BY TELESCRIBE
What Sir John Hampden was "about to do" he had decided in the course of
the outward journey.
There was nothing in his actions, past or prospective, that struck him
as illogical. He would have said, indeed, that they were the only
possible outcome of the circumstance.
For the last four hours, as the nameless emissary of the Order to whose
discipline he bound himself, he had merged every other feeling in his
duty to the dying man and in the fulfilment of a death-bed charge.
That was over; now, as the President of the Unity
League, he was on his way to try by every means in his power to minimise
the effect of what he had done; to anticipate and counteract the value
of the warning he had so scrupulously conveyed.
It was a fantastic predicament. He had sat for perhaps half an hour with
the unsealed envelope in his pocket, and no eye had been upon him. He
had declared passionately, year after year, that class and class were
now at war, that the time for courteous retaliation was long since past,
that social martial law had been proclaimed. Yet as he drove back to
Trafalgar Chambers he would have given a considerable sum of money--the
League being not ill provided, say fifty thousand pounds--to know the
extent of those notes.
When he reached the offices it was almost half-past twelve. Salt would
be flying northward as fast as steam could take him, and for the next
two hours at least, cut off from the possibility of any communication.
The burden of decision lay on Hampden alone.
He had already made it. Within an hour he would have pledged the League
to a line of policy from which there was no retreat. Before another day
had passed the Government could recall the little band of secret service
agents and consign their reports to the wastepaper basket. Every one
would know everything. Everything? He smiled until the remembrance of
that cheap frayed envelope in Mr Tubes's possession drove the smile
away.
Next to his own office stood the instrument room. Here, behind double
doors that deadened every sound, were ranged the telephones, the tape
machines, the Fessenden-d'Arco installation, and that most modern
development of wireless telegraphy which had come just in time to save
the over-burdened postal system from chronic congestion, the telescribe.
Hampden had not appeared to move hurriedly, but it was just seventeen
seconds after he had sent his brougham roving eastward that he stood
before the telephone.
"1432 St Paul's, please."
There was a sound as of rushing water and crackling underwood. Then the
wire seemed to clear itself like a swimmer rising from the sea, and a
quiet, far-away voice was whispering in his ear: "Yes, I'm Lidiat."
"I am at Trafalgar Chambers," said Hampden, after giving his name. "I
want you to drop _anything_ you are on and come here. If my motor is not
waiting for you at the corner of Chancery Lane, you will meet it along
the Strand."
At the other end of the wire, Lidiat--the man who possessed the sixth
code typewriter--looked rather blankly at his pipe, at the little silver
carriage clock ticking on the mantelpiece, at the fluted white-ware
coffee set, and at his crowded desk. Then, concluding that if the
President of the Unity League sent a message of that kind after midnight
and immediately rang off again he must have a good reason for it, he
locked up his room as it stood, took up a few articles promiscuously
from the rack in the hall, and walked out under the antique archway into
Fleet Street.
In the meantime the Exchange was being urged to make another attempt to
get on with "2743 Vincent," this time with success.
"Mr Salt is not 'ere, I repeat, sir," an indignant voice was protesting.
"He is out of town."
"Yes, yes, Dobson, I know," replied "St James's." "I am Sir John
Hampden. What train did your master go by?"
"Beg pardon, sir," apologised "Vincent." "Didn't recognise your voice at
first, Sir John. The wires here is 'issing 'orrible to-night. He went by
the 10 o'clock from the Great Central, and told me to meet the 10.40
Midland to-morrow morning."
"He did actually go by the 10 train?"
"I 'anded him the despatch case through the carriage window not five
minutes before the whistle went. He was sitting with his----"
"Thank you, Dobson. That's all I wanted to know. Sorry if you had to get
up. Good night," and Sir John cut off a volume of amiable verbosity as
he heard the bell of his Launceston ring in the street below.
"Fellow watching your place," said Lidiat, jerking his head in the
direction of a doorway nearly opposite, as Hampden admitted him. Had he
himself been the object of the watcher's attention it would have been
less remarkable, for had not the time and the place been London after
midnight, Lidiat's appearance must have been pronounced bizarre.
Reasonable enough on all other points he had a fixed conviction that it
was impossible for him to work after twelve o'clock at night unless he
wore a red silk skull cap, flannels, and yellow Moorish slippers. Into
this aesthetic costume he had changed half an hour before Hampden rang
him up, and in it, with the addition of a very short overcoat and a silk
hat that displayed an inch of red beneath the brim, he now stepped from
the brougham, a large, bovine-looking man, perfectly bald, and still
clinging to his pipe.
Hampden laughed contemptuously as he glanced across the street.
"They have put on half a dozen private enquiry men lately," he
explained. "They are used to divorce, and their sole idea of the case
seems to be summed up in the one stock phrase, 'watching the house.'
Possibly they expect to see us through the windows, making bombs. Why
don't they watch Paris instead? Egyptian Three Per Cents. have gone up
75 francs in the last fortnight, all from there, and for no obvious
reason."
Lidiat nodded weightily. "We stopped too much comment," he said. "Lift
off?"
"There are only two short flights," apologised Hampden. "Yes; I saw that
even the financial papers dismissed it as a 'Pied Piper rise.' Here we
are."
They had not lingered as they talked, although the journalist ranked
physical haste and bodily exertion--as typified by flights of
stairs--among the forbidden things of life.
Hampden had brought him to the instrument room. In view of what he was
asking of Lidiat, some explanation was necessary, but he put it into the
narrowest possible form. It was framed not on persuasiveness but
necessity.
"Salt is away, something has happened, and we have to move a week before
we had calculated."
Lidiat nodded. He accepted the necessity as proved; explanation would
have taken time. His training and occupation made him chary of
encouraging two words when one would do, between midnight and the hour
when the newspapers are "closed up" and the rotaries begin to move.
"I should like," continued Hampden, "in to-day's issue of every morning
paper a leader, two six-inch items of news, one home one foreign, and a
single column six-inch advertisement set in the middle of a full white
page."
Lidiat had taken off his hat and overcoat and placed them neatly on a
chair. It occurred to him as a fair omen that Providence had dealt
kindly with him in not giving him any opportunity of changing his
clothes. He now took out his watch and hung it on a projecting stud of
the telephone box.
"Yes, and the minimum?" He did not think, as a lesser man with equal
knowledge of Fleet Street might have done, that Hampden had gone mad. He
knew that conventionally such a programme was impossible, but he had
known of impossible things being done, and in any case he understood by
the emphasis that this was what Hampden would have done under freer
circumstances.
"That is what I leave to you. The paragraphs and comment at some length
I shall look for. The provinces are out of the question, I suppose? The
eight leading London dailies _must_ be dealt with."
"You give me _carte blanche_, of course--financially?"
"Absolutely, absolutely. Guarantee everything to them. Let them arrange
for special trains at all the termini. Let them take over all the
garages, motor companies, and cab yards in London as going concerns for
twelve hours. They will all be in it except _The Tocsin_ and _The
Masses_. We can deal with the distributing houses later. You see the
three points? It is the patriotic thing to do at any cost; they can have
anything they like to make up time; and it is absolutely essential."
"Yes," said Lidiat; "and the matter?"
Hampden had already taken a pencilled sheet of paper from his pocket. He
had written it on his way up to Kilburn. He now handed it to the
journalist.
"Between four and five o'clock that will be telescribed over the entire
system," he explained. "Those who are not on the call will see it in the
papers or hear from others. Every one will know before to-night."
He watched Lidiat sharply as he read the statement. Apart from the two
principals, he was the first man in England to receive the confidence,
and Sir John had a curiosity, not wholly idle, to see how it would
strike him. But Lidiat was not, to use an obsolete phrase, "the man in
the street." He absorbed the essence of the manifesto with a trained,
practical grasp, and then held out his hand for the other paper, while
his large, glabrous face remained merely vacant in its expression.
The next paper was a foreign telegram in cipher, and as Lidiat read the
decoded version that was pinned to it, the baronet saw, or fancied that
he saw, the flicker of a keener light come into his eyes and such a
transient wave across his face, as might, in a man of impulse, indicate
enthusiasm or appreciation.
"Are there to be any more of these--presently?" was all he said.
"I think that I might authorise you to say that there will be others to
publish, as the moment seems most propitious."
"Very good. I will use the instruments now."
"There is one more point," said Hampden, writing a few short lines on a
slip of paper, "that it might be desirable to make public now."
Lidiat took the paper. This was what he read:
"_You are at liberty to state definitely that the membership of
the Unity League now exceeds five million persons._"
There was a plentiful crop of grey hairs sown between Charing Cross and
Ludgate Hill in the early hours of that summer morning. With his mouth
to the telephone, Lidiat stirred up the purlieus of Fleet Street and the
Strand until office after office, composing room after composing room,
and foundry after foundry, all along the line, began to drone and hum
resentfully, like an outraged apiary in the dead of night. When he once
took up the wire he never put it down again until he had swept the
"London Dailies: Morning" section of Sell and Mitchell from beginning to
end. Those who wished to retort and temporise after he had done with
them, had to fall back upon the telescribe--which involved the
disadvantage to Fleet Street of having to write and coldly transmit the
indignant messages that it would fain pour hot and blistering into its
tormentor's ear. For two hours and a half by the watch beneath his eye
he harrowed up all the most cherished journalistic traditions of the
land, and from a small, box-like room a mile away, he controlled the
reins of the Fourth Estate of an Empire--a large, fat, perspiring man of
persuasive authority, and conscious of unlimited capital at his back.
By the end of that time chaos had given place to order. _The Scythe_ had
shown an amenable disposition with a readiness suggesting that it
possibly knew more than it had told in the past. _The Ensign_ was won
over by persuasion and the condition of the Navy, and _The Mailed Fist_
was clubbed and bullied and cajoled with big names until it was dazed.
For seven minutes Lidiat poured patriotism into the ear of _The
Beacon's_ editor, and gold into the coffers of _The Beacon's_ manager,
and then turned aside to win over _The Daily News-Letter_ by telling it
what _The Daily Chronicler_ was doing, and the _Chronicler_ by reporting
the _News-Letter's_ acquiescence. _The Morning Post Card_ remained
obdurate for half an hour, and only capitulated after driving down and
having an interview with Hampden. _The Great Daily_--well, for more than
a year _The Great Daily_ had been the property and organ of the League,
only no one had suspected it. The little _Illustrated Hour_, beset by
the difficulty of half-tone blocks, and frantic at the thought of having
to recast its plates and engage in the mysteries of "making ready" again
after half its edition had been run off, was the last to submit. So long
was it in making up its mind, that at last Lidiat sarcastically proposed
an inset, and, taking the suggestion in all good faith, the _Illustrated
Hour_ startled its sober patrons by bearing on its outside page a gummed
leaflet containing a leaderette and two news paragraphs.
So the list spun out. Lidiat did not touch the provinces, but sixteen
London dailies, including some sporting and financial organs, marked the
thoroughness of his work. At half-past three he finally hung up the
receiver; and taking the brougham, rode like another Wellington over the
field of his still palpitating Waterloo. His appearance, bovine and
imperturbable despite the shameful incongruity of his garb when revealed
in the tremulous and romantic dawn of a day and of an epoch, and further
set off by the unimpeachable correctness of the equipage from which he
alighted, was a thing that rankled in the minds of lingering compositors
and commissionaires until their dying days.
A few minutes after his departure Hampden returned to the telephone and
desired to make the curious connection "1 Telescribe."
"Who is there?" he asked, when "1 Telescribe" responded.
The man at the other end explained that he was a clerk on the main
platform of "1 Telescribe"--name of Firkin, if the fact was of
Metropolitan interest.
"Is Mr Woodbarrow there yet?"
It appeared, with increased respect, that Mr Woodbarrow was in his own
office and could be informed of the gentleman's name.
"Please tell him that Sir John Hampden wishes to speak with him."
In two minutes another voice filtered through the wire, a voice which
Hampden recognised.
"What are you running with now, Mr Woodbarrow?" he asked, when brief
courtesies had been exchanged.
Mr Woodbarrow made an enquiry, and was able to report that a 5 H.P.
Tangye was supplying all the power they needed at that hour. Nothing was
coming through, he explained, except a few press messages from America,
a little business from Australia, and some early morning news from
China.
"I should be obliged if you would put on the two Westinghouses as soon
as you can, and then let me know when you can clear the trunk lines for
a minute. Within the next hour I want to send an 'open board' message."
There was no response to this matter-of-fact request for an appreciable
five seconds, but if ever silence through a telephone receiver conveyed
an impression of blank amazement at the other end, it was achieved at
that moment.
"Do I rightly understand, Sir John," enquired Mr Woodbarrow at the end
of those five seconds, "that you wish to repeat a message over the
entire system?"
"That is quite correct."
"It will constitute a record."
"An interesting occasion, then."
"Have you calculated the fees, Sir John?"
"No, I have not had the time. You will let me know when the power is
up?"
Mr Woodbarrow, only just beginning to realise fully the magnitude of the
occasion and tingling with anticipation, promised to act with all
possible speed, and going to his own room Sir John took up an agate pen
and proceeded to write with special ink on prepared paper this
encyclical despatch.
A library of books had been written on the subject of the telescribe
within two years of its advent, but a general description may be
outlined untechnically in a page or two. It was, for the moment, the
last word of wireless telegraphy. It was efficient, it was speedy, it
was cheap, and it transmitted in facsimile. It had passed the stage of
being wondered at and had reached that of being used. It was universal.
It was universal, that is, not in the sense that tongues are universally
in heads, for instance, but, to search for a parallel, as universal as
letter-boxes are now on doors, book-cases in houses, or cuffs around
men's wrists. There were, in point of number, about three millions on
the index book.
It was speedy because there was no call required, no intervention of a
connecting office to wait for. That was purely automatic. Above the
telescribe box in one's hall, study, or sitting-room, was a wooden panel
studded with eight rows of small brass knobs, sixteen knobs in each row.
These could be depressed or raised after the manner of an electric light
stud, and a similar effect was produced: a connection was thereby made.
All the country--England and Wales--was mapped out into sixteen primary
divisions, oblong districts of equal size. The top row of brass knobs
corresponded with these divisions, and by pulling down any knob the
operator was automatically put into communication with that part of the
system, through the medium of the huge central station that reared its
trellised form, like an Eiffel Tower, above the hill at Harrow, and the
subsidiary stations which stood each in the middle of its division.
The second stage was reached by subdividing each primary division into
sixteen oblong districts, and with these the second row of knobs
corresponded. Six more times the subdividing process was repeated, and
each subdivision had its corresponding row. The final division
represented plots of ground so small that no house or cottage could
escape location.
Pulling down the corresponding studs on the eight rows instantly and
automatically established the connection. The written communication
could then be transmitted, and in the twinkling of an eye it was traced
on a sheet of paper in the receiving box. There was no probability of
the spaces all being occupied with telescribes for some years to come. A
calculation will show that there was provision for a good many thousand
million boxes, but only three million were fixed and attuned at this
period.
That, briefly, was the essential of the telescribe system. It was
invaluable for most purposes, but not for all. Though speedier than the
letter, it lacked its privacy when it reached its destination, and it
also, in the eyes of many, lacked the sentimental touch, as from hand to
hand, which a letter may convey. It carried no enclosures, of course,
and, owing to the difficulties of ink and paper, printed matter could
not be telescribed at all. It cost twice as much as a letter, but as
this was spread in the proportion of three-quarters to the sender and
one quarter to the receiver the additional cost was scarcely felt by
either. Thus it came about that although the telescribe had diminished
the volume of telegrams by ninety per cent., and had made it possible
still to cope with a volume of ordinary postal correspondences which up
to that time had threatened to swamp the department, it had actually
superseded nothing.
At four o'clock Mr Woodbarrow called up Sir John and reported that the
two great engines were running smoothly, and that for three minutes the
entire system would be closed against any message except his. In other
words, while the "in" circuit was open to three million boxes, the "out"
circuit was closed against all except one. It was not an absolutely
necessary precaution, for overlapping telescripts "stored latent" until
the way was clear, but it was not an occasion on which to hesitate about
taking every safeguard.
The momentous order was already written. Hampden opened the lid of a
small flat box supported on the telescribe shelf by four vulcanite feet,
put the paper carefully in, and closed the lid again. He had pulled down
the eight rows of metal studs in anticipation of Woodbarrow's message,
and there was only one more thing to do. A practical, unemotional man,
and not unused, in an earlier decade, to controlling matters of national
importance with energy and decision, he now stood with his hand above
the fatal switch, not in any real doubt about his action, but with a
kind of fascinated time-languor. A minute had already passed. To pull
down the tiny lever and release it would not occupy a second. At what
period of those three minutes should he do it? How long _dare_ he leave
it? He caught himself wondering whether on the last second--and with an
angry exclamation at the folly he pressed the lever home.
There was no convulsion of nature; a little bell a foot away gave a
single stroke, and that was all the indication that the President of the
Unity League had passed the Rubicon and unmasked his battery.
This was what he had written and scattered broadcast over the land:
"THE UNITY LEAGUE.
"The time has now arrived when it is necessary for the League
to take united action in order to safeguard the interests of
its members.
"In directing a course which may entail some inconvenience, but
can hardly, with ordinary foresight, result in real hardship,
your President reminds you of the oft-repeated warning that
such a demand would inevitably be made upon your sincerity. The
opportunity is now at hand for proving that as a class our
resource and endurance are not less than those of our
opponents.
"On or before the 22nd July, members of the League will cease
until further notice to purchase or to use coal in the form of
(_a_) Burning Coal (except such as may be already on their
premises), (_b_) Coke (with the exception as before), (_c_)
Gas, (_d_) Coal-produced electricity.
"The rule applies to all private houses, offices, clubs,
schools, and similar establishments; to all hotels,
restaurants, boarding-houses and lodging-houses, with the
exception (for the time) of necessary kitchen fires, which will
be made the subject of a special communication, to all
greenhouses and conservatories not used for the purposes of
trade; and to all shops, workshops, and similar buildings where
oil or other fuel or illuminant not produced or derived from
coal can be safely substituted.
"Members of the League who have no coal in stock, and who do
not possess facilities for introducing a substitute
immediately, are at liberty to procure sufficient to last for a
week. With this exception members are required to cancel all
orders at present placed for coal. The League will take all
responsibility and will defend all actions for breach of
contract.
"_Members of the League are earnestly requested to co-operate
in this line of action both as regards the letter and the
spirit of the rule._
"MEMBERS ARE EMPHATICALLY ASSURED THAT EVERY POSSIBLE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAMPAIGN HAS BEEN FULLY CONSIDERED DURING
THE PAST TWO YEARS, AND IT IS ADVANCED WITH ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE
THAT NOTHING UNFORESEEN CAN HAPPEN TO MAR ITS SUCCESSFUL
CONCLUSION.
"Nothing but the loyal co-operation of members is required to
ensure the triumph of those Principles of Government which the
League has always advocated, and a complete attainment of the
object for which the League came into existence.
"JOHN HAMPDEN, _President_.
"TRAFALGAR CHAMBERS,
"LONDON, 15^{_th_} _July_ 1918."
In the past the world had seen very many strikes on the part of workers,
not selfishly conceived in their essence, but bringing a great deal of
poverty and misery in their train, and declared solely for the purpose
of benefiting the strikers through the necessity of others. In the more
recent past the world had seen employers combine and declare a few
strikes (the word will serve a triple purpose) for just the same end and
accompanied by precisely similar results. It was now the turn of the
consumers to learn the strike lesson, the most powerful class of all,
but the most heterogeneous to weld together. The object was the same but
pursued under greater stress; the weapons would be similar but more
destructive; the track of desolation would be there but wider, and the
end----On that morning of the 15th of July the end lay beyond a very
dim and distant shock of dust and turmoil that the eye of none could
pierce.