At length the final day of the struggle came round. The election took place on the first Saturday in November. At an unearthly hour of the morning parties of Reds and Blues were out pasting their bills all over the town, on whatever flat surface they could find. These parties met sometimes, and bills were captured or lost and paste used as an offensive and defensive weapon.
An hour or two later began the last feature of the campaign—the bus fights.
Between seven and eight in the morning each club sends anything from a dozen to twenty buses to outlying parts of the city and to all the principal railway stations. Nominally, and probably originally, these buses were meant to collect voters. Now their chief mission is to hunt and destroy one another.
Each bus is manned by about a dozen men. It carries also a few boxes of pease-meal, but not many. There is a new weapon to-day, in abundant rows of cardboard boxes—rotten eggs. Up to the day of election it is considered bad form to throw anything but pease-meal. But on election day everything is permitted—soot, red and blue ochre, and, above all, rotten eggs.
When two hostile buses sight one another—and that is no very rare occurrence, since they are dispatched to the same districts—the crews descend and fight in the streets, unless the crew of one bus sees itself outmanned, when it may fly and be chased at breakneck speed, to the consternation and dislocation of the regular street traffic. Otherwise the crews fight in the street until one of the parties is beaten and forced back into its bus. They must defend this, whip up the horses, and try to escape. On the other hand, the assailants endeavour to cover the approach of one of their number who carries a long sharp knife. It is his business to cut the traces and prevent the enemy's escape.
"WE SURGED ROUND THE 'FRONT' IN A PERPETUAL RUGBY 'SCRUM.'"
If they are successful in doing this they put the vanquished bus hors de combat altogether by cutting the harness to pieces and sending the grinning driver back to the stables with the horses. The bus on which I was had the good fortune to win its first fight. The combat was long and doubtful, and, incidentally, it took place in one of the busiest streets in Glasgow. All the time it lasted policemen held up the traffic on either side. When we had finished there were rows of electric cars packed behind one another, up the street and down; half Glasgow seemed to be waiting patiently while a score of young men exchanged hostilities.
When the battle was over we gave the policemen a hand to drag the dismantled bus of our enemy up a side-street. After that we were joined by a crew of Liberals who had been dispossessed in a similar manner. Thus brought to double strength, we soon scored another easy victory. Then we had a long stern chase after a fugitive bus. It ended fruitlessly, because we were overloaded.
Finally we made our way to the University, where polling was in progress all the forenoon.