The Lost Naval Papers Part 21

The Field-Marshal smiled and shook hands with the sporting Commandant.

"This is all frightfully irregular," said he, "but I sympathise.

Still, if I know our friend Dawson here, there won't be any fighting.

You have no idea of his skill as a diplomatist. He tells the truth, which is so unusual and startling that the effect is overwhelming. He is a heavy human howitzer. I envy you, Colonel."

"I have not a notion what we are to be at," said the Colonel.

"I am not very clear myself. It is Dawson's picnic, not ours, and we have given him a free hand. You won't get any fighting, but there will be lots of fun."

Meanwhile the First Lord had drawn Dawson to one side. "Good luck, Captain Dawson; you have not wasted any time, and I have the best of hopes. We had a beautiful row after you left us this morning. It did my poor heart good. The P.M. declares that if you put martial law into force, he will hand in his checks to the King. So, my poor friend, you carry with you a mighty responsibility. But stick it out, don't hesitate to follow your judgment, and wire me how you get on."

"Don't worry, sir," said Dawson, "I shall not fail. If it had not been for you and his lords.h.i.+p here, I should not have had this great chance. I won't let you down."

"s.h.!.+" whispered the other. "Not so loud. We are conspirators, strictly incog., dressed in the shabbiest of clothes. We had to see you off, for I enjoyed the tussle of this morning beyond words. I would not for anything have missed the P.M.'s face when he found himself driven to act suddenly and definitely. I am eternally your debtor, Captain Dawson of the Red Marines."

"My word," exclaimed the Colonel-Lieutenant, when the visitors had slipped away like a couple of stage villains, with soft hats pulled down over their eyes--"the Field-Marshal and the First Lord! You have some friends, sir."

"I am only a ranker," said Dawson humbly, "with very temporary stars; not a pukka officer and gentleman like you. I hope that you do not mind sharing' a sleeper with me?"

"I should be proud to share with you the measliest dug-out in a Flanders graveyard," replied the Colonel emphatically. The two officers, so anomalously a.s.sociated, entered their berth the best of friends and talked together far into the night. And as they talked, the Colonel, now a Lieutenant, made the same discovery which had startled Dawson's two powerful supporters of the morning. In the police officer, rough, half-educated, vain, tender of heart, he also had discovered a Man. "But for me and my Red Marines," said Dawson, as they turned in for some broken sleep, "those poor fools up yonder would get themselves shot in the streets. But I shall save them, and in saving them I shall save the country."

It was the afternoon of the following day, just twenty-four hours after Dawson had commandeered the resources of Chatham, and the scene was a public hall in a big industrial city. In the body of the room sat two hundred and thirty-four men--shop stewards and district trade union officials--and their faces were gloomy and anxious. They had come for a last meeting with the officers of the Munitions Dept, and to declare that the men whom they represented were resolved not to permit of any further dilution of labour. The great majority of them were not unpatriotic, their sons and brothers and friends had joined the Forces, and had already fought and died gallantly, but they were intensely suspicious. To them the "employer," the "capitalist," was a greater, because more enduring and insidious, enemy than the Germans.

Dilution of labour had become in their eyes a device for destroying all their hardly won privileges and restrictions, and for delivering them bound and helpless to their "capitalist oppressers." To this sorry pa.s.s had the perpetual disputes of peace brought the workmen under stress of war! Rates of pay did not enter into the dispute--never in their lives had they earned such wages--its origin led in a queer perverted sense of loyalty to the trade unions, and to those members who had gone forth to fight. "What will our folks say,"

asked the men of one another, "when they come home from the war, if we have given away in their absence all that they fought for during long years?" When it was attempted to make clear that the lives of their own sons in the trenches were being made more hazardous by their obstinacy, they shook their heads and simply did not believe. "We can make all the guns and the sh.e.l.ls that are wanted without giving up our rules. We value our sons' lives as much as you do. We love our country as much as you do. The capitalists are using a plea of patriotism to get the better of us." It was a pitiful deadlock--honest for the most part; yet it was a deadlock which, as Dawson said, brought very near the day when English artillery would be firing shotted guns in English streets.

At a small table on a low platform at one end of the room sat three civilians, and a few feet away, sitting a little back, was an officer whose uniform and badges attracted the eyes of the curious. None of the workmen knew this brown-skinned man with the small, dark moustache who looked so very professional a soldier, yet Dawson knew them, every man of them, and had moved among them in their works many times. Ten of those present were actually his own agents, working among their fellow unionists and agitating with them--hidden sources of information and of influence at need--and yet not one of those ten knew that the Marine Captain upon the platform was his own official chief. The chairman rose to speak to the men for the last time, and Dawson sat listening and studying a small slip of paper in his hand.

The chairman said nothing that the men had not been told many times during the past few days, but there was in his speech a note of solemn appeal and warning which was new. The hearers shuffled their feet uneasily, for most of them felt uneasy; they were, as I have said, most of them honest men. But when the chairman had sat down, and the men began, one after another, to reply, it appeared at once that there was present an element not honest, even seditious. Dawson smiled to himself, and studied his slip of paper, for the snake, whose head he had come to cut off, was beginning to rear itself before him. Hints began to appear that there was a strong minority at least which was unwilling both to fight and to work for a country which was none of theirs--"What has this country done for us that we should bleed and sweat for it? It has starved us and sweated us to make profits out of us, and now in its extremity s...o...b..rs us with fair words." At last one man rose, a thin-faced, wild-eyed man, who, under happier conditions, might have been a preacher or a writer, and delivered a speech which was rankly seditious. "The workers," he declared, "are being shackled, gagged, and robbed. Our enemy is not the German Kaiser. Our enemy consists of that small, cunning, treacherous, well-organised, and highly respectable section of the community who, by means of the money power, compels the workers to sweat in order that their bellies may be full and their fine ladies gowned in gorgeous raiment. They pa.s.s a Munitions Act to chain the worker to his master. They 'dilute' labour to call into being an invisible army which can be mobilised at short notice to defeat the struggles of striking artisans. The attack of the masters must be resisted. The workers must fight. There is a fascinating attraction in the idea of meeting force with force, violence with violence. It is undeniable that many of the more thoughtful among the toilers would consider that their lives had not been spent in vain if they organised their comrades to drilled and armed rebellion."

The speaker paused. He was encouraged by a few cheers, but the ma.s.s of his hearers were silent. He glanced at Dawson, whose face was set in an expressionless mask. Cheers came again, and he went on, but with less a.s.surance. "The worker's labour power is his only wealth. It is also his highest weapon. But the workers need not think of using this weapon so long as they are split and divided into sects and groups and crafts. To be effective they must organise as workers. An organisation that would include all the workers, skilled and unskilled, throughout the entire country, would prove irresistible. But as matters stand at present I do not advocate armed rebellion. I advocate and herewith proclaim a general strike."

He sat down, and there was a long silence. The die had been cast. If the meeting broke up without the emphatic a.s.sertion of the Government's authority, then a general strike upon the morrow was as certain as that the sun would rise. It was for this moment, this intensely critical moment, that Dawson had worked and fought in London, and for which he was now ready. The chairman sighed and wiped his face, which had become clammy. He looked at Dawson, who nodded slightly, and then rose.

"I call," said he solemnly, "upon Captain Dawson. He is now in supreme authority."

Dawson sprang to his feet, alert, decided, and picked up a large roll of papers which had rested behind him upon his chair. He placed the roll upon the table and faced the audience, who knew at once, with the rapid instinct of a crowd, that the unexpected was about to happen.

Dawson pulled down his tunic, settled himself comfortably into his Sam Browne belt, and rested his left hand upon the hilt of his sword.--It was a pretty artistic touch, the wearing of that sword, and exactly characteristic of Dawson's methods. I laughed when he told me of it.--There were two doors to the room--one upon Dawson's left hand, the other at the far end behind the workmen. He raised his right hand, and the chairman, who was watching him, pressed an electric bell. Then events began to happen.

The doors flew open, and through each of them filed a line of smart men in blue, equipped with rifles and side arms. Twenty men and a sergeant pa.s.sed through each door, which was then closed. The ranks of each detachment were dressed as if on parade, and when all were ready, Dawson gave a sharp order. Instantly forty-two rifle-b.u.t.ts clashed as one upon the floor, and the Marines stood at ease. At this moment the door at the far end might have been seen to open, and an officer to slip in who, though white of hair, had not apparently reached a higher rank than that of lieutenant. "It was all very fine, Dawson," he explained afterwards, "your plan of leaving me outside with the rest of the Marines, but it wasn't good enough. I didn't come north to be buried in the reserves."

"You should have obeyed orders," replied Dawson severely.

"I should," cheerfully a.s.sented the Colonel-Commandant of Chatham, "but somehow I didn't."

While Dawson's body-guard of Marines was getting into position before the doors, the workmen, surprised and trapped, were on their feet chattering and gesticulating. The unfamiliar appearance of the blue-uniformed men, not one of whom was less than five feet nine inches in height, their well-set-up figures and stolid professional faces, gave a business-like, even ominous flavour to the proceedings which chilled the strike leaders to the bone. They would have cheered an irruption of kilted recruits in khaki tunics as the coming of old friends, and would have felt no more than local patriotic hostility towards a detachment of English or Irish soldiers. But these blue men of the Sea Regiment, an integral part of the great mysterious silent Navy, had no part or lot with British workmen "rightly struggling to be free." They represented some outside authority, some potent, overpowering authority, as no khaki-clad soldiers could have represented it. The surprise was complete, the moral effect was staggering, and Dawson, who had counted upon both when he brought his Marines north, smiled contentedly to himself. He stepped forward, with that little slip of paper in his hand, and began to read from it. One by one he read out twenty-three names, the very first being that of the man who had made the speech which I have reported.

As name after name dropped from Dawson's lips, the wonder and terror grew. Who was this strange officer who could thus surely divide the goats from the sheep, who was picking out one after another the self-seekers and fomenters of sedition, who, while he omitted none who were really dangerous, yet included none who were honest though mistaken? As the list drew towards its end, quite half the listeners were smiling broadly. They could not have drawn up a more perfect one themselves, and they did not love most of those whose names were found upon it.

"Now," said Dawson, when he had finished, "I must ask all those gentlemen to step forward." Not a man moved. "Let me warn you that every man whose name I have read out is personally known to me. If I have to come and fetch you, I shall not come alone." There was still some hesitation, and then those upon the proscribed list began to move forward. They would willingly have hidden themselves, had that been possible, but to be known and to be dragged out by those hard-faced Marines would have added humiliation to terror. They came forth, until all the twenty-three were ranged up before Dawson. Then the man, whose name was first upon the list, rasped out, "What is your authority for this outrage upon a peaceful meeting? I demand your authority."

"You shall have it," serenely replied Dawson. And, going up to the pile of papers which he had laid upon the table, he drew one forth and held it up so that all might see. It was a large placard, boldly printed, a proclamation in cold, terse language of Martial Law, signed by the Secretary for War himself.

"Martial Law! This is sheer militarism," cried the first of those arrested.

"For you and for these other twenty-two upon my list it is Martial Law," replied Dawson. "But for the rest it will be as they choose themselves. Sergeant, remove the prisoners." A sergeant stepped out, the line of Marines before the door divided, and the prisoners were led away. Dawson put the proclamation back upon the table, squared his shoulders, and turned towards his audience, now silent, subdued, and purged. His plans were working very well.

"I am no speaker," he began; "I am a man of the people, one of yourselves. I have made my own way, and though I wear the uniform and stars of a Captain of Marines, I am really an officer of police, Chief Detective Inspector Dawson of Scotland Yard." He paused to allow time for this astonis.h.i.+ng fact to sink in. So that was why he had known the names and faces of all the ring-leaders of sedition! And if he knew so much, what more might he not know! Even the most innocent among his audience began to feel loose about the neck.

"I know you all," he went on. "There is not a man among you whom I do not know. You--or you--or you." He addressed those near to him by name. "We sympathise with you and have reasoned with you. But you proved obdurate. The King's Government must be carried on; the war must be carried on if our country is to be saved. And those who have given power to me--the power which you have seen set out upon these papers, the powers of Martial Law--will exercise them unflinchingly if there appears to be no other way. But there is another and a better way. You must obey the laws which Parliament has pa.s.sed for the defence of the country and for the provision of munitions. Your rights are protected under them. After the war is over, your privileges will be restored. For the present they must be abandoned. Willingly or unwillingly they must be abandoned. I said just now that it is for you to choose whether Martial Law shall take effect or not. The moment those placards are posted in the streets the military authorities become supreme, but they will not be posted if you have the sense to see when you are beaten. What I have to ask, to require of you, is that to-morrow, at the ma.s.s meeting of the men which is to be held, you will advise them to surrender unconditionally, to work hard themselves, and to allow all others to work hard. There must be no more holding up of essential parts of guns, no more writing and talking sedition. Our country needs the whole-hearted service of us all. If you here and now give me your promise that you will use every effort--no perfunctory, but real effort--to stop at once all these threats of a strike, I will let you go now and wish you G.o.d-speed. If you fail, then Martial Law will be proclaimed forthwith. Make this very clear to the men. Tell them that you have seen the proclamation, signed by the Field-Marshal himself, and that I, Captain and Chief Inspector Dawson, will post the placards in the streets with my own hands. If you will not give me your promise--I do not ask for any hostages or security, just your promise as loyal, honourable men--I shall arrest you all here and now, and deport you all just as those twenty-three have been arrested and will be deported. You will not see those men for a long time; you know in your hearts that you are well quit of them. If I arrest you all, I shall not stop my arrests at that point. There are many others--many who are not workmen from whom has come money for your strike funds and to offer bail when arrests have been made. I shall pick them all up. Nothing that you can now do will affect the fate of those who have been taken from this room. Whatever loyalty you may owe to them has been discharged, and I will give you a quittance. Their chapter has been closed. What you have to consider now is the fate of yourselves and of many beside yourselves, of all those who look to you for advice and guidance. Take time, talk among yourselves, consult one another. I am not here to hurry you unduly, but before you are allowed to leave this room there must be a complete and final settlement."

He sat down. The men split into groups, and the buzz of talk ran through the room. There was no anger or excitement, but much bewilderment. They had come to the meeting as masters, strong in numbers, to dictate terms, yet now the tables had been turned dramatically upon them. No longer masters, they were in the presence of a Force which at a word from Dawson could hale them forth as prisoners to be dealt with under the mysterious shuddering powers of Martial Law. They thought of those twenty-three, a few minutes since so potent for mischief, now bound and helpless in the hands of the Blue Men from the Sea.

At last an elderly grey-locked man stepped forward, and Dawson rose to meet him. "We admit, sir," said he, "that you have us at a disadvantage. We did not expect this Proclamation nor those Marines of yours. We did not believe that the Government meant business. We thought that we should have more talk, talk, and we are all sick of talk. We are true patriots here--you have taken away all those who cared nothing for their country--and we feel that if you are prepared to use Martial Law and the forces of the Crown against us, that you must be very much in earnest. We feel that you would not do these terrible things unless the need were very urgent. We do not agree that the need is urgent, but if you, representing the Government, say that it is, we have no course open to us but to submit. If we now surrender unconditionally and promise heartily to use every effort to bring the ma.s.s of the men to our views, will you in your turn give us your personal a.s.surance that all our legitimate grievances will be fully considered, and that every effort will be made to meet them? You may crush us, sir, but you will not get good work from men whose spirit has been broken."

"I cannot make conditions," replied Dawson gently, "but ask yourselves why I brought my Marines all the way from Chatham to deal with this meeting? Was it not that I would not put upon you the pain and humiliation of arrest at the hands of your own sons and brothers?

Though I stand here with gold stars on my shoulders I am one of you.

My father worked all his life in the dockyard at Portsmouth, and I myself as a boy have been a holder-on in a black squad of riveters. I can make no conditions, but if you will leave yourself entirely in my hands, and in those of my superiors, you may be a.s.sured that there will be no attempt made to crush you, to break your spirit."

As he said these words an inspiration came to him, and by sure instinct he acted upon it. Jumping down from the platform, he approached the old sad-faced spokesman, and shook him hard by the hand. Then he moved along among the other workmen, addressing them by name, chatting to them of their work and private interests, and showing so complete and human a regard for them that their hostility melted away before him. This man, who had conquered them, was one of themselves, a "tradesman" like them, one of the Black Squad of Portsmouth, a fellow-worker. He was no tool of the hated "capitalist."

If he said that they must all go back to work unconditionally, well they must go. But he was their friend, and would see justice done them. Presently Dawson was handing out cigarettes--of which he had brought a large supply in his pockets, Woodbines--and the meeting, of which so much was feared, had apparently turned into, a happy conversazione. For half an hour Dawson pursued his campaign of personal conciliation, and then went back to his place upon the platform.

"Go in peace," he cried. "Come again to-morrow afternoon and tell me about the ma.s.s meeting. There will be more cigarettes awaiting you, and even, possibly, a bottle or two of whisky."

The men laughed, and one wag called out, "Three cheers for holder-on Dawson." The cheers were given heartily, the Marines stood aside from the doors, and the room rapidly emptied. The officials of the Munitions Department and the Colonel, who was Dawson's insubordinate subaltern, crowded round him spouting congratulations. He soaked in their flatteries as was his habit, and then delivered a lesson upon the management of men which should be printed in letters of gold. "Men are just grown-up children," said he, "and should be treated as children. Be always just, praise them when they are good, and smack them when they are naughty. But if when they are naughty you spare the rod and try to s...o...b..r them with fine words, they will despise you utterly, and become upon the instant naughtier than ever."

"What about that ma.s.s meeting to-morrow?" asked the Colonel.

"I shall not be there, but ten of my men will be. Have no fears of the ma.s.s meeting. The snake's head is off--by to-morrow it will be two hundred miles away--and though the body may wriggle, it will be quite harmless. After two or three hours of talk and vain threats the meeting will collapse, and we shall get unconditional surrender."

And so it happened. The talk went on for four solid hours--vain, vapouring talk, during which steam was blown off. At the end the surrender, as Dawson predicted, was unconditional.

That evening of the morrow a telegram sped away over the long wires to the south addressed to the Secretary of the Admiralty.

"Please tell First Lord that the snake is dead. I am returning the Marines carriage-paid and undamaged. My commission as a Captain is no longer required. Dawson."

Back flashed a reply from the Minister himself: "To Captain Dawson, R.M.L.I. Adjutant-General insists that you retain rank and pay until the end of the war. So do I. You have done a wonderful piece of work for which you will be adequately punished in official quarters. But you will suffer in good company."

Though Dawson thus became ent.i.tled to call himself Captain for the duration of the war, he never used the rank or the uniform again. Once more, to my knowledge, he served in his well-beloved Corps, but it was then not as Captain, but as private, during his long watch in the _Malplaquet_, of which I have told the story earlier in this book.

CHAPTER XVII

DAWSON TELEPHONES FOR A SURGEON

I have never been able to plan this book upon any system which would hold together for half a dozen consecutive chapters. I am the victim of my characters who come and go and pull me with them tied to their chariot wheels. When I wrote the first story of the "Lost Naval Papers"--which, by the way, were not lost at all--I had not made the personal acquaintance of William Dawson. When I wrote of my own encounters with Dawson and of my share, a humble share, in his researches, my dear Madame Gilbert had not met me and subdued me into a drivelling wors.h.i.+p of her s.h.i.+ning personality. While I was amusing myself trying to convey to the reader the frolicsome atmosphere which Madame carries about with her and in which she hides the workings of her big heart and brain, I was ignorant of the adventures of the two battle-cruisers and of Dawson's encounter with the War Committee, and of his triumph over the revolting workmen of the north. I have therefore written, as it were, from hand to mouth, more as one who keeps a vagabond diary than as one who consciously plans a work of art. It is as a diary of personal experiences that this book should be regarded. It has no merit of constructive skill, for I have never known what the future would yield to me of material. When Dawson parted with me to return south to the Yard, and to his deserted family in Acacia Villas, Primrose Road, Tooting, I did not expect to see him again for months, possibly years. But a turn came to the wheel of my destiny as it had done to his. I also was plucked from my northern place of exile and transported joyfully to the south country, whither I have always fled whenever for a few days or weeks I could loosen the bonds which tied me to the north. Now that those bonds have fallen entirely from me, and I am back in my southern home--whether for good or for evil rests upon the lap of the high G.o.ds--I have been able unexpectedly to resume contact with Dawson and to bring this, discursive book to some kind of a conclusion. It cannot really end so long as Dawson and Froissart and Madame Gilbert live and remain in friendly a.s.sociation with me. They have become parts of my life, and if I have not outraged their feelings beyond forgiveness by what I have written of them, I have hopes that I shall meet all of them often in the future and that they will tell me many more stories of their exploits.