"Yes. That, or something like it. If I have the threat of it at my back, so that it rests with me, and me alone, to put it into force, I shall not need to use it. But I must go North with the proclamation in my pocket or I shall not go North at all. Here is my resignation." Dawson tossed a letter upon the table, and laughed. The Chief picked it up and read the curt lines in which Dawson delivered his last word.
"Good man," commented he; "that is the way to talk. They can't understand how any man can have the grit to resign a fat job before he is kicked out. They never do. They compromise. You may put starch into their soft backbones, but personally I doubt the possibility. But at least you will get your chance. There is to be a meeting of the War Committee the first thing to-morrow morning and you are to be summoned. I told the Home Secretary that I should resign myself if they did not give you a full opportunity to state your case. I will support you as long as I am in this chair."
Dawson held out his hand. "Thank you," he said simply. The two men clasped hands and looked into one another's eyes. "It is a good country, Dawson," said the Chief—"a jolly good country, and worth big risks to oneself. It will be saved by plain, honest men if it is to be saved at all. Our worst enemies are not the Germans, but our flabby-fibred political classes at home. The people are just crying out to be told what to do, and to be made to do it. Yet nobody tells them. Don't let the Cabinet browbeat you, and smother you with plausible sophistries. Just talk plain English to them, Dawson."
"I will. For once in their sheltered lives they shall hear the truth."
For what follows, Dawson is my principal, but not my sole authority. I have tested what he told me in every way that I could, and the test has held. Somehow—I am prepared to believe in the manner told by him—he forced the Cabinet to give him the authority for which he asked, and he used it in the manner which I shall tell of. He held what is always a first-rate advantage: he knew exactly what he wanted, no more or less, and was prepared to get it or retire from official life. Those who gave to him authority gave it reluctantly—gave it because they were between the devil and the deep sea. They would gladly have thrown over Dawson, but they could not throw over the civil and military powers who supported him in his demands. And had they thrown him over they would have been left to deal by their incompetent unaided selves with a strike in the midst of war which might have spread like a prairie fire over the whole country. But though they bent before Dawson, I am very sure that they did not love him, and that he will never be the Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police. Against his name in the official books stands a mark of the most deadly blackness. Strength and success are never pardoned by weakness and failure.
When at last Dawson was summoned to the sitting; of the War Committee, he found himself in the presence of some half a dozen elderly and embarrassed-looking gentlemen arranged round a big table. They had been discussing him, and trying to devise some decent civil means to get rid of him. He and his story of the coming strike in the North were a distressful inconvenience, an intolerable intrusion upon a quiet life. When he entered, he was without a friend in the room, except the War Minister who loved a man who knew his own mind and was prepared to accept big responsibilities. But even he doubted whether it were possible to achieve the results aimed at with the means required by Dawson.
Our friend suffered from no illusions. "I knew what I was up against," he said to me long afterwards. "I knew that they were all longing to be quit of me and to go to sleep again. But I had made up my mind that they should get some very plain speaking. I would compel them to understand that what I offered was a forlorn chance of averting a civil war, and that if they refused my offer they would be left to themselves—not to stamp out a spark of revolution, but to subdue a roaring furnace. They could take their choice in the certain knowledge that if they chose wrongly the North would be in flames within forty-eight hours. It was a great experience, Mr. Copplestone. I have never enjoyed anything half so much."
Dawson was offered a chair set some six feet distant from the sacred table, but he preferred to stand. His early training held, and he was not comfortable in the presence of his superiors in rank or station except when standing firmly at attention.
The Prime Minister fumbled with some papers, looked over them for a few embarrassed minutes, and then spoke.
"Great pressure has been placed upon us, Mr. Dawson, to see you and to hear your report. Great pressure—to my mind improper pressure. I have here letters from Magistrates, Lords Lieutenant, competent military authorities, naval officers superintending shipyards, officials of the Munitions Department. They all declare that the industrial outlook in the North is most perilous, and that at any moment a situation may arise which will be fraught with the gravest peril to the country. We have replied that the law provides adequate remedies, but to that the retort is made that the men who are at the root of the grave troubles pending snap their fingers at the law. We are pressed to take counsel with you, though why the high officers who communicate with me should, as it were, shift their responsibilities upon the shoulders of a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard I am at a loss to comprehend. What I would ask of my colleagues is this: who is in fact responsible for the maintenance of a due observance of law in the Northern district from which you have come, and where you appear to discharge unofficial and wholly irregular functions? Who is responsible? Perhaps my learned friend the Home Secretary can enlighten us?" The Prime Minister paused, and smiled happily to himself. He had at least made things nasty for an intrusive colleague. But the Home Secretary, suave, alert, was not to be caught. He at any rate was not prepared to admit responsibility.