trenches are comin' round to our side.'

We entered the hall by a back door, and in a little waiting-room I
was introduced to some of the speakers. They were a scratch lot as
seen in that dingy place. The chairman was a shop-steward in one
of the Societies, a fierce little rat of a man, who spoke with a
cockney accent and addressed me as 'Comrade'. But one of them
roused my liveliest interest. I heard the name of Gresson, and
turned to find a fellow of about thirty-five, rather sprucely dressed,
with a flower in his buttonhole. 'Mr Brand,' he said, in a rich
American voice which recalled Blenkiron's. 'Very pleased to meet
you, sir. We have Come from remote parts of the globe to be
present at this gathering.' I noticed that he had reddish hair, and
small bright eyes, and a nose with a droop like a Polish jew's.

As soon as we reached the platform I saw that there was going
to be trouble. The hall was packed to the door, and in all the front
half there was the kind of audience I expected to see - working-
men of the political type who before the war would have thronged
to party meetings. But not all the crowd at the back had come to
listen. Some were scallawags, some looked like better-class clerks
out for a spree, and there was a fair quantity of khaki. There were
also one or two gentlemen not strictly sober.

The chairman began by putting his foot in it. He said we were
there tonight to protest against the continuation of the war and to
form a branch of the new British Council of Workmen and Soldiers.
He told them with a fine mixture of metaphors that we had got to
take the reins into our own hands, for the men who were running
the war had their own axes to grind and were marching to oligarchy