Glibly, and with that curious, half-amused expression which always fascinated an audience, Lewin Rodwell began by jeering at those who “slacked.”
“I ask you—every man of military age present,” he cried, thrusting forth his clenched fist towards his audience—“I ask you all to get, at any post office, that little pink-covered pamphlet called ‘The Truth about German Atrocities.’ You can get it for nothing—just for asking for it. Take it home and read it for yourselves—read how those devilish hordes of the Kaiser invaded poor little law-abiding Belgium, and what they did when they got there. Murder, rape, arson and pillage began from the first moment when the German army crossed the frontier. Soldiers had their eyes gouged out, men were murdered treacherously and given poisoned food. Those fiends in grey killed civilians upon a scale without any parallel in modern warfare between civilised Powers. We know now that this killing of civilians was deliberately planned by the higher military authorities in Berlin, and carried out methodically. They are a nation of murderers and fire-bugs. A calculated policy of cruelty was displayed that was without parallel in all history. Women were outraged, murdered and mutilated in unspeakable fashion; poor little children were murdered, bayoneted or maimed; the aged, crippled and infirm were treated with a brutality that was appalling; wounded soldiers and prisoners were tortured and afterwards murdered; innocent civilians, women and children of tender age, were placed before the German troops to act as living screens for the inhuman monsters, while there was looting, burning and destruction of property everywhere. Read, I say, that official report for yourselves!” he shouted, with anger burning his eyes, for he was indeed a wonderful actor.
“Read!” he cried again. “Read, all of you, how seven hundred innocent men, women and children were shot in cold blood in the picturesque little town of Dinant, on the Meuse; read of the massacres and mutilations at Louvain, Tamines, Termonde and Malines—and then reflect! Think what would be the fate of your own women and children should the German army land upon these shores! The Germans did not hate the Belgians—they had no reason whatever to do so. But the hatred in Germany against the British race to-day amounts to a religion, and if ever the Germans come, depend upon it that the awful massacres in Belgium will be repeated with tenfold vigour, until the streets of every English town and village run red with the blood of your dearly-loved ones. Young men!” he shouted, “I ask you whether you will still stand by and see these awful outrages done, whether you will be content to witness the mutilation and murder of those dearest to your hearts, or whether, before it is too late, you will come forward, now, and at once, and bear your manly share in the crushing out for ever of this ogre of barbarism which has arisen as a terrible and imminent menace to Europe, and to the thousand years of the building up of our civilisation.”
In conclusion he made a fervent, stirring appeal to his hearers—an appeal in which sounded a true ring of heartfelt patriotism, and in consequence of which many young men came forward and gave in their names for enlistment.
And Lewin Rodwell laughed within himself.
A dozen men congratulated him upon his splendid speech, and as Charles Trustram sat by his side, on their drive back to the West End, he could not refrain from expressing admiration of the speech.
“Ah!” laughed Rodwell. “I merely try to do my little bit when I can. It is what we should all do in these black days. There is a big section of the public that doesn’t yet realise that we are at war; they must be taught, and shown what invasion would really mean. The lesson of poor stricken Belgium cannot be too vividly brought home to such idiots as we have about us.”
As the car dashed past Aldgate, going west, Trustram caught sight of the contents-bill of a late edition of one of the evening papers. In large letters was the bold announcement, “Air Raids on Colchester, Braintree and Coggeshall.”
“The Zeppelins have been over again!” he remarked, telling Rodwell what he had just read.
“When?”