ok my hand and told
me to say I was a vegetarian, as the diet was better in Holloway for
vegetarians.

MITCHENER. Why didnt you telephone?

BALSQUITH. They tap the telephone. Every switchboard in London is in
their hands or in those of their young men.

MITCHENER. Where on Earth did you get that dress?

BALSQUITH. I stole it from a little Exhibition got up by my wife in
Downing Street.

MITCHENER. You dont mean to say its a French dress?

BALSQUITH. Great Heavens, no. My wife isnt allowed even to put on her
gloves with French chalk. Everything labelled Made in Camberwell. She
advised me to come to you. And what I have to say must be said here to
you personally, in the most intimate confidence, with the most urgent
persuasion. Mitchener: Sandstone has resigned.

MITCHENER (amazed). Old Red resigned!

BALSQUITH. Resigned.

MITCHENER. But how? Why? Oh, impossible! the proclamation of martial law
last Tuesday made Sandstone virtually Dictator in the metropolis, and to
resign now is flat desertion.

BALSQUITH. Yes, yes, my dear Mitchener; I know all that as well as you
do: I argued with him until I was black in the face and he so red
about the neck that if I had gone on he would have burst. He is furious
because we have abandoned his plan.

MITCHENER. But you accepted it unconditionally.

BALSQUITH. Yes, before we knew what it was. It was unworkable, you know.

MITCHENER. I dont know. Why is it unworkable?

BALSQUITH. I mean the part about drawing a cordon round Westminster at a
distance of two miles; and turning all women out of it.

MITCHENER. A masterpiece of strategy. Let me explain. The Suffragets are
a very small body; but they are numerous enough to be troublesome--even
dangerous--when they are all concentrated in one place--say in
Parliament Square. But by making a two-mile radius and pushing them
beyond it, you scatter their attack over a circular line twelve miles
long. A superb piece of tactics. Just what Wellington would have done.

BALSQUITH. But the women wont go.

MITCHENER. Nonsense: they must go.

BALSQUITH. They wont.

MITCHENER. What does Sandstone say?

BALSQUITH. He says: Shoot them down.

MITCHENER. Of course.

BALSQUITH. Youre not serious?

MITCHENER. Im perfectly serious.

BALSQUITH. But you cant shoot them down! Women, you know!

MITCHENER (straddling confidently). Yes you can. Strange as it may seem
to you as a civilian, Balsquith, if you point a rifle at a woman and