roaring to their god.

"They are desperate," I said to myself: "I will not take what they think
seriously. It does not matter what desperate people think."

Then I waited a minute. "But I am desperate, too," I said; "I must not
take what I think seriously. It does not matter what desperate people
think."

I thought about this a little, and drove it in.

"What I think will matter more a little later, perhaps, when I get over
being desperate."

"Perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later, too."

In the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as my
scared and hateful opinions?

The important and final opinions, the ones to be taken seriously, that
can be acted on, will be the opinions of those who get over being scared
and hateful first.

Then I stood up for myself.

I had a reason for being scared and hateful. They and their prayer drove
me to be scared and hateful.

I thought again.

Perhaps they had a reason, too.

Then it all came over me. I became a human being all in a minute when I
thought of it.

I became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers.

I thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not been
hateful at all.

* * * * *

I do not imagine God was sorry when He heard those fifty thousand
dockers asking Him to strike Lord Devonport dead.

Not that He would have approved of it.

It was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking in
beauty and distinction as a petition, as being just the right form of
prayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill that
afternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper way
that London has).

But I hav