The Secret of the League: The Story of a Social War

"Why France should have done this is beyond me."

There was another reason, deeper. It was a commonplace that England had been cordially hated in turn by every nation in and out of Europe, but with all that there was no responsible nation in or out of Europe that dare contemplate a weak, a dying, England. France looked at the map of Europe, and the thought of the German Eagle flying over Dover Castle and German navies patrolling the seas from Land's End to The Skawe haunted her dreams. Russia wanted nothing in the world so much as another Thirty Years' Peace. Spain had more to lose than to gain; Italy had much to lose and nothing at all to gain. All the little independent states and nations remembered the Treaties of Vienna and Berlin, and trembled at the thought of what might happen now. Germany alone might have had visions, but Germany had a nightmare too, and when the man who ruled her councils with a strong if tortuous policy saw wave after wave of the infectious triumph of Socialism reach his own shores, he recognised that England's weakness was more hostile to his ambitions than England's strength.

No one wanted two Turkeys in Europe.

"I don't see why we shouldn't make a naval demonstration, at all events," some one suggested hopefully. "That used to be enough, and the French Government must have plenty to look after at home."

"Naval demonstration be boiled!" exclaimed Mr Bilch forcibly. "Send your little Willie to Hamley's for a tin steamer, and let him push it off Ramsgate sands if you want a naval demonstration, comrade. But don't show the Union Jack inside the three-mile limit on the other side of the Channel, or you'll have something so hot drop on your hands that you won't be able to lick it off fast enough."

"I fail to see that," said Mr Vossit. "Heaven forbid that I should raise my voice in favour of bloodshed, but if it were necessary for self-preservation our navy is at least equal to that of any other power."

"Is it?" retorted Mr Bilch, with so heavily-laden an expression of contemptuous derision on his face that it seemed as though he might be able to take it off, like a mask, and hang it on some one else. "Is it? Oh, it is, is it? Well, ask that man there. Ask him, is all I say. Simply ask him." His contorted face was thrust half-way across the table towards Mr Vossit, while his rigid arm with extended forefinger was understood to indicate Sir Causter Kerr.

"As the subject has been raised, perhaps the First Lord of the Admiralty will reassure us on that point," said the Premier.

"Dear, dear, no," replied Causter Kerr blandly. "We couldn't carry it through, Premier. You must not think of going to extremes."

There was a moody silence in which men looked angrily at Kerr and at one another.

"Are we to understand that the navy is not equal to that of any other power?" demanded Mr Vossit.

"On paper, yes, comrade," replied Kerr, with a pitying little smile, "but on deep water, where battles are usually fought, no. It is a curious paradox that in order to be equal to any other single power England must be really very much stronger. I should also explain that from motives of economy no battleships have been launched or laid down during the last three years, and only four cruisers of questionable armament. Then as regards gunnery. From motives of economy actual practice is never carried out now, but the championship, dating from last year, lies at present with the armoured cruiser Radium: – stationary regulation target, 1-1/2 miles distant, speed 4 knots, quarter charges, 3 hits out of 27 shots. As regards effective range – "

"Tell them this," struck in Mr Bilch, "they'll understand it better. Tell them that the Intrepidy could sail round and round the Channel Fleet and bloody well throw her shells over the moon and down on to their decks without ever once coming into range. Tell them that."

"The picture so graphically drawn by Comrade Bilch is substantially correct," corroborated Sir Causter Kerr. "The Intrépide, together with three other battleships of her class, has an effective range of between four and five thousand yards more than that of any English ship… But you have been told all this so often, comrades, that I fear it cannot interest you." Sir Causter was having his revenge for two years of subservience at a thousand pounds a year.

"Then perhaps you will tell us, as First Lord of the Admiralty – the job you are paid for doing – what you imagine the navy is kept up for?" demanded a comrade with fierce resentment.

"As far as I have been encouraged to believe, in that capacity," replied Kerr with easy insolence, "I imagine that its duties consist nowadays in patrolling the lobster-pots, and in amusing the visitors on the various seaside promenades by turning the searchlights on."

"We won't ask you to remain any longer," said the Premier.

Sir Causter Kerr rose leisurely. "Good morning, comrades," he remarked punctiliously, and going home wrote out his resignation, "from motives of patriotism," and sent a copy of the letter to all the papers.

A man who had been standing by the door listening to the conversation now came forward with a copy of an early special edition of the Pall Mall Gazette in his hand.

"You needn't sweat yourselves about being equal to a single power or not," he remarked with an unpleasant laugh. "Look at the 'fudge' there." And he threw the paper on the table, as though he washed his hands of it and many other things.

Mr Bilch secured it, and turning to the space which is left blank for the inclusion of news received up to the very moment of going to press, he read aloud the single item it contained.

COAL WAR

Berlin, Thursday Morning.

"The action which France is reported to have taken had for some time been anticipated here. On all sides there is the opinion, amounting to conviction, that Germany must at once call into operation the power lying dormant in the Penalising Tariff and impose a tax on imported coal. It is agreed that otherwise, in her frantic endeavours to restore the balance of her export trade, England would flood this country with cheap coal and precipitate a state of things similar to that from which France is just emerging.

"Emphasis is laid on the fact that such a measure will be self-protective and in no way aggressive. It is not anticipated that the tax will exceed 2 mks. 50 pf., or at the most 3 mks. per ton."

"Export value, eight and elevenpence," murmured a late arrival, one of the fifty practical men in the House. "Yes, I imagine that two marks fifty will just about knock the bottom out."

"Is there nothing we can offer them in exchange?" demanded some one. "Nothing we can hit them back with?"

Cecil Brown, who was suspected of heterodoxy on this one point, crystallised the tariff question into three words.

"Nothing but tears," he replied.

"If there's one thing that fairly makes me hot it's the way we always have to wait for some one else to tell us what's going on," said the comrade who had brought in the Pall Mall Gazette, looking across at the Foreign Office Under-Secretary resentfully. "A fellow in Holborn here pokes the paper under my nose and asks me what we're going to do about it, and there I don't even know what is being done at us. What I want to know is, what our ambassadors and Foreign Office think they're there for. It's always the same, and then there'll be the questions in Parliament, and we know nothing. Makes us look like a set of kiddin' amateurs."

The fact had been noticed. Former governments had not infrequently earned the title in one or two departments. Later governments had qualified for it in every department. The reason lay on the surface; the members of those parliaments and the men who sent them were themselves bunglers and amateurs in their daily work and life. Except in the stereotyped product of machinery, accuracy was scarcely known. The man who had built a house in England at that period, the man who had had a rabbit-hutch built to order, the man who had stipulated for one article to be made exactly like a copy, the man who had been so unfortunate as to require "the plumbers in," the man who had to do with labour in any shape or form, the man who had been "faithfully" promised delivery or completion by a certain stated time, the woman who shopped, the person who merely existed with open eyes, could all testify out of experiences, some heartrending, some annoying, some simply amusing, that precision and reliability scarcely existed among the lower grades of industry and commerce. It was a period of transition. The worker had cast off the love, the delicacy, the intelligence of the craftsman, and he had not yet attained to the unvarying skill of the automaton. In another century one man would only be able to fix throttle valve connections on to hot-water pipes, but his fixing of throttle valves would be a thing to dream about, while the initial letter A's of his brother, whose whole life would be devoted to engraving initial letter A's on brass dog-collar plates, would be as near unswerving perfection as mundane initials ever could be.

"Makes us look like a set of tinkerin' amateurs."

"One inference is plain enough," said Mr Guppling, smoothing over the suggestion. "These three things weren't going to happen all together of their own accord. There's a deep game somewhere, and seeing what's at stake our powers ought to be wide enough for us to put our hands on them and stop it."

There was a murmur of approval. Having been taken by surprise, the idea of peremptorily "stopping it" was a peculiarly attractive one.

But there were malcontents who were not to be appeased so easily, and a Comrade Pennefarthing, who had arrived in the meantime, raised an old cry in a new form.

"I won't exactly say that we've been betrayed," he declared, glancing at the group of orthodox Ministers who sat together, "but game or no game I will say that we've been damned badly served with information."

Comrade Tirrel stood up. He had not yet spoken at all, and he was accorded instant silence, for men were beginning to look to him. "It is now nearly eleven o'clock," he said in his quick, incisive tone, "and some of us have been here for upwards of an hour. We met to consider a situation. That situation still remains. May I ask that the Home Secretary, who is doubly qualified for the task, should tell us the extent of the danger and its probable effect?"

If Mr Tubes possessed a double qualification he also laboured under a corresponding disability. As the representative of a mining constituency, a practical expert, and a leading member of a Government which existed by the goodwill of the workers – largely of the miners – it would be scarcely to his interest to minimise the gathering cloud. As the Minister for the Home Department, the blacker he made the picture the greater the volume of obloquy he drew upon his head for not having foreseen the danger; the more relief he asked for, the fiercer the opposition he would encounter from hostile sections and from the perturbed heads of a depleted Treasury.

"We are still very much in the dark as to what has really happened, is happening, and will happen," he remarked tamely. "An appreciable drop in the demand for coal, whether for home or export, will certainly have a disturbing effect on the conditions of labour in many departments. But the difficulties of estimating the effects are so great – "

There were murmurs. Whatever might be the failings of Socialistic oratory, flatness and excess of moderation did not lie among them.

"Figures," suggested Tirrel pointedly.

"Perhaps Comrade Tirrel will take the job in hand instead of me," said Tubes bitterly, but without any show of anger. "Doubtless he'd get a better hearing."

"No," replied Tirrel gravely, "the moment is too critical for recrimination. If the Home Secretary lays the position frankly before us, he will have no cause to complain of an unsympathetic hearing, nor, as far as I can speak, of a whole-hearted support in taking means to safeguard it."

It occurred to Mr Tubes then, for the first time in his life – and it was almost like a shock to feel it – that the man who had always seemed to throw himself into sharp antagonism to himself might be actuated by higher motives than personal jealousy after all. He continued his speech.

"If we accept the figure of five millions as a correct return of the Unity League membership, and if we assume that they will all obey the boycott, then we are face to face with the fact that on the basis of a four ton per person average, twenty million tons of coal must be written off the home consumption."

"But the four tons per head average includes the entire industrial consumption of the country," objected Mr Vossit.

"That is so," admitted Mr Tubes, "but it also includes a great many people whose use of coal is practically nil. An alternative basis is to assume that two millions of the members are house-holders. Then taking ten tons a year as their average household consumption – and admitting that all the wealthiest men in the country are included the average is not too high – we arrive at just the same result.

"The exports, on the other hand, do not depend on estimate: we have the actual returns. France takes fifteen million tons in round numbers. For the purpose of facing the worst, we may therefore assume that the work of digging and handling thirty-five million tons will be suddenly cut off."

"Germany," some one reminded him.

"Germany is wholly conjectural at present. I have no objection to taking it into account as well, if it is thought desirable, but I would point out that we are being influenced by the merest rumour."

"No," objected Tirrel, but without any enmity, "I think that we must regard Germany as lost. We are just beginning to touch the outskirts of a vast organisation which has been quietly perfecting its plan of operation for years. I do not regard a German tax as settled because of this one rumour, but I do regard it as settled because at this precise moment the rumour has been allowed to appear."

"Germany ten millions," accepted Mr Tubes. "Total decrease, forty-five million tons."

"Don't you be too sure of that, comrade," warned Mr Bilch. "Why, it's not twelve o'clock yet by a long way. There'll be half a dozen editions out before the 'Three o'clock winners.'" Mr Bilch evidently regarded his shaft that each fresh edition might contain a new country imposing a tax humorously, but several comrades looked towards the Home Secretary enquiringly.

"The other large importers are Italy, Russia, Sweden, Egypt, Spain and Denmark," said Mr Tubes, who could have talked coal statistics for hours if necessary. "All these, with the possible exception of Russia, must import. It is unlikely that the estimate I have given will be exceeded from that cause."

"And the result?"

"Above and below, about a million men are now employed in raising 236,000,000 tons. It is simple arithmetic… In less than a month about two hundred thousand more men will be out of work."

Mr Chadwing, Chancellor of the Exchequer, moved uneasily in his chair.

"That is the full extent?" enquired Cecil Brown.

"No," admitted the Home Secretary. "That is the inevitable direct result. Forty-five million tons less will be carried by rail, or cart, or ship, or all three. A fair sprinkling of railway-men, carters, dockers, stokers, sailors, and other fellows will be dropped off too. There will be fewer railway trucks built this next year, less doing in the fire-grate trade, several thousand horses not wanted, a slight falling off in road-mending work. There is not a trade in England, from steeple-building to hop-picking, that will not be a little worse off because of those 45,000,000 tons. Then the two hundred thousand out-of-work miners will burn less coal at home, the ships and the engines will burn less, and the workshops and the smithies will burn less, and the whole process will be repeated again and again, for coal is like a snowball in its cumulative effects, and it cannot stand still."

If Mr Tubes had come to compromise, he had remained to publish broadcast.

Perhaps no one quite understood the danger yet, for the mind, used to everyday effects, does not readily grasp the extent of a calamity, and six hours before there had not been a cloud even the size of a man's hand on their horizon. The Premier thought it was impolitic on his colleague's part; the Treasury officials looked on it as a move to force their hands; the Foreign Under-Secretary was suspicious that Mr Tubes was leading away by some mysterious by-path from the unpreparedness of his own Department to Foreign Office remissness. They all continued to look silently at the Home Secretary as he continued to stand.

"The indirect effects will involve about two million people to some extent," he summed up.

"That, at least, is the worst?" said Cecil Brown with an encouraging smile, for Mr Tubes remained standing.

The Prime Minister made an impatient movement; the Treasury heads looked at one another and said with their eyes, "He is really overdoing it"; the Foreign Office man scowled unconsciously, and Cecil Brown continued to smile consciously.

"The worst is this: that a great many pits are working to-day at a bare profit, partly in the hope of better things, partly because we stimulate the trade. The crisis we are approaching will hang over the coal fields like a blight, and one crippled industry will bring down another. All the poorer mines will close down. You need only look back to '93 to see that. Neither I nor any one else can give you a forecast of what that will involve, but you may be sure of this: that although '93 with its 17,000,000 tons of a decrease half-ruined the English coal fields for a decade, '93 was a shrimp to what this is going to be."

"Then let us stimulate the trade more, until the crisis is over," suggested Cecil Brown.

Mr Tubes gave a short, dry laugh. "I commend that course to Comrade Chadwing," he said, as he sat down.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was busy with his papers.

"Let me dispel any idea of that kind at once," he remarked, without looking up. "The moment is not only an unfortunate one – it is an utterly impossible one for making any extra disbursement however desirable."

"Well," said Mr Bilch, looking round on the moody assembly paternally, "it seems that the situation is like this here, mates: The navy is no messin' good at all, same as I told you; the army's a bit worse; Treasury empty, yes; the Home Office don't know what's going on at home, and the Foreign Office possesses just the same amount of valuable information as to what is happening abroad. Lively, ain't it? Well, it's lucky that Bilch is still Bilch."

No one rose to his mordant humour. Even Cecil Brown had forgotten how to smile.

"If our comrade has any suggestion to make – " said the Premier discouragingly.

"Yes, sir," replied Mr Bilch. "I have the wisdom of the serpent to rub into your necks if you'll only listen. We haven't any navy, so we can't fight if we wanted to; we haven't any money, so we can't pay out. Tubes here doesn't know what's going to happen at home, and Jevons doesn't rightly know what has happened abroad. What is to be done? I'll tell you. Wait. Wait and see. Wait, and let them all simmer down again. Why," he cried boisterously, looking round on them in good-humoured, friendly contempt, "to see your happy, smiling faces one would think that the canary had died or the lodger gone off without paying his rent. For why? Because a bloke in a frock-coat and a top hat gets on to a wooden horse and blows a tin trumpet, and the export trade in a single article of commerce is temporarily disarranged – perhaps!"

Mr Strummery nodded half absent-mindedly; the Treasury men smiled together; Mr Chadwing murmured "Very true"; and nearly every one looked relieved. Comrade Bilch was certainly a rough member, but the man had a shrewd common-sense, and they began to feel that they had been hasty in their dismal forebodings.

"Haven't we been threatened with this and that before?" demanded Mr Bilch dogmatically. "Of course we have, and what came of it? Nothing. Haven't there been strikes and lock-outs, some big some little, every year? According to Comrade Tubes, this is going to be the champion. That remains to be seen. What I say is, don't play into their hands in a panic. Wait and see what's required. That don't commit us to anything."

"It may be too late then," said Mr Tubes, but he said "may" now and not "will."

"There may be no need to do anything then," replied Mr Bilch. "And remember this: that the minute you begin to shout 'Crisis!' you make one. All round us; all at us. My rag-bags! what a run on the old bank there would be! But if you go on just as usual, taking no notice of no one? Why, before long there will come a wet day or a cold night, and Johnny Hampden's aunt will say to Johnny Hampden's grandmamma: 'My dear, I feel positively starved. Don't you think that we might have a little fire without Johnny knowing?' And the old lady will say: 'Well, do you know, my pet, I was just going to say the same thing myself. Suppose you run out and buy a sack of coal?' And before you can say 'coughdrop' every blessed aunt and mother and first cousin of the Unicorn League will be getting in her little stock of coal."

It was what every one wished to believe, and therefore they were easily persuadable. It was a national characteristic. The country had never entered into a war during the past fifty years without being assured by every authority, from the Commander-in-Chief down to the suburban barber, that as soon as the enemy got a little tap on the head they would be making for home, howling for peace as they went. All these men had known strikes; many had been involved in them: some had controlled their organisation. They had seen the men of their own class loyally and patiently facing poverty and hardship for the sake of a principle, and enduring day after day and week after week, and, if necessary, month after month; they had seen the women of their own class preaching courage and practising heroism by the side of their men while their bodies were racked by cold and hunger and their hearts were crushed by the misery around; they had seen even the children of their class learning an unnatural fortitude. They accepted it as a commonplace of life, an asset on which they could rely. But they did not believe that any other class could do it. It did not occur to them to consider whether the officers of an army are usually behind the rank and file in valour, sacrifice, or endurance.

Doubtless there were among them some who were not deceived, but they wilfully subordinated their clearer judgment to the policy of the moment.

Tirrel was the one exception.

"There can be no more fatal mistake of the dangerous position into which we have been manœuvred than to assume that we shall be easily delivered from it by the weakness of our opponents before we have the least indication that weakness exists," he declared, as soon as Mr Bilch had finished, speaking vigorously, but without any of the assertiveness and personal feeling that had gained him many enemies in the past. "I agree with every word that Comrade Tubes has spoken. We all do; we all must admit it or be blind. What on earth, then, have we to hope for in a policy of drift, of sitting tight and doing nothing in the hope of things coming round of their own accord? It is madness, my comrades, sheer madness, I tell you, and a month hence it will be suicide."

He dropped his voice and swept the circle of faces with a significant glance.

"It is through such madness on the part of others that we are here to-day."

Mr Chadwing smiled the thin smile of expediency.

"It is one thing for a comrade with no official responsibility to say that a certain course does not satisfy him," he said; "it may be quite another thing for those who have to consider ways and means to do anything different. Perhaps Comrade Tirrel will kindly enlighten us as to what in our position he would do?"

"I see two broad courses open," replied Tirrel, without any hesitation in accepting the challenge. "Both, as you will readily say, have their disadvantages, but neither is so fatal as inaction. The first is aggressive. The Unity League has declared war on us. Very well, let it have war. I would propose to suspend the habeas corpus, arrest Hampden and Salt, declare the object and existence of the Unity League illegal, close its offices and confiscate its funds. There are between five and ten million pounds somewhere. Do you reflect what that would do? It would at least keep two hundred thousand out-of-work miners from actual starvation for a year. Prompt action would inevitably kill the boycott movement at home. The foreign taxes, my comrades, you would probably find to have a very marked, though perhaps undiscoverable, connection with the home movement, and when the latter was seen to be effectually dealt with, I venture to predict that the former could be compromised. If the confiscated funds were not sufficient to meet the distress, I should not hesitate to requisition for State purposes in a time of national emergency all incomes above a certain figure in a clean sweep."