3
Thereafter, like every one else, I waited to see the policy of the government proclaimed. The debate on the address gave rise to some acrimonious passages between the two front benches; a programme of rather remote public-relief work was fluttered in the face of the labour party; and the prime minister ostentatiously reestablished departmental responsibility and dissociated himself from the improvisations of his predecessor by refusing to receive a deputation of the unemployed.
Then the interest of the public sought a new stimulus.
I am inclined to think that modern journalism, with its craving for daily excitement and its acquiescence in the superficial, has incapacitated us for patient study. Few subjects unconnected with sex or bloodshed can hold the attention of a newspaper-reader for more than three days; and, when the men with schemes for employment had been photographed as they walked to Downing Street and when a popular novelist had protested passionately that the unemployed were not really bolshevists, the eyes of the nation were allured by pictures of Lord Curzon entering his train for the Lausanne conference, and controversialists with uncertain memories enquired rhetorically the name of the last woman to be hanged in England for complicity in murder. Like the peace negotiations, like the war, like the domestic and international unrest before the war, like the Irish problem, this unemployment business became a bore: the public was accustomed to the variety of a “continuous performance” in its cinematograph theatres, it expected a “new programme weekly” for its political stage.
I myself was compelled for professional reasons to study problems of public policy even after they had ceased to be fashionable. The only excuse for continuing our paper was to be found in my uncle’s warning that, after four years of peace, we were in at least no better position than at the outbreak of war; at his death, we had cut our last party-ties and were standing behind the government as friendly critic. If the new administration shewed no improvement on the old, we should have to consider—as I told my colleagues—whether we were to throw in our lot with labour, whether we should lay our paper in its overdue grave or whether we must extend to our own country the verdict of revolutionary Russia that the old machine of national and international government had broken down.
That verdict was pronounced in my private hearing by Griffiths himself, with a warning that he would repeat it publicly if the government failed to give him instant satisfaction. Our second interview was no more of my seeking than the first. When the House rose without curing unemployment then and there, he made it known—first of all at a mass-meeting in Trafalgar Square and then in handbills which were distributed about the streets—that he would instruct ministers in the meaning of unemployment by confronting them with the unemployed. This, in the vague phrase which he favoured, would “put things to the test”. The demonstrations at the opening of parliament had been hardly more than a parade. “Hunger marches” were now to be organized in every part of the country, converging on London at the same moment. After that . . .? I noticed that Griffiths carefully refrained from saying what would happen when fifty, or a hundred, thousand disappointed men found themselves empty-handed, empty-bellied, foot-sore and resentful at the closed door of an impotent office. And I pointed out this sinister omission in the next number of Peace.
There was nothing, Hornbeck told me at this time, in the speech or the manifesto to justify police interference; but any one who remembered Griffiths’ share in organizing the land-grabbing campaign could imagine how this new demonstration would be conducted and how it was likely to end. I went farther than most of my confrères and denounced the manifesto as deliberately provocative. Griffiths called to inform me that, if I chose to print lies, he could not stop me, but that, if I was interested in the truth, I might perhaps be not too proud to hear it from him.
I professed a prompt eagerness for truth in any form, though I was more interested to know what amusement or instruction he derived from so painfully academic a journal as Peace. I wondered how he came to associate me with its direction and why he visited me in Seymour Street rather than in Fetter Lane. My curiosity on this last point was satisfied when he ran a practised eye over the dimensions of the house and asked me how many the establishment comprised.
“You? And your wife? And six servants?,” he recapitulated. “No kids? A car and a man to drive it? Four meals a day? You don’t call that provocative?”
“If we had fewer servants, you’d have more unemployed,” I pointed out.
“It takes three men and four women to keep the two of you alive. The house is half empty. You waste more food in a day than my people eat in a week. You drive about in your jewels and fine clothes among people who’ve been cold and hungry for months. And then you tell me not to be . . . ‘provocative’!”
I reminded him that we were supposed to be discussing unemployment.
“I shan’t remedy that by going about in rags,” I said, “or by shutting up half the house.”
“If you were in Germany, you wouldn’t be allowed to have empty rooms. And, if you were in Russia, you wouldn’t be allowed twenty coats when the next man has nothing but a shirt between him and the rain.”
I reminded him that we were in England and that he had called to demonstrate how little provocation his manifesto contained.
“If the government orders me to find accommodation for people without homes,” I said, “if I have to clothe them and feed them, I’ll do it to the best of my ability. I put obedience to the law above all things.” The little red eyes glowed in anticipation of an attack. “My criticism of you is the criticism I’ve brought before now against the people who preach a general strike for political objects. That’s not the way to proceed in a constitutional country. There’s no end to it short of revolution. You object to the word ‘provocative’. . .”
“Did you read what I said?,” he interrupted.
“Every word. It was admirably phrased. A single letter more would have had you prosecuted. You’re careful not to provoke anybody in words; but I tell you that you’re inciting people to violence by your actions. You know their temper far better than I do. You know what you’ve taught them to regard as the minimum standard of housing, feeding, wages and out-of-work pay. Do you believe you’ll get it by bringing a hundred thousand men to London?”
Griffiths hesitated perceptibly. If he said “no”, he condemned himself for inflating his followers with false hopes; if he said “yes”, he was confessing himself the prophet of intimidation in its crudest form.
“In time,” he answered at length.
“Do your men realize that they’ll have to wait?” He hesitated again for fear of admitting that he had taught them too well or not well enough. “No government in the world can submit to the dictation of a mass-meeting. You know that. If it surrendered to-morrow, you’d have another mass-meeting the day after. I think you know that too.”
“And still they wouldn’t have all they’re entitled to,” he murmured.
“That’s another question. My charge is that you’re bringing thousands of men to London on false pretences. They’re probably not in the sweetest of moods; and small blame to them. They won’t get what you’re promising them; and they’ll turn on you.”
The red eyes flashed defiantly:
“I can look after myself.”
So far, we had kept fairly free from personal attacks, but something in Griffiths’ manner or voice exasperated me. I had not admitted him in order to be lectured about the number of servants who were needed to keep me alive; the angry, ferret’s eyes gave me a curious feeling that I must bite before I was bitten; and, seeing him—perhaps quite unjustifiably as a vindictive, treacherous little animal, I fixed a quality of untrustworthiness on the man.
“You will look after yourself,” I prophesied, “by putting the blame on the government and rousing your people against law and order instead of telling them there was never a hope of their getting any of the things you promised.”
Though my antagonist betrayed his feelings in an angry flush, he affected to dismiss my prediction as something unworthy of his notice:
“They said that at Woolhampton,” he answered, “when we seized the Town Hall. I’m always stirring people up, it seems . . . Provocative . . . because I put the blame where the blame should go! You haven’t called me a paid agitator yet.”
“I’ve no intention of doing so. I say to your face, as I said in print, that you’re provoking something which may end in a revolution. I take the purity of your motives for granted. You’ve volunteered to tell me the truth and to shew that you’re not organizing constructive revolution.” . . .
Despite the dislike which I could not help feeling, there was no doubting the man’s passionate sincerity. He felt for the people he championed the same frenzied protectiveness and lust for revenge that I should have felt if my sister had been hacked to pieces before my eyes. Argument was out of the question; warnings were idle. I reconsidered the phrase I had used in likening him to a spiteful ferret, for he was touched with the greatness that is inseparable from fanaticism. Self-advancement and self-advertising had no place in his thoughts, though he was arrogantly confident of his authority as a popular leader and of his power to cut knots that had baffled every other hand. In a conversation that extended over two hours I learned nothing of his private history; at the end I realized no better than at the beginning why he had singled me out for his aggressive apologia. The resonant blows of our blunt swords echoed emptily on our impenetrable harness; and, when I saw him to the door, I was saying for the fiftieth time: “You’re trying to stir up a revolution”; and for the fiftieth time he was retorting: “If your precious government can’t do anything, some one else had better have a try.”
As we crossed swords for the last time, Barbara drove up to the door. She had been giving another sitting to Wace; and her appearance, in an ermine coat and a diamond star, was not wasted on Griffiths, who bowed ironically and looked her up and down as though he were assessing her in terms of daily meat-meals.
“Well, I must be off,” he said; and I know he was recapitulating again: “You. And your wife. And six servants . . .”
“I’m glad to have had this talk,” I said, “even though we’ve not convinced each other. If you think I’ve misrepresented you, I can only offer you equal space in our columns to put yourself right with our readers.”
“I shan’t have time,” he answered.
“You can do it in two lines. If you’ll answer my charge that you’re working, consciously or unconsciously, for a revolution . . .”
“I’m answering it now,” he interrupted. “From here I go to King’s Cross and from King’s Cross to the north. Putting things to the test. I shall be back again in just the time that it takes us to walk here.”
As he disappeared from sight, Barbara commented admiringly on his exit:
“For a third curtain, it was unsurpassed. I do want to know what’s going to happen in the last act.”