lenkiron's. 'Very pleased to meet you, sir. We have Come from
remote parts of the globe to be present at this gathering.' I noticed
that he had reddish hair, and small bright eyes, and a nose with a
droop like a Polish Jew's.

As soon as we reached the platform I saw that there was going to be
trouble. The hall was packed to the door, and in all the front half
there was the kind of audience I expected to see--working-men of the
political type who before the war would have thronged to party
meetings. But not all the crowd at the back had come to listen. Some
were scallawags, some looked like better-class clerks out for a spree,
and there was a fair quantity of khaki. There were also one or two
gentlemen not strictly sober.

The chairman began by putting his foot in it. He said we were there
tonight to protest against the continuation of the war and to form a
branch of the new British Council of Workmen and Soldiers. He told them
with a fine mixture of metaphors that we had got to take the reins into
our own hands, for the men who were running the war had their own axes
to grind and were marching to oligarchy through the blood of the
workers. He added that we had no quarrel with Germany half as bad as we
had with our own capitalists. He looked forward to the day when British
soldiers would leap from their trenches and extend the hand of
friendship to their German comrades.

'No me!' said a solemn voice. 'I'm not seekin' a bullet in my
wame,'--at which there was laughter and cat-calls.

Tombs followed and made a worse hash of it. He was determined to speak,
as he would have put it, to democracy in its own language, so he said
'hell' several times, loudly but without conviction. Presently he
slipped into the manner of the lecturer, and the audience grew
restless. 'I propose to ask myself a question--' he began, and from the
back of the hall came--'And a damned sully answer ye'll get.' After
that there was no more Tombs.

I followed with extreme nervousness, and to my surprise got a fair
hearing. I felt as mean as a mangy dog on a cold morning, for I hated
to talk rot before soldiers--especially before a couple of Royal Scots
Fusiliers, who, for all I knew, might have been in my own brigade. My
line was the plain, practical, patriotic man, just come from the
colonies, who looked at things with fresh eyes, and called for a new
deal. I was very moderate, but to justify my appearance there I had to
put in a wild patch or