the feeble heads of others, and under
it was written, 'Is this man an anarchist? He wants a wage to keep his
family,' and it was awful to think that he and his family would perhaps
get the wage and be kept after all. The question about whether he was an
anarchist was obviously unanswerable without further data, as there was
nothing in the picture to show his political convictions; they might,
from anything that appeared, have been liberal, tory, labour, socialist,
anarchist, or coalition-unionist. And anyhow, supposing that he had been
an anarchist, he would still, presumably, have wanted a wage to keep his
family. Anarchists are people who disapprove of authority, not of wages.
The member of the N.U.R. who composed that picture must have had a
muddled mind. But so many people have, and so many people use words in an
odd sense, that you can't find in the dictionary. Bolshevist, for
instance. Lloyd George called the strikers Bolshevists, so did plenty of
other people. None of them seem to have any very clear conception of the
political convictions of the supporters of the Soviet government in
Russia. To have that you would need to think and read a little, whereas
to use the word as a vague term of abuse, you need only to feel, which
many people find much easier. Some people use the word capitalist in the
same way, as a term of abuse, meaning really only 'rich person.' If they
stopped to think of the meaning of the word, they would remember that it
means merely a person who uses what money he has productively, instead of
hoarding it in a stocking.

But 'capitalist' and 'Bolshevist' were both flung about freely during the
strike, by the different sides. Emotional unrest, I suppose. People get
excited, and directly they get excited they get sentimental and confused.
The daily press did, on both sides. I don't know which was worse. The
Pinkerton press blossomed into silly chit-chat about noblemen working on
under ground trains. As a matter of fact, most of the volunteer workers
were clerks and tradesmen and working men, but these weren't so
interesting to talk about, I suppose.

The _Fact_ became more than ever precise and pedantic and clear-headed,
and what people call dull. It didn't take sides: it simply gave, in more
detail than any other paper, the issues, and the account of the
negotiations, and had expert articles on the different currents of
influence on both sides. It didn't distort or conceal the truth in either