This refuse, among which dead rats lay, was so filthy in one of the best squares of Liverpool outside the hotel where I was staying, that a number of journalists, and myself, borrowed brooms, sallied out, swept up the rubbish heaps, and made bonfires of them, surrounded by a crowd of angry men who called us “scabs” and “blacklegs,” and threatened to “bash” us, if we did not stop work. We stuck to our job, and were rewarded by a clapping of hands from ladies and maidservants in the neighboring windows, so that our broomsticks seemed as heroic as the lances of chivalry.
Some bad things happened in Liverpool. The troops were stoned by mobs of men who were becoming sullen and savage. Shops were looted. I saw no less than forty tramcars overturned and smashed one afternoon in that sunny August, because they were being driven by men who had refused to strike.
On that afternoon I saw something of mob violence, which I should have thought incredible in England. A tramcar was going at a rapid pace, driven by a man who was in terror of his life because of a mob on each side of the road, threatening to stone him to death. Inside the car were three women and a baby. A fusillade of stones suddenly broke every window. Two of the women crouched below the window frames, and the third woman, with the baby, utterly terrified, came on to the platform outside, and prepared to jump. A stone struck her on the head, and she dropped the baby into the roadway, where it lay quite still. A gust of hoarse laughter rose from the mob, and not one man stirred to pick up the baby. Terrible, but true. It was left there until a woman ran out of a shop.... Wedged behind the men, but a witness of all that happened, I was conscious then of a cruelty lurking in the vicious elements of our great cities which, before, I had not believed to exist in England of the twentieth century. If ever there were revolution in England, it would not be made with rose water.
The troops and police were patient and splendid in their discipline, despite great provocation at times. Now and again, when the mob started looting or stone throwing, the police made baton charges, which scattered crowds of young hooligans like chaff before them, and they thrashed those they caught without mercy. At such times I had to run like a hare, for there is no discrimination in treatment of the innocent.
One afternoon the troops were ordered to fire on a crowd which made an attempt to attack an escort of prisoners, and there was a small number of casualties. That night I had an exciting narrative to dictate over the telephone to the office of The Daily Chronicle. But, in the middle of it, the sub-editor, MacKenna, who was taking down my message, said, “Cut it short, old man! Something is happening to-night more important than a strike in Liverpool. The German fleet is out in the North Sea, and the British fleet is cleared for action!”
When I put down the telephone receiver, I felt a shiver go down my spine; and I thought of Stead’s preposterous story of war in August. Had it happened?
There was nothing in next day’s papers. Some iron censorship closed down on that story of the German fleet, true or false.... As we now know, it was true. The German fleet did go out on that night in August, but finding the British fleet prepared, they went back again. It was in August of another year that Germany put all to the great hazard.
The thoughts of the English people were not obsessed with the German menace. For the most part they knew nothing about it, apart from newspaper “scares,” which they pooh-poohed, and no member of the government, getting anxious now in secret conversations, took upon himself the duty of preparing the nation for a dreadful ordeal.
England was excited by two subjects of sensational interest and increasing passion—the mania of the militant suffragettes, and the raising of armed forces in Ireland, under the leadership of Sir Edward Carson, to resist Home Rule.
I saw a good deal of both those phases of political strife in England and Ireland. The suffragette movement kept me in a continual state of mental exasperation, owing to the excesses of the militant women on one side, and the stupidity and brutality of the opponents of women’s suffrage on the other. I became a convinced supporter of “Votes for Women,” partly because of theoretical justice which denied votes to women of intellect, education, and noble work, while giving it to the lowest, most ignorant, and most brutal ruffians in the country, partly because of a sporting admiration—in spite of intellectual disapproval—of cultured women who went willingly to prison for their faith, defied the police with all their muscular strength, risked the brutality of angry mobs (which was a great risk), and all with a gay, laughing courage which mocked at the arguments, anger, and ridicule of the average man.