"Now, now," reproved Mr Guppling, the Postmaster-General, "let the man speak if he has anything on his mind. Come now, comrade, what do you mean?"
"I don't know what I mean," replied the comrade, at which there was a general shout of laughter. "I don't know what I mean," he continued, having secured general attention by this simple device of oratory, "because I am told in those Government quarters where I ought to be able to find information, that no information has been collected, no systematic enquiries made, nothing is known, in fact. Therefore, I do not know what I mean because I do not know—none of us know—what the Unity League means. But I know this: that a hostile organisation of over a million and a half strong——"
Dissent came forcibly from every quarter of the room. "Not half!" was the milder form it took.
"——of over a million and a half strong," continued the speaker grimly—"perhaps more, in fact, than all our Trades Unions put together—with an income very little less than what all the Trades Unions put together used to have, and funds in hand probably more, is a living menace in our midst, and ought to have been closely watched."
"It keeps 'em quiet," urged the Foreign Under-Secretary.
"Too quiet. I don't like my enemy to be quiet. I prefer him to be talking large and telling us exactly what he's going to do."
"They're going to chuck us out, Tirrel; that's what they're going to do," said a sarcastic comrade playfully. "So was the Buttercup League, so was the Liberal-Conservative alliance. Lo, history repeats itself!"
"I see a long line of strong men fallen in the past—premiers, popes, kings, generals, ambassadors," replied Tirrel. "They all took it for granted that when they had got their positions they could keep them without troubling about their enemies any more. That's generally the repeating point in history."
Mr Strummery felt that the instances were perhaps getting too near home. "Come, come, chaps, and Comrade Tirrel in particular," he said mildly, "don't imagine that nothing is being done in the proper quarter because you mayn't hear much talk about it. Our Executives work and don't talk. I think that you may trust our good comrade Tubes to keep an eye on the Unity League."
"Wish he'd keep an eye on the clock," murmured a captious member. "Not once," he added conclusively, "but three times out of four."