now he was looking the other way. And again, Richard felt afraid of
something.
It was a packed hall, tense. There was plenty of noise and interruption,
plenty of homethrusts at the speakers from the audience. But still, that
sense of sardonic tolerance, endurance. “What’s the odds, boys?”
Willie Struthers gave the main speech: on the solidarity of Labour. He
sketched the industrial situation, and elaborated the charge that
Labour was cutting its own throat by wrecking industry and commerce.
“But will anything get us away from this fact, mates,” he said: “that
there’s never a shop shuts down because it can’t pay the weekly
wage-bill. If a shop shuts down, it is because it can’t pay a high
enough _dividend_, and there you’ve got it.
“Australian Labour has set out from the first on the principle that huge
fortunes should not be made out of its efforts. We have had the obvious
example of America before us, and we have been determined from the start
that Australia should not fall into the hands of a small number of
millionaires and a larger number of semi-millionaires. It has been our
idea that a just proportion of all profits should circulate among the
workers in the form of wages. Supposing the worker _does_ get his pound
a day. It is enormous, isn’t it! It is preposterous. Of course it is.
But it isn’t preposterous for a small bunch of owners or shareholders to
get their ten pounds a day, _for doing nothing_. Sundays included. That
isn’t preposterous, is it?
“They raise the plea that their fathers and their forefathers
accumulated the capital by their labours. Well, haven’t _our_ fathers
and forefathers laboured? Haven’t they? And what have they accumulated?
The right to labour on, and be paid for it what the others like to give
’em.
“We don’t want to wreck industry. But, we say, wages shall go up so that
profits shall go down. Why should there be any profits, after all?
Forefathers! Why, we’ve all had forefathers, and I’m sure mine worked.
Why should there be any profits _at all_, I should like to know. And if
profits there _must_ be, well then, the profit grabber isn’t going to
get ten times as much as the wage-earner, just because he had a few
screwing forefathers. We, who work for what we get, are going to see
that the man who doesn’t work shall not receive a large income for not
working. If he’s _got_ to have an income for doing nothing, let him have
no more than what we call wages. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and
the hire is worthy of his labourer. But I can _not_ see that any man is
worthy of an unearned income. Let there be no unearned incomes. So much
for the basic wage. We know it is not the basic wage that wrecks
industry. It’s big profits. When the profits are not forthcoming the
directors would rather close down. A criminal proceeding. Because, after
all, any big works is run, first, to supply the community with goods,
and second, to give a certain proportion of the community a satisfactory
occupation. Whatever net profits are made are made by cheating the
worker and the consumer, filching a bit from every one of them, no
matter how small a bit. And we will not see wages reduced one ha’penny,
to help to fill the pockets of shareholders--”
“What about your own shares in Nestles Milk, Willie?” asked a voice.
“I’ll throw them in the fire the minute they’re out of date,” said
Willie, promptly, “they’re pretty well wastepaper already.”
He went on to answer the charges of corruption and “Tammany,” with which
the Labour Party in Australia had been accused. This led to the point of
class hatred.
“It is we who are supposed to foster class hatred,” he said. “Now I put
it to you. Does the so-called upper class hate us, or do we hate them
more? If you’ll let me answer, I tell you it’s they who do the hating.
We don’t wear the flesh off our bones hating them. They aren’t worth it.
They’re far beneath hatred.
“We do want one class only--not your various shades of upper and lower.
We want The People--and The People means the worker. I don’t mind what a
man works at. He can be a doctor or a lawyer even, if men are such fools
they must have doctors and lawyers. But look here, mates, what do we all
work _for_? For a living? Then why won’t a working-man’s living wage do
for a lawyer? Why not? Perhaps a lawyer makes an ideal of his job.
Perhaps he is inspired in his efforts to right the wrongs of his client.
Very well: virtue is its own reward. If he wants to be paid for it, it
isn’t virtue any more. It’s dirty trading in justice, or whatever law
means.
“Look at your upper classes, mates. Look at your lawyer charging you two
guineas for half an hour’s work. Look at your doctor scrambling for his
guinea a visit. Look at your experts with their five thousand a year.
Call these _upper_ classes? Upper in what? In the make-and-grab
faculties, that’s all.
“To hell with their ‘upper.’ If a working man thinks he’ll be in the
running, and demand say half of what these gentry get, then he’s the
assassin of his trade and country. It’s his business to grovel before
these ‘upper’ gents, is it?
“No, mates, it’s his business to rise up and give ’em a good kick in the
seats of their pants, to remind them of their bed-rock bottoms. You’d
think, to hear all the fairy tales they let off, that their pants didn’t
have such a region as seats. Like the blooming little angels, all
fluttery tops and no bottoms. Don’t you be sucked in any more, mates.
Look at ’em, and you’ll see they’ve got good, heavy-weight sit-upons,
and big, deep trouser-pockets next door. That’s them. Up-end ’em for
once, and look at ’em upside down. Greedy fat-arses, mates, if you’ll
pardon the vulgarity for once. Greedy fat-arses.
“And that’s what we’ve got to knuckle under to, is it? They’re the upper
classes? Them and a few derelict lords and cuttle-fish capitalists.
Upper classes? I’m damned if I see much upper about it, mates. Drop ’em
in the sea and they’ll float butt-end uppermost, you see if they don’t.
For that’s where they keep their fat, like the camel his hump. Upper
classes!
“But I wish them no special harm. A bit of a kick in the rear, to remind
them that they’ve got a rear, a largely kickable rear. And then, let
them pick themselves up and mingle with the rest. Give them a living
wage, like any other working man. But it’s hell on earth to see them
floating their fat bottoms through the upper regions, and just stooping
low enough to lick the cream off things, as it were, and to squeal if a
working man asks for more than a gill of the skilly.
“Work? What is one man’s job more than another. Your Andrew Carnegies
and your Rothschilds may be very smart at their jobs. All right--give
’em the maximum wage. Give ’em a pound a day. They won’t starve on it.
And what do they want with more? A job is nothing but a job, when all’s
said and done. And if Mr Hebrew Rothschild is smart on the finance job,
so am I a smart sheep-shearer, hold my own with any man. And what’s the
odds? Wherein is Mr Hebrew, or Lord Benjamin Israelite any better man
than I am? Why does he want so damned much for his dirty financing, and
begrudges me my bit for shearing ten score o’ sheep?
“No, mates, we’re not sucked in. It may be Mr Steel-trust Carnegie, it
may even be Mr Very-clever Marconi, it may be Marquis Tribes von Israel;
and it certainly _is_ Willie Struthers. Now, mates, I, Willie Struthers,
a big fortune _I do not want_. But I’m damned if I am going to let a few
other brainy vampires suck big fortunes out of me. Not I. I wouldn’t be
a man if I did. Upper classes? They’ve got more greedy brains in the
seats of their pants than in their top storeys.
“We’re having no more of their classes and masses. We’ll just put a hook
in their trouser-bottoms and hook ’em gently to earth. That’s all. And
put ’em on a basic wage like all the rest: one job, one wage. Isn’t that
fair? No man can do more than his best. And why should one poor devil
get ten bob for his level best, and another fat-arse get ten thousand
for some blooming trick? No, no, if a man’s a sincere citizen he does
his _best_ for the community he belongs to. And his simple wage is
enough for him to live on.
“That’s why we’ll have a Soviet. Water finds its own level, and so shall
money. It shall not be dammed up by a few sly fat-arses much longer. I
don’t pretend it will be paradise. But there’ll be fewer lies about it,
and less fat-arsed hypocrisy, and less dirty injustice than there is
now. If a man works, he shall not have less than the basic wage, be he
even a lying lawyer. There shall be no politicians, thank God. But more
than the basic wage also he shall not have. Let us bring things down to
a rock-bottom.
“Upper? Why all their uppishness amounts to is extra special greedy
guts, ten-thousand-a-year minimum. Upper classes! Upper classes! Upper
arses.
“We’ll have a Soviet, mates, and then we shall feel better about it. We
s’ll be getting nasty tempered if we put it off much longer. Let’s know
our own mind. We’ll unite with the World’s Workers. Which doesn’t mean
we’ll take the hearts out of our chests to give it Brother Brown to eat.
No, Brother Brown and Brother Yellow had, on the whole, best stop at
home and sweep their own streets, rather than come and sweep ours. But
that doesn’t mean we can’t come to more or less of an understanding
with them. We don’t want to get too much mixed up with them or anybody.
But a proper understanding we can have. I don’t say, Open the gates of
Australia to all the waiting workers of India and China, let alone
Japan. But, mates, you can be quite friendly with your neighbour over
the fence without giving him the run of your house. And that is
International Labour. You have a genuine understanding with your
neighbours down the street. You know they won’t shy stones through your
windows or break into your house at night or kill your children in a
dark corner. Why not? Because they’re your neighbours and you all have a
certain amount of trust in one another. And that is International
Labour. That is the World’s Workers.
“After all, mates, the biggest part of our waking lives belongs to our
work. And certainly the biggest part of our importance is our importance
as workers. Mates we are, and we are bound to be, workers, first and
foremost. So were our fathers before us, so will our children be after
us. Workers first. And as workers, mates. On this everything else
depends. On our being workers depends our being husbands and fathers and
playmates: nay, our being men. If we are not workers we are not even
men, for we can’t exist.
“Workers we are, mates, workers we must be, and workers we will be, and
there’s the end of it. We take our stand on it. Workers first, and
whatever soul we have, it must go first into our work. Workers, mates,
we are workers. A man is a man because he works. He must work and he
does work. Call it a curse, call it a blessing, call it what you like.
But the Garden of Eden is gone for ever, and while the ages roll, we
must work.
“Let us take our stand on that fact, mates, and trim our lives
accordingly. While time lasts, whatever ages come or go, we must work,
day in, day out, year in, year out, so for ever. Then, mates, let us
abide by it. Let us abide by it, and shape things to fit. No use
shuffling, mates. Though you or I may make a little fortune, enough for
the moment to keep us in idleness, yet, mates, as sure as ever the sun
rises, as long as ever times lasts, the children of men must rise up to
their daily toil.
“Is it a curse?--is it a blessing? I prefer to think it is a blessing,
so long as, like everything else, it is in just proportion. My happiest
days have been shearing sheep, or away in the gold mines--”
“What, not talking on a platform?” asked a voice.
“No, not talking on a platform. Working along with my mates, in the
bush, in the mines, wherever it was. That’s where I put my manhood into
my work. There I had my mates--my fellow workers. I’ve had playmates as
well. Wife, children, friends--playmates all of them. My fellow workers
were my mates.
“So, since workers we are and shall be, till the end of time, let us
shape the world accordingly. The world is shaped now for the idlers and
the play-babies, and we work to keep _that_ going. No, no, mates, it
won’t do.
“Join hands with the workers of the world: just a fist-grip, as a token
and a pledge. Take nobody to your bosom--a worker hasn’t got a bosom.
He’s got a fist, to work with, to hit with, and lastly, to give the
tight grip of fellowship to his fellow-workers and fellow-mates, no
matter what colour or country he belong to. The World’s Workers--and
since they _are_ the world, let them take their own, and not leave it
all to a set of silly playboys and Hebrews who are not only silly but
worse. The World’s Workers--we, who are the world’s millions, the world
is our world. Let it be so, then. And let us so arrange it.
“What’s the scare about being mixed up with Brother Brown and Chinky and
all the rest: the Indians in India, the niggers in the Transvaal, for
instance? Aren’t we tight mixed up with them as it is? Aren’t we in one
box with them, in this Empire business? Aren’t we all children of the
same noble Empire, brown, black, white, green, or whatever colour we may
be? We may not, of course, be reposing on the bosom of Brother Brown and
Brother Black. But we are pretty well chained at his side in a sort of
slavery, slaving to keep this marvellous Empire going, with its
out-of-date Lords and its fat-arsed, hypocritical upper classes. I don’t
know whether you prefer working in the same imperial slave-gang with
Brother Brown of India, or whether you’d prefer to shake hands with him
as a free worker, one of the world’s workers--but--”
“_One!_” came a loud, distinct voice, as if from nowhere, like a gun
going off.
“But one or the other--”
“_Two!_” a solid block of men’s voices, like a bell.
“One or the other you’ll--”
“_Three!_” The voice, like a tolling bell, of men counting the speaker
out. It was the diggers.
A thrill went through the audience. The diggers sat mostly together, in
the middle of the hall, around Jack. Their faces were lit up with a new
light. And like a bell they tolled the numbers against the speaker,
counting him out, by their moral unison annihilating him.
Willie Struthers, his dark-yellow face gone demonic, stood and faced
them. His eyes too had suddenly leaped with a new look: big, dark,
glancing eyes, like an aboriginal’s, glancing strangely. Was it fear,
was it a glancing, gulf-like menace? He stood there, a shabby figure of
a man, with undignified legs, facing the tolling enemy.
“_Four!_” came the sonorous, perfect rhythm. It was a strange sound,
heavy, hypnotic, trance-like. Willie Struthers stood as if he were
fascinated, glaring spell-bound.
“_Five!_” The sound was unbearable, a madness, tolling out of a certain
devilish cavern in the back of the men’s unconscious mind, in terrible
malignancy. The Socialists began to leap to their feet in fury, turning
towards the block of Diggers. But the lean, naked faces of the
ex-soldiers gleamed with a smiling, demonish light, and from their
narrow mouths simultaneously:
“_Six!_”
Struthers, looking as if he were crouching to spring, glared back at
them from the platform. They did not even look at him.
“_Seven!_” In two syllables, _Sev-en!_
The sonorous gloating in the sound was unbearable. It was like
hammer-strokes on the back of the brain. Everybody had started up save
the Diggers. Even Somers was wildly on his feet, feeling as if he could
fly, swoop like some enraged bird. But his feeling wavered. At one
moment he gloated with the Diggers against the black and devilish figure
of the isolated man on the platform, who half-crouched as if he were
going to jump, his face black and satanic. And then, as the numbers
came, unbearable in its ghastly striking:
“_Eight!_” like some hammer-stroke on the back of his brain it sent him
clean mad, and he jumped up into the air like a lunatic, at the same
moment as Struthers sprang with a clear leap, like a cat, towards the
group of static, grinning ex-soldiers.
There was a crash, and the hall was like a bomb that has exploded.
Somers tried to spring forward. In the blind moment he wanted to
kill--to kill the soldiers. Jaz held him back, saying something. There
was a most fearful roar, and a mad whirl of men, broken chairs, pieces
of chairs brandished, men fighting madly with fists, claws, pieces of
wood--any weapon they could lay hold of. The red flag suddenly flashing
like blood, and bellowing rage at the sight of it. A Union Jack torn to
fragments, stamped upon. A mob with many different centres, some
fighting frenziedly round a red flag, some clutching fragments of the
Union Jack, as if it were God incarnate. But the central heap a mass
struggling with the Diggers, in real blood-murder passion, a tense mass
with long, naked faces gashed with blood, and hair all wild, and eyes
demented, and collars bursted, and arms frantically waving over the
dense bunch of horrific life, hands in the air with weapons, hands
clawing to drag them down, wrists bleeding, hands bleeding, arms with
the sleeves ripped back, white, naked arms with brownish hands, and
thud! as the white flesh was struck with a chair-leg.
The doors had been flung open--many men had gone out, but more rushed
in. The police in blue uniforms and in blue clothes wielding their
batons, the whole place gone mad. Richard, small as he was, felt a great
frenzy on him, a great longing to let go. But since he didn’t _really_
know whom he wanted to let go at, he was not quite carried away. And
Jaz, quiet, persistent, drew him gradually out into the street. Though
not before he had lost his hat and had had his collar torn open, and had
received a bang over the forehead that helped to bring him to his
senses.
Smash went the lights of the hall--somebody smashing the electric lamps.
The place was almost in darkness. It was unthinkable.
Jaz drew Somers into the street, which was already a wide mass of a
crowd, and mounted police urging their way to the door, laying about
them. The crowd too was waiting to catch fire. Almost beside himself
Richard struggled out of the crowd, to get out of the crowd. Then there
were shots in the night, and a great howl from the crowd. Among the
police on horseback he saw a white hat--a white felt hat looped up at
the side--and he seemed to hear the bellowing of a big, husky voice.
Surely that was Kangaroo, that was Kangaroo shouting. Then there was a
loud explosion and a crash--a bomb of some sort.
And Richard suddenly was faint--Jaz was leading him by the arm--leading
him away--in the city night that roared from the direction of the hall,
while men and women were running thither madly, and running as madly
away, and motor cars came rushing: and even the fire-brigade with bright
brass helmets--a great rush towards the centre of conflict--and a rush
away, outwards. While hats--white hats--Somers, in his dazed condition
saw three or four, and they occupied his consciousness as if they were
thousands.
“We must go back,” he cried. “We must go back to them!”
“What for?” said Jaz. “We’re best away.”
And he led him sturdily down a side street, while Somers was conscious
only of the scene he had left, and the sound of shots.
They went to one of the smaller, more remote Digger’s Clubs. It
consisted only of one large room, meeting room and gymnastics hall in
turn, and a couple of small rooms, one belonging to the secretary and
the head, and the other a sort of little kitchen with a sink and a
stove. The one-armed caretaker was in attendance, but nobody else was
there. Jaz and Somers went into the secretary’s room, and Jaz made
Richard lie down on the sofa.
“Stay here,” he said, “while I go and have a look round.”
Richard looked at him. He was feeling very sick: perhaps the bang over
the head. Yet he wanted to go back into the town, into the melee. He
felt he would even die if he did so. But then why not die? Why stay
outside the row? He had always been outside the world’s affairs.
“I’ll come with you again,” he said.
“No, I don’t want you,” snapped Jaz. “I have a few of my own things to
attend to.”
“Then I’ll go by myself,” said Richard.
“If I were you I wouldn’t,” said Jaz.
And Richard sat back feeling very sick, and confused. But such a pain in
his stomach, as if something were torn there. And he could not keep
still--he wanted to do something.
Jaz poured out a measure of whiskey for himself and one for Richard.
Then he went out, saying:
“You’d best stay here till I come back, Mr Somers. I shan’t be very
long.”
Jaz too was very pale, and his manner was furtive, like one full of
suppressed excitement.
Richard looked at him, and felt very alien, far from him and everybody.
He rose to his feet to rush out again. But the torn feeling at the pit
of his stomach was so strong he sat down and shoved his fists in his
abdomen, and there remained. It was a kind of grief, a bitter, agonised
grief for his fellow-men. He felt it was almost better to die, than to
see his fellow-men go mad in this horror. He could hear Jaz talking for
some time to the one-armed care-taker, a young soldier who was lame with
a bad limp as well as maimed.
“I can’t do anything. I can’t be on either side. I’ve got to keep away
from everything,” murmured Richard to himself. “If only one might die,
and not have to wait and watch through all the human horror. They are my
fellow-men, they are my fellow-men.”
So he lay down, and at length fell into a sort of semi-consciousness,
still pressing his fists into his abdomen, and feeling as he imagined a
woman might feel after her first child, as if something had been ripped
out of him. He was vaguely aware of the rage and chaos in the dark city
round him, the terror of the clashing chaos. But what was the good even
of being afraid?--even of grief? It was like a storm, in which he could
do nothing but lie still and endure and wait. “They also serve who only
stand and wait.” Perhaps it is the bitterest part, to keep still through
it all, and watch and wait. In a numb half-sleep Richard lay and
waited--waited for heaven knows what.
It seemed a long time. Then he heard voices. There was Jack and Jaz and
one or two others--loud voices. Presently Jack and Jaz came in to him.
Jack had a big cut on the chin, and was pale as death. There was blood
on his coat, and he had a white pocket-handkerchief round his neck,
having lost his collar. He looked with black eyes at Richard.
“What time is it?” asked Richard.
“Blowed if I know,” answered Jack, like a drunken man.
“Half past eleven,” said Jaz quietly.
Only an hour--or an hour and a half. Time must have stood still and
waited.
“What has happened?” asked Richard.
“Nought!” blurted Jack, still like a drunken man. “Nought happened.
Bloody blasted nothing.”
“Kangaroo is shot,” said Jaz.
“Dead?”
“No--o!” snarled Jack. “No, damn yer, not dead.”
Somers looked at Jaz.
“They’ve taken him home--shot in the belly,” said Jaz.
“In his bloomin’ Kangaroo guts,” said Jack. “Ain’t much left of the ant
that shot ’im, though--neither guts nor marrow.”
Richard stared at the two men.
“Are you hurt?” he said to Jack.
“Me? Oh, no, I just scratched myself shaving, darling. Making me
toilet.”
There was silence for some time. Jaz’s plump, pale face was still
impassive, inscrutable, and his clothing was in order. Jack poured
himself a half-glass of neat whiskey, put in a little water, and drank
it off.
“And Willie Struthers and everybody?” asked Richard.
“Gone ’ome to his missis to have sausage for tea,” said Jack.
“Not hurt?”
“Blowed if I know,” replied Jack indifferently, “whether he’s hurt or
not.”
“And is the town quiet?” Somers turned to Jaz. “Has everything blown
over? What has happened?”
“What has happened exactly I couldn’t tell you. I suppose everything is
quiet. The police have everything in hand.”
“Police!” snarled Jack. “Bloody Johnny Hops! They couldn’t hold a
sucking pig in their hands, unless somebody hung on to its tail for
them. It’s our boys who’ve got things in hand. And handed them over to
the Hops.”
Somers knew that Johnny Hops was Australian for a policeman. Jack spoke
in a suppressed frenzy.
“Was anybody killed?” Somers asked.
“I’m sure I hope so. If I haven’t done one or two of ’em in I’m sorry.
Damned sorry. Bloody sorry,” said Jack.
“I should be careful what I say,” said Jaz.