I called on W. T. Stead one day in his office of The Review of Reviews, which afterward I was to edit for a year. It was just before lunch time, and Stead had an engagement with Spender of The Westminster Gazette. But he grabbed me by the arm, in his genial way, and said, “Listen to this for a minute, and tell me what you think of it.”
It appeared that he had been rather upset by Blatchford’s articles. He could not make up his mind whether they were all nonsense or had some truth at the back of them. He decided to consult the spirit world through “Julia,” his medium.
“We rang up old Bismarck, Von Moltke, and William II of Prussia. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘Is there going to be war between Germany and England?’”
The spirits of these distinguished Germans seemed uncertain. Bismarck saw a red mist approaching the coast of England. Von Moltke said the British fleet had better keep within certain degrees of latitude and longitude—which was kind of him! One of the trio—I forget which—said there would be war between Germany and England. It would break out suddenly, without warning.
“When?” asked W. T. Stead.
A date was given. It was the month of August. The year was not named.
I laughed heartily at Stead’s anecdote, especially when he told me the effect this announcement had upon him. He was so disturbed that he went round to the Admiralty, interviewed Lord Fisher, who was a friend of his, and revealed the dread message that the German fleet was going to attack in August. (It was then May, 1912).
Fisher leaned back in his chair, smiled grimly, and said, “No such luck, my boy!”
In August of that year I was engaged in trouble which did not seem connected with Germany, though I am inclined to think now that German agents were watching it very closely—especially one German baron who posed as a journalist and was always reporting on industrial unrest in Great Britain, wherever it happened to break out. I had met him at Tonypandy, in Wales, during the miners’ riots down there, and I met him again in Liverpool, which was now in the throes of a serious strike.
It was the nearest thing to civil war I have seen in any English city. I have forgotten the origin of the strike—I think it began with the dockers—but it spread until the whole of the transport service was at a standstill, and the very scavengers left their work. The Mersey was crowded for weeks with shipping from all the ports of the world, laden with merchandise, some of it perishable, which no hands would touch. No porters worked in the railway goods yards, so that trains could not be unloaded. There was no fresh meat, and no milk for babes. Not a wheel turned in Liverpool. It was like a besieged city, and presently, in hot weather, began to stink in a pestilential way, because of the refuse and muck left rotting in the streets and squares.