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