5
I had intended to lunch at the Eclectic in the hopes of hearing what steps the government was taking to house and feed the hunger-marchers, but, when I was halfway to St. James’ Street, I turned north and walked home with a vague feeling that I must see how Barbara was getting on.
When Spence-Atkins asked me point-blank if I thought there would be any outbreak, I had replied with conviction that I did not. That, however, was in the office; and, as I walked west, I was disquieted by the sight of these silent columns, marching aimlessly, halting and dissolving into little knots of stragglers too weary to march longer. In Waterloo Place and Regent Street, the police imposed an order which the men themselves had been unable to maintain; but from Hanover Square to Park Lane the army split into its elements. Through the settling fog I saw men sitting on the kerbs and clustering on the island-refuges; they dropped in a shapeless heap on the first convenient doorstep; and the good-humoured constables who said “Now then, you must move along” found themselves addressing ears that were already deaf with sleep.
“Half of them are no more than boys, sir,” one policeman pointed out to me. “Tired out, that’s what they are. They don’t mean no harm.”
By a damnable irony, the men had chosen for their collapse a moment when Brook Street offered a tantalizing blend of warm, savoury smells. I, who had never known the meaning of hunger, found my appetite quickening.
“They’re tired out and hungry,” I said. So far as I am a judge of accents, some of these boys had come from the Black Country, others from Lancashire, others again from Northumberland. “I live near here. Is it any good trying to raise some soup . . .?”
The constable shrugged his shoulders and waited while an old man, who had fainted, was lifted on to an ambulance.
“If once you begin, sir, you’ll have the whole lot of them at your door. It’s more than one man can tackle.”
I walked on to Seymour Street with a growing sense of despair. All this had been prophesied to Griffiths in forcible language ten days before; but my meagre powers of imagination and description never came within miles of actuality. I had not realized the dishonour to humanity which a man commits when he no longer hides a broken spirit; I had forgotten the disfigurements of starvation and the sickly stench of neglect. The policeman was entirely right: half these fellows were only boys; and I felt the blood mounting to my head when I thought of the way they were victimized and their ignorance exploited. During the war I had seen them and their elder brothers trotting obediently to the slaughter-house and bemusedly offering their lives for a cause that was never explained and for objects that they never understood. Now, no less obediently, they trotted in answer to a voice that promised them a quick millennium.
I should have caught some hope, for all my denunciation of violence, if they had torn Griffiths limb from limb; but the patient credulity that collected them under his leadership accepted uncomplainingly the fate to which he led them. Griffiths, as he had boasted to me, could look after himself; providence, the police or the devil might look after his followers, who sprawled about the misty streets like slumbering cattle.
If I had expected to find Barbara sharing my own anxiety, I might have known better than to expect any sign of it. She greeted me with faint surprise because I had not warned her that I should be lunching at home; then the surprise turned to relief as she recollected that she was a man short.
“It’s a family party,” she explained. “Father and mother and Charles. I asked the O’Ranes; but David can’t get away, so you must take his place. . . . You’re not ill or anything are you, George?”
“Oh, no, thanks. Depressed, if you like. London’s a horrible sight with all these hunger-marchers dropping down on every side from sheer exhaustion. I don’t know what’s to be done about them. I only hope there won’t be a scrap.”
Barbara looked out of window; but the fog was now so thick that she could not see across the street.
“Was that why you came back?,” she asked with her head averted.
“I wanted to see that you were all right.”
“Thank you.” . . . As though afraid that I might take advantage of her curt gratitude, she broke into a laugh. “Some one—I think it was Jim—once said that, when the revolution came, there’d be keen competition between Sonia and me for a place in the first tumbril. If it begins to-day, we shall be able to drive down together. I suppose we are two of the most useless human beings in creation. . . . I hope the mob doesn’t break in while father’s here: I know he’d struggle with the executioner, and I think it’s unfair to hinder a man who’s simply trying to do his duty.”
“I feel Robson would probably save us,” I answered. “He’d tell the mob, very patiently, that it was out of the question for them to have a revolution in Seymour Street.” . . .
“You don’t really expect any trouble, do you?”
As I believed Barbara to be entirely fearless, I did not mind speaking frankly:
“It all turns on what’s likely to happen in the next few hours. The men are too tired at present even to feel hungry. When they wake up, they’ll be like ravening wolves.”
On Crawleigh’s arrival, I was distantly comforted to find that he shared my own view and had indeed spent an hour trying to get it accepted in Downing Street. During his viceroyalty he had been ultimately responsible for the relief-works in two famines; and, for once, I found him pregnant with constructive proposals. Three or four of the biggest catering-firms, he urged, should set up kitchens in the London parks; every public hall should be turned into a dormitory; and, if supplies ran short in the shops, there must be a house-to-house visitation to collect bread and blankets.
“I’d punish the ring-leaders without mercy,” he added, “but we must do one thing at a time. This is December, these men are starving; and for the next forty-eight hours we must simply suspend our ordinary laws. Why the government ever allowed such madness . . .”
We were still discussing emergency measures when Sonia came in very late and apologetic. Every approach to Westminster, she reported, was barred with lines of mounted police; St. James’ Park was closed, Whitehall and Victoria Street were barricaded. She herself had crossed the river at Lambeth and come by tube from Waterloo.
“Are things still quiet?,” Lady Crawleigh enquired nervously.
“I should think so; but the fog’s so thick that you can’t tell. . . . Did David find you?,” Sonia asked me. “He wanted to talk to you about soup-kitchens or something.”
“He hadn’t come when I left the office,” I answered.
As we went in to luncheon, Charles Neave, who had come up from the country the day before, contributed some first-hand observations on the march from Cumberland. It had been peaceful and orderly from the moment when the marchers convinced their potential antagonists that they meant to have what they wanted. Private property was scrupulously respected; but, on the principle that churches and public buildings belonged to the community, Griffiths’ ‘armies’ took possession of them as lodgings for a night. I was given to understand that there had been one or two sharp conflicts; but Crawleigh was expressing more than his own opinion when he reminded us that this was December and that the men were starving. Barns and warehouses were offered voluntarily as soon as their owners were satisfied that they would not be damaged.
“How did they manage for food?,” I asked.
“The workhouse people did what they could. I think the rest was voted by the different town-councils. There wasn’t enough to go round anywhere, but a whole lot was given privately.”
“Were there any speeches or demonstrations?,” asked Crawleigh.
“I didn’t hear any. Everybody seemed to be on the side of the marchers. They felt it was jolly hard lines and something ought to be done. Any ass who calls it bolshevism doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“If we can only get them back as quietly as they’ve come . . .” Crawleigh began and left his sentence unfinished.
I wondered whether he too was reflecting that the most dangerous revolution is the one in which popular sympathy goes out to the revolutionaries. In the last years of the eighteenth century the history of the world would have been changed if Louis had not forbidden the Swiss Guard to fire from the windows of the Tuileries; it was in fact changed—and revolution died in giving birth to Bonapartism—when Napoleon cleared the streets of Paris with a whiff of grapeshot. I would more readily have turned a machine-gun on my own dining-room than have harassed the spent men whom I saw collapsing on the doorsteps of Brook Street; but I wondered how far the sympathy of the onlookers and the kindliness of the police would paralyse vigorous action if the spent men rose and had to be coerced.
“Is anybody in fact taking any steps?,” I asked Crawleigh. “We’ve food in the house, we can buy more.” . . .
“They’re collecting food and money as it is,” added Sonia. “Just before I came here, that little red-eyed Welshman called to see David . . .”
“D’you mean Griffiths?,” I asked in surprise.
“Yes. That’s another reason why I was so late. He wouldn’t go. I told him I’d nothing to give him.”
“Did he come alone?”
“Oh, no! There was a queue stretching farther than I could see. He told me he was sure Mr. O’Rane wouldn’t refuse to help when he realized what these men had been through to bring their grievances before the government.” Sonia’s expression grew suddenly hard. “I told him we weren’t the government; and I should be very glad if he’d take his army to Hampstead and let me get to my taxi.”
Before I had time to warn her against such trifling, I was called to the telephone and informed that O’Rane himself was in Fetter Lane and wished to see me at once.
“Hullo? This is a private wire, isn’t it?,” he began. “Good! I came to see you on quite other business. Then one of your people came in with the latest news, and I felt I should have to borrow your eyes for the afternoon. I’m afraid Griffiths’ people are getting out of hand. There’s a certain amount of damage being done . . .”
“Whereabouts?,” I interrupted.
“In Hampstead. I’ve warned the police; and, of course, Hampstead is a big place; but I couldn’t help wondering if they’d taken it into their heads to loot my office. I’m afraid they won’t find more than about five pounds in the till; but there are a lot of young clerks there, and I don’t want them to have a scare. If you could pick me up here and come to inspect the field of battle . . .”
“I’ll be with you as soon as I can get across London,” I answered.