ne, and stood up and cried out, "Drink this
glass to the memory of those who died there, for indeed it would be a
long tale to tell how much we owe them."

I drank, and he sat down again and went on.

"That massacre of Trafalgar Square began the civil war, though, like all
such events, it gathered head slowly, and people scarcely knew what a
crisis they were acting in.

"Terrible as the massacre was, and hideous and overpowering as the first
terror had been, when the people had time to think about it, their
feeling was one of anger rather than fear; although the military
organisation of the state of siege was now carried out without shrinking
by the clever young general. For though the ruling-classes when the news
spread next morning felt one gasp of horror and even dread, yet the
Government and their immediate backers felt that now the wine was drawn
and must be drunk. However, even the most reactionary of the capitalist
papers, with two exceptions, stunned by the tremendous news, simply gave
an account of what had taken place, without making any comment upon it.
The exceptions were one, a so-called 'liberal' paper (the Government of
the day was of that complexion), which, after a preamble in which it
declared its undeviating sympathy with the cause of labour, proceeded to
point out that in times of revolutionary disturbance it behoved the
Government to be just but firm, and that by far the most merciful way of
dealing with the poor madmen who were attacking the very foundations of
society (which had made them mad and poor) was to shoot them at once, so
as to stop others from drifting into a position in which they would run a
chance of being shot. In short, it praised the determined action of the
Government as the acme of human wisdom and mercy, and exulted in the
inauguration of an epoch of reasonable democracy free from the tyrannical
fads of Socialism.

"The other exception was a paper thought to be one of the most violent
opponents of democracy, and so it was; but the editor of it found his
manhood, and spoke for himself and not for his paper. In a few simple,
indignant words he asked people to consider what a society was worth
which had to be defended by the massacre of unarmed citizens, and called
on the Government to withdraw their state of siege and put the general
and his officers who fired on the people on their trial for murder. He
went further, and declared that whatever his opinion might be as to t