The hall became a medley of sound with but one meaning. Men leaped to the seats, to the rails of balconies, shouting. The thing they had wanted to have said had been said. The fire that had been smouldering since early in the war, that had occasionally blazed in public meetings, in the press, in private denunciation, had at last eaten through the long silence to burn now with a devouring flame, and the people gave it fuel.
A dozen men and women there were who fought their way forward, and stood on the platform, appealing for silence. One by one these tried to speak. To each the hall listened until it had determined the temper of the speaker: then, if it was, as it was from several, a passionate denunciation of the policy, groans and hisses drowned the speaker’s voice. And if it was a ringing cry of “Patriots of the world, show your patriotism in the cause of the stricken world and of this offended nation!”—the fury of applauding hands and stamping feet silenced speech no less.
“Question! Question! Question!” they called—not here and there and otherwhere, but in a great wave of hoarse shouting, like a pulse.
The Chairman rose to put the motion, and as silence fell for him to speak, a youth of twenty, lithe, dark, with a face of the fineness of some race more like to all peoples than peoples now are like to one another, hurled himself before him, and shouted into the quiet:
“Comrades! Comrades! In the name of God—of the hope of the International....”
A yell went up from the hall. A dozen hands drew the youth away. He waved his arms toward the hall. From above and below, came voices—some of men, some of women, hoarse or clear or passionate:
“Comrades! Comrades!...”
But in that moment’s breath of another meaning, the speaker who first had fired them stood beside the chairman, and held up a telegram. They let him read:
“Resolution almost unanimously passed by Metropolitan mass meeting and by two overflow meetings....”