of all his courage so much as in making this announcement--which, to
himself, sounded brutally bald.
One of the directors rose, banging nervously upon the table with his
fist, and shaking with rage.
"By God!" he said, "I never thought Tom Hathaway's boy would be a
traitor!"
Sir Thomas Hathaway half rose, and sat down again--looking as though he
were going to faint.
Another of the directors stood up.
"Has our new managing director any other harmless little proposals to
make?" he asked, in bitter sarcasm.
"Yes," replied Captain Hathaway, "I propose to take powers to create
a new Deferred Stock which will rank for dividend after the Ordinary
Stock has received eight per cent, but which will in all circumstances
carry a right to vote on the board--and this stock will be vested in
the representatives of our employees, chosen by them."
"It will never be agreed to by the men!" cried a voice.
"It _is_ agreed to already by the men's representatives," replied the
new chief, feeling the coolness of courage return to him as once when
he had faced the mob of Germans.
The wealthiest of the directors, a man associated with other houses in
the trade, rose in his turn.
"I warn you, Hathaway, that I shall dispose of my interests in this
business--and I'm going to fight you to the last shilling! You'll be
broke in a year!" "All of us! All of us!" came a chorus of approval.
"We'll all fight! This is sheer madness!"
"Fight, if you will, gentlemen," said Hathaway calmly. "It won't pay
you. I haven't been idle these three months. I may tell you that I
have contracts in my pocket that will keep us going for many months
to come--more than a year. The whole world is shrieking for goods, and
Germany is supplying them--capturing your markets while you commit
suicide in trying to get the better of Labour. In these last months I
have established agents all over the world--and I've got the orders!
I know what the other houses have got--I know what's open to you--you
_can't_ fight us!--but you'll be taken over by the Government if your
obstinacy continues this unworthy industrial strife."
There was a silence of vague-headed, angry old men who did not quite
know what to say.
"And now, gentlemen," continued Hathaway. "Let me plead for a better
spirit. That great mass of human beings you coldly call Labour fought
for England just as I fought for England, just as thousands and
thousands of our own class fought. We've been together in the trenches
year in year out and we've learnt to know each other, not as hostile
abstractions, but as living men,--good men, the most of us. We learnt
all sorts of things we didn't realize before the war, but most of
all we learnt--and when I say we, _I mean your sons as well_--that
we're all Englishmen and that we all have to play the game and stick
together--officer and man. D'you think I who have watched over the
comfort of my men, taught them, led them into danger and seen them
unafraid, who have hungered with them, thirsted with them, gloried in
them for these last long years--d'you think I can coldly condemn those
men and their wives and children to starvation now? D'you think I can
treat them as an enemy? I can't. And the men who have been proud of
us, their officers,--d'you think they haven't learnt the value of
leadership? They have--but not the leadership of a slave-master. In the
long bitter years of strife those men have won for themselves a freedom
of soul which is the life-force of a free Empire! Class-hatred! It has
vanished as between officer and man. We're all Englishmen together--and
we're going to work, share and share alike, in the new England, that,
share and share alike, we fought for!" He flung open the door behind
him. "Here, gentlemen, is Jim Swain, the leader of your work-people in
their time of trouble. He saved my life twice--once in the trenches
and got a D.C.M. when he ought to have had the V.C.--and again to-day
when he set a seal of comradeship between the managing director and the
employees of Hathaway's. Together, he and I, and those we represent,
are going to make our patch of England worth the lives that were spent
to save it!"
There was a hush in the room, and into that hush came the strains of a
military band playing a regiment to the neighbouring railway station.
It played the familiar marching tune of the old days, and a flaw of
wind brought masculine voices in the uplift of the chorus.
"... There's a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining,
Turn the dark cloud inside out,
For the boys are home!"
"They're coming back!" cried Captain Hathaway. "Coming back in their
thousands and their millions--officers and men--your sons at the
head of the men they have learned to love! Comrades that can never
be estranged! We're the new generation, gentlemen--the old order has
gone--never to return--we've come back, Swain and I, from the borders
of death that has taught us how precious life may be."
The heads, bald and florid, of that obese elder generation turned in
a community of curious interest, to gaze at Swain--the man who had
nerved his fellows to withstand an economic pressure they had thought
irresistible and was now hailed as comrade by their own young chief.
The ex-soldier took a step forward.
"I should just like to say this, sirs--we men know what it is to have
good officers--and we've never let 'em down. We've come back, officers
and men, and officers like Captain Hathaway will always find their
men work for them as they used to fight--for officers like him make
us feel the Old Country is worth working for as it was worth fighting
for. We've learnt to play the game--and we'll play it so long as we
have fair play. The British soldier has learnt to die rather than
surrender--and the British soldier is just the British working-man."
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