The Secret Of The League Part 26

There was a gasp of surprise; a moment of stupefaction. Strange things were again being done in the name of Liberty.

Mr Tubes's voice, enumerating the results and advantages of the step, recalled their wandering thoughts. There was little need for the recital; the effect of so unexpected a _coup_ leapt to the mind at once.

The Leaguers must either burn coal or starve. The home oil deposits had long ceased to be worked. Wood under modern conditions was impracticable; peat was equally debarred, and neither could meet a sudden emergency in sufficient quant.i.ty; electricity meant coal, and was far from universal. The League movement must collapse within a week.

There were other points, all in favour of the course. Although it might slightly inconvenience many working-cla.s.s homes it would not take their money as a heavier tax would, and it must convince all that the end was well in sight. It would induce the poor to use more coal, more gas, in itself a step towards that desired end. It would teach Russia a sharp lesson, and Russia's sins were the freshest in their minds.

All were convinced, and all against their will. There was something sinister in the proposal; the thought of it fell like a shadow across the room.

"It is not a course I would recommend or even a.s.sent to as a general thing," said Mr Strummery. "But we are fighting for the existence of our party, for the lives of thousands of our people. It is no exaggeration.

Think of the awful misery that must sweep the country in the coming winter if the League holds out. If we do not break the wicked power of those two men, there is no picture of national calamity to be found in the past that can realise the worst."

"It is their game," said Mr Tubes bitterly. "The cowards are striking at the women and children through the men."

He ignored the fact that his party had struck the first blow, and had had the word "War!" figuratively nailed to the staff of their red banner for years. In war one usually strikes some one, and on the whole it is perhaps less reprehensible to strike women and children through men than _vice versa_. But it was an acceptable sentiment on the face of it, and it sounded all right at the moment.

"Moreover," added the Premier, "there will be this danger in the situation: that blinded by pa.s.sions and desperate through misery, the people may fail to realise who are the real causes of their plight."

Yes, there was that possibility to be faced by thoughtful Socialistic Ministers. The people are not very subtle in their reasoning. The most pressing fact of their existence would be that the Government, which had promised to keep them from starvation in return for their votes, had had their votes and was allowing them to starve.

"I think that we must all agree to the necessity of the step," said one of the minor men, "though our feelings are all against it."

"Quite so," admitted Mr Strummery. "Let us hope that being a sharp remedy it will only need to be a short one."

Surprise was the essence of the _coup_, and the "business-like"

procedure of Parliament permitted this when the Government was backed by a large automatic majority. The expeditious pa.s.sing of the measure was a foregone conclusion, yet a few shrewd warning voices were raised against it even among the stalwarts. The regular opposition voted against it as a matter of course. The most moderate section of the Labour Party and the extreme Socialists, who both elected to sit on the opposition side of the House, refrained from voting, and a few Ministers, who were distracted between their private opinions and their party duty, were diplomatically engaged elsewhere.

The Bill first received the attention of the House on the 25th of September, the day after the Premier had called his informal meeting. It became law on the 28th, and three days later, the 1st of October, Great Britain was absolutely "closed" against the introduction of mineral burning oils on any terms.

The country received the measure with mixed feelings, but on the whole with the admission that it would be effective and with an expression of dislike. The coal mining districts hailed it with enthusiasm, and the same reception was accorded it among the affected industries, but outside these it was nowhere popular, and in certain working-cla.s.s quarters it evoked the bitterest hostility. It was felt even by those who stood to gain much by the overthrow of the League that their instincts rebelled against the means; possibly the underlying feeling was distrust of the exercise of power so despotic. It was admitted that the League's action with respect to coal stood on a different plane. Any member could at once resign; it was questionable if one could not use coal and still remain a member. Certainly no coercion was used. But in the matter of oil a necessary commodity was absolutely ruled out, and, whether he wished or nor, every one must obey. By the 8th of October the retail price of petroleum of an average quality was 2s. 9d. the gallon, and the price was rising as the end of the stock came in sight.

One curious circ.u.mstance excited remark. The Unity League members were still being supplied at the original price. The League was keeping its word gallantly to the end. The Government had calculated that the two interested companies might have a reserve that would last a week. The average stock which the consumer might be supposed to have in hand would carry them on for a further five days, and the economy which they would doubtless practise might hold off the climax for five more. The 17th of October came to be confidently mentioned in Government circles as the date of the Unity League's surrender.

It might have been merely coincidence, but on the 17th of October Mr Strummery chose to entertain a few of his colleagues to dinner in the House.

In spite of the host's inevitable jug of boiling water, an air of genial humour, almost of gaiety, pervaded the board. Mr Tubes was entertainingly reminiscent; Chadwing succeeded in throwing off the weight of the Treasury; Comrade Stubb, fresh from the soil, proved to have a dry humour of his own; and Cecil Brown, who was always socially welcome, made a joke which almost surprised the Premier into a smile.

Mr Tubes was in the middle of a sentence when Cecil Brown, with his face turned towards the door, laid his hand upon the speaker's arm.

"A minute, Tubes," he said. "There is something unusual going on out there."

"Perhaps it is----" began Chadwing, and stopped. The same thought had occurred to at least three of them. Perhaps they were coming to tell them that Hampden had accepted his defeat. Whatever it might be, a dozen members who had entered the room in a confused medley were making their way towards the Premier's table. A man who seemed to concentrate their attention was in their midst; some were apparently trying to hold him back, while others urged him on. While yet some distance off he broke away from them all, and running forward, reached the table first.

It was Comrade Bilch, so dishevelled, red, and heated, that it did not occur to any one to doubt that he was drunk. For a second he stood looking at them stupidly, and then he suddenly opened his mouth and poured out so appalling a string of vile and nauseating abuse that men who were near drew aside.

"Why, in Heaven's name, don't you take him away?" exclaimed Cecil Brown, appealing to those who formed the group beyond the table.

They would have done so, but Comrade Bilch raised his hand as though to enjoin attention for a moment. A change seemed to have come over him even in that brief pa.s.sage of time. He walked up to the table and leaned heavily upon it with both fists, while his breath came in throbs, and the colour played about his face like the reflection of a raging fire.

When he spoke it was without a single oath; all his uncleanness had dropped away from him as though he recognised its threadbare poverty in the face of the colossal news he brought.

"Gentlemen," he said, leaning forward and breathing very hard, "you would have it, and you have got your way. You've made oil contraband, and not a drop can be landed in Great Britain now. It can't be brought, but it can be used when it is here, and the Unity League that you have done it all to starve has got two hundred million gallons safely stowed away at Hanwood! Yes, while our people will have to grope and freeze through the winter, _they_ are quite comfortably provided for, and you, whether you leave the bar on or whether you take it off, you have made us the laughing-stock of Europe!"

An awed silence fell on the group. Not the most shadowy suspicion of such a miscarriage had ever stirred the most cautious. All their qualms had been in the direction of swallowing the unpalatable measure, not of doubting its efficacy. They seemed to be the puny antagonists of some almost superhuman power that not only brushed their most elaborate plans aside, but actually led them on to pave the way to their own undoing.

Mr Tubes was the first to speak. "It can't be true," he whispered. "It is impossible."

"Oh, everything's impossible with you, especially when it's happened,"

retorted Mr Bilch contemptuously. "Pity you didn't live when there were real miracles about."

"But the time?" protested some one. "How could they do it in the time?"

"Time!" said Mr Bilch, "what more do you want? They've had two years, and they've used two years. If those----" He stopped suddenly, jerked his head twice with a curious motion, and fell to the ground in a fit.

There were plenty of good friends to look after him without troubling the Ministerial group. The dinner-party broke up in the face of so inauspicious a series of events, and before another hour had pa.s.sed the story of the gigantic fiasco had reached every club in London, and was being cabled to every capital in Christendom.

CHAPTER XVI

THE DARK WINTER

The autumn of 1918 had proved unusually mild. It was said that many of the migratory birds delayed their exodus for weeks beyond their normal times, and in sheltered gardens and hedgerows in the south of England flowers and fruit were making an untimely show; but about midday on the 24th of November it began to grow dark, and, without any indication of fog, it grew darker, until the greater part of England and Wales was plunged into a nocturnal gloom. As there was a marked fall in the temperature, men looked up to the clouds and predicted snow, but they were wrong. Had it snowed it might have been the White Winter of 1918, for that night the frost began, and the 24th of November had already become an ill-omened date to usher in a frost. It did not belie its character. The next day broke clear but bitter, and those who read newspapers learned with curious interest that during the night the seven-tailed comet of 1744 had been observed by several astronomers, to the great confusion of their science, for its appearance was premature by a round hundred thousand years. The phenomenon afterwards grew into a portent to the vulgar mind, for that was the beginning of the great frost that lasted seven weeks without an intermission.

Outside certain limits, life was proceeding very much as before. The condition of the upper cla.s.ses was not materially different from what it had been before the policy of retaliation had been declared. The Personal Property Tax had not been proceeded with, and the Minimum Wage Bill had been dropped for the time. There were diplomatic explanations; the real reason was that the Cabinet was too sharply divided over the expediency of anything in those days to make the pa.s.sing of important measures practicable. While none had the courage to go to an extreme either in aggression or in conciliation, there was a mult.i.tude of counsel vehemently wrangling over the wisdom of little concessions and little aggressions.

In London the great increase in the number of unemployed began to be observable in the early autumn. The obsolete "marches of unemployed"

were revived, but, as might have been foreseen, except among the poor themselves, they met with no financial encouragement. Even the poor were becoming careful of their pence. They saw what the winter must mean, for every one knew of a score of deserving cases around his own door, and it was commonly reported that the Government contemplated reducing the Unemployed Grant to two-thirds its normal basis before the year was out.

That was the Cabinet's idea for "breaking it gently." So, meeting with no response in the suburbs, the City, or the West End, the processions groaned occasionally, broke a few windows, enhanced the bitter feeling existing against their cla.s.s by frightening more than a few ladies, and were finally kept in check by the special constabulary raised in the suburbs, the City, and the West End. Finding so little profit for their exertions, they abandoned their indiscriminate peregrinations, and took to demonstrating before St Stephen's and to hooting outside the houses of Cabinet Ministers until the processions and meetings were disallowed.

There was no public charity that winter, either organised or spontaneous, for the benefit of the working-cla.s.s poor. The conditions of labour would have warranted a Mansion House Fund being opened in September, but no one suggested it, and no one would have contributed to it. Abroad it was generally recognised that England was involved in civil war to which it behoved them to act as neutrals. The Socialists in Belgium collected and despatched the sum of 327, 14s. 6d. for the relief of their "persecuted confraternity in England," but as the pomp and circ.u.mstances attending the inauguration of the Fund had led their persecuted confraternity in England to expect at least a quarter of a million sterling, some intemperate remarks greeted the consummation of the effort, and it was not repeated.

To those who did not look very deeply into the situation it appeared that a long, hard winter must operate against the interests of the League. Their opponents would burn more coal. The Government, indeed, issued an appeal asking them to do so, and thus to relieve the tension in the provinces. The response was not promising. The Government was, in effect, told to mind its own business, and particularly that detail of its business which consisted in the guarantee of a full and undocked living wage to every worker in or out of work. The contention so far had been that with the surfeit, coal would be so cheap that even the poorest could burn it unstintingly. But soon a new and rather terrible development grew out of the complex situation. Coal became dear, not only dear in the ordinary sense of the word--winter prices--but very, very dear. The simple truth was that a disorganised industry always moves on abnormal lines, and coal was a routed, a shattered, industry.

There was no oil to be had by any but members of the League; in some places there was no gas to be had, for many of the small gas companies, and some of the large ones, had found it impossible to continue amidst the dislocation of their trade, and the cheapest coal was being retailed in the streets of London at two shillings the hundred-weight. The Government had left oil contraband after the discovery of the League's secret store down the quiet country lane, for they recognised that to remove the embargo immediately would kill them with ridicule. They promised themselves that the freedom of commerce should be restored at the first convenient opportunity. In the meanwhile they decided to do as they had done in other matters: they bravely ignored the fact that the League members were any better off than any one else, and declined to believe the evidence that any store existed.

That was the state of affairs before the winter set in, and in London alone. The Capital was feeling some of the remoter effects of the blow, but from the provinces, from the actual battle-fields, there came grim stories. Northumberland, which had been loth to accept the Eight Hours Bill, now traced the whole of the trouble to that head, and declared that the only hope was for the Government to make a complete surrender to the Unity League, on the one condition that it restored a normal demand for coal both at home and abroad. Durham, on the contrary, held that it was necessary for the Government to crush or wear out the League. In both counties there had been fierce conflict between the rival factions, and blood had been freely shed. After a single day's rioting at Newcastle and Gateshead seventeen dead bodies had been collected by the ambulances.

The "Beaconmen" in Glamorgan were setting fire to the pits themselves in a spirit of fanaticism. In one instance a fire had spread beyond the intended limits, and an explosion, in which three score of their unfortunate fellow-workmen perished, had been the net result. The Midlands were the least disturbed, and even there Walsall had seen a ma.s.s meeting at which thirty thousand colliers and other affected workmen had called insistently with threats upon the Government, in pathetic ignorance of the Treasury's plight, to purchase the nation's coal pits at once, and resume full time at all of them, as the only means of averting a national calamity.

And all this had been taking place in the mild autumn, while the Government was still paying out sufficient relief funds to ensure that actual starvation should not touch any one, long before it had been driven to take the country into its confidence. The spectre of cold and hunger had not yet been raised to goad the men to madness; so far they regarded existence at least as a.s.sured, and the question that was stirring them to rebellion was not the fundamental one of the "right to live," but the almost academic issue of the right to live apart from the natural vicissitudes of life.

The Government had other troubles on hand. The two princ.i.p.al causes for anxiety among these, if not actually of their own hatching, had certainly sprung from a common stock.

The Parliament sitting at College Green deemed the moment opportune for issuing a Declaration of Independence and proclaiming a republic. Three years before, all Irishmen had been withdrawn from the British army and navy on the receipt of Dublin's firmly-worded note to the effect that since the granting of extended Home Rule, Irishmen came within the sphere of the Foreign Enlistment Act. These men formed the nucleus of a very useful army with which Ireland thought it would be practicable to hold out in the interior until foreign intervention came to its aid.

Possibly England thought so too, for Mr Strummery's Ministry contented itself with issuing what its members described as a firm and dignified protest. Closely examined, it was discoverable that the dignified portion was a lengthy recapitulation of ancient history; the firm portion a record of Dublin's demands since Home Rule had been conceded, while the essential part of the communication informed the new republic that its actions were not what his Majesty's Ministers had expected of it, and that they would certainly reserve the right of taking the matter in hand at some future time more suitable to themselves.