reason to attack Syndicalism he would find out what it was first. Not so
the man I found in the club.

He was very well dressed; he had a heavy but handsome face; his black
clothes suggested the City and his gray moustaches the Army; but the whole
suggested that he did not really belong to either, but was one of those
who dabble in shares and who play at soldiers. There was some third
element about him that was neither mercantile nor military. His manners
were a shade too gentlemanly to be quite those of a gentleman. They
involved an unction and over-emphasis of the club-man: then I suddenly
remembered feeling the same thing in some old actors or old playgoers who
had modelled themselves on actors. As I came in he said, "If I was the
Government," and then put a cigar in his mouth which he lit carefully with
long intakes of breath. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth again and
said, "I'd give it 'em," as if it were quite a separate sentence. But
even while his mouth was stopped with the cigar his companion or
interlocutor leaped to his feet and said with great heartiness, snatching
up a hat, "Well, I must be off. Tuesday!". I dislike these dark
suspicions, but I certainly fancied I recognised the sudden geniality with
which one takes leave of a bore.

When, therefore, he removed the narcotic stopper from his mouth it was to
me that he addressed the belated epigram. "I'd give it 'em."

"What would you give them," I asked, "the minimum wage?"

"I'd give them beans," he said. "I'd shoot 'em down shoot 'em down, every
man Jack of them. I lost my best train yesterday, and here's the whole
country paralysed, and here's a handful of obstinate fellows standing
between the country and coal. I'd shoot 'em down!"