two, and I got these by impassioned attacks on
the Ministry of Munitions. I mixed up a little mild praise of the
Germans, whom I said I had known all over the world for decent fellows.
I received little applause, but no marked dissent, and sat down with
deep thankfulness.

The next speaker put the lid on it. I believe he was a noted agitator,
who had already been deported. Towards him there was no lukewarmness,
for one half of the audience cheered wildly when he rose, and the other
half hissed and groaned. He began with whirlwind abuse of the idle
rich, then of the middle-classes (he called them the 'rich man's
flunkeys'), and finally of the Government. All that was fairly well
received, for it is the fashion of the Briton to run down every
Government and yet to be very averse to parting from it. Then he
started on the soldiers and slanged the officers ('gentry pups' was his
name for them), and the generals, whom he accused of idleness, of
cowardice, and of habitual intoxication. He told us that our own kith
and kin were sacrificed in every battle by leaders who had not the guts
to share their risks. The Scots Fusiliers looked perturbed, as if they
were in doubt of his meaning. Then he put it more plainly. 'Will any
soldier deny that the men are the barrage to keep the officers' skins
whole?'

'That's a bloody lee,' said one of the Fusilier jocks.

The man took no notice of the interruption, being carried away by the
torrent of his own rhetoric, but he had not allowed for the persistence
of the interrupter. The jock got slowly to his feet, and announced that
he wanted satisfaction. 'If ye open your dirty gab to blagyird honest
men, I'll come up on the platform and wring your neck.'

At that there was a fine old row, some crying out 'Order', some 'Fair
play', and some applauding. A Canadian at the back of the hall started
a song, and there was an ugly press forward. The hall seemed to be
moving up from the back, and already men were standing in all the
passages and right to the edge of the platform. I did not like the look
in the eyes of these new-comers, and among the crowd I saw several who
were obviously plain-clothes policemen.

The chairman whispered a word to the speaker, who continued when the
noise had temporarily died down. He kept off the army and returned to
the Government, and for a little sluiced out pure anarchism. But he got
his foot in it again, for he pointed to the Sinn Feiners as examples of
manl