often used to think that they would be helpless in such a crisis."

Said old Hammond: "Of course I don't doubt that in the long run
matters would have come about as they did. But if the Government
could have treated their army as a real army, and used them
strategically as a general would have done, looking on the people as
a mere open enemy to be shot at and dispersed wherever they turned
up, they would probably have gained the victory at the time."

"But would the soldiers have acted against the people in this way?"
said I.

Said he: "I think from all I have heard that they would have done so
if they had met bodies of men armed however badly, and however badly
they had been organised. It seems also as if before the Trafalgar
Square massacre they might as a whole have been depended upon to fire
upon an unarmed crowd, though they were much honeycombed by
Socialism. The reason for this was that they dreaded the use by
apparently unarmed men of an explosive called dynamite, of which many
loud boasts were made by the workers on the eve of these events;
although it turned out to be of little use as a material for war in
the way that was expected. Of course the officers of the soldiery
fanned this fear to the utmost, so that the rank and file probably
thought on that occasion that they were being led into a desperate
battle with men who were really armed, and whose weapon was the more
dreadful, because it was concealed. After that massacre, however, it
was at all times doubtful if the regular soldiers would fire upon an
unarmed or half-armed crowd."

Said I: "The regular soldiers? Then there were other combatants