High and clear over the confused shouting, "That's a lie!" a voice cried angrily. The direct charge acted like a stimulant. The word "lie" was caught up by a score of throats.
"An' why ain't 'e at the front?"
Above the increasing disorder Napier caught fragments from the platform:
"Waste places of the earth, crying out for labor and development. Yes, in bitter need of something the German could give, wanted to give—"
But pandemonium had broken loose, and reigned irresistible for some moments. As the wave of sound ebbed, those high, fife-like notes, conquering hoarseness for a moment, soared above the din and over the bobbing heads of the multitude:
"Waste places! Yet we grudged even the waste places to that supremely hard-working people. Why?"
A hail of answers, every one a stone of scorn.
"As you don't seem to know why it was we grudged these places to the Germans, you'd better let me tell you. We grudged them to an industrious people because the people weren't British people. What happened? No! no! no! Listen! The Germans—the Germans—"
Cries of "Belgium!" mixed with booing and cursing, drowned the voice again and again till the moment when it rose with "they" in lieu of the word intolerable.
"They have done what you say. I'm not here to deny it. They've turned the most fertile lands of Europe into wastes. Why? Because we refused them the places that were already waste. Energy must go somewhere. Energy that could have helped to save the world has gone to the devastation of Belgium, to the ruin of France. Gone to the torture and death of tens of thousands of British men. Whose fault? Ours, ours, I tell you!"