arose. For several
minutes he made no attempt to speak; but his dignity seemed to grow in
proportion with the indignities offered him. He stood there towering
above the crowd like a rock of strength, scanning the thousands of faces
with the steady gaze of one who, in thinking of the progress of the
race, had lost all consciousness of his own personality. He had come
there to protest against injustice, to use his vast strength for others,
to spend and be spent for millions, to die if need be! Raeburn was made
of the stuff of which martyrs are made; standing there face to face with
an angry crowd, which might at any moment break loose and trample him to
death or tear him to pieces, his heart was nevertheless all aglow with
the righteousness of his cause, with the burning desire to make an
availing protest against an evil which was desolating thousands of
homes.

The majesty of his calmness began to influence the mob; the hisses and
groans died away into silence, such comparative silence, that is, as
was compatible with the greatness of the assembly. Then Raeburn braced
himself up; dignified before, he now seemed even more erect and stately.
The knowledge that for the moment he had that huge crowd entirely
under control was stimulating in the highest degree. In a minute
his stentorian voice was ringing out fearlessly into the vast arena;
thousands of hearts were vibrating to his impassioned appeal. To each
one it seemed as if he individually were addressed.

"You who call yourselves Englishmen, I come to appeal to you today! You,
who call yourselves freemen, I come to tell you that you are acting like
slaves."

Then with rare tact, he alluded to the strongest points of the British
character, touching with consummate skill the vulnerable parts of his
audience. He took for granted that their aims were pure, their standard
lofty, and by the very supposition raised for a time the most abject of
his hearers, inspired them with his own enthusiasm.

Presently, when he felt secure enough to venture it, when the crowd was
hanging on his words with breathless attention, he appealed no longer
directly to the people, but drew, in graphic language, the picture
of the desolations brought by war. The simplicity of his phrases, his
entire absence of showiness or bombast, made his influence indescribably
deep and powerful. A mere ranter, a frothy mob orator, would have been
silenced long before.

But this man had somehow got hold of