AS the Mayor of Blackhampton watched from his window at the City Hall the tall and striking form of John Endor merge itself in the welter of citizens below in Market Square, he knew that he was faced by a momentous issue. The case against the Government and the U. P., that unholy alliance which had caused such widespread misery in the land and which now was threatening once more the peace of the world, had been urged with a force that had given the good man a shock. A key was now his to many disconcerting events of recent years, and he could but marvel that long before this he had not had the wit to discern the truth for himself. The shameful graft of the new bureaucracy for which Government by Newspaper had much to answer, he now saw from his own experience, to be sapping the life and liberties of the State.
More than once of late at the Imperial Club, whose imposing freestone façade stared at him from the other side of the Square, had Sir Munt during the luncheon hour heard despondent businessmen declare “that what the country really wanted to put things right was another war.” During the late upheaval, whose scars had now begun to fade, all classes of the community had shared in a delusive prosperity; but only the few who controlled the means of production and their nominees in Whitehall and Westminster had been permanently enriched. The price of everything had been forced up, yet the value of everything had gone down.
When Sir Munt entered the Club dining room at a quarter past one as usual, he found it a hive. And it was a hive seething with excitement. Political feeling ran high. This by-election, having regard to all the circumstances, promised to be quite one of the most piquant of modern times. John Endor whom the U. P. had returned by a solid majority of four thousand at the last election, having bitten the hand that fostered him, was now going ignominiously to be “fired.”
“Serve him right!” The opinion of the Club dining room was almost unanimous. But that which none of these pundits could understand even now was why in Wonder’s name had Slippery Sam offered John Endor the Home Secretaryship? On the face of it such a move was an open and palpable affront to the U. P. In the light of that circumstance only one explanation was feasible. The prime minister was riding for a fall.
Even the most advanced thinkers at the Club luncheon table hesitated to accept that view. Slippery Sam was the wiliest of men; yet those who were ready to make every concession to his peculiar talent were quite unable to read the riddle. If Endor was unseated, Mr. Williams would have to appeal to the country. And what would happen then?
No, the pundits declared themselves beaten. It was left, however, to the shrewdest and weightiest of them all to cast a ray of light upon the darkness. Sir Munt, armed with the new and rather amazing knowledge that had come to him less than an hour ago, proceeded to electrify the table at the head of which he sat.
“Comes to this, Murrell, my boy.” Poising an oyster on an authoritative fork Sir Munt turned augustly to Alderman Murrell, the eminent Imperialist on his right. “Do we want another war or don’t we? That’s what it comes to.”
A pause followed. And then, Sir Munt having enforced the appeal to Alderman Murrell’s judgment by demonstratively swallowing the oyster, the eminent Imperialist gave a cock of the head and said: “Well, Sir Munt, since you ask me I say ‘Yes’ and I say ‘No.’”
“You can’t ride both horses, my boy.” Sir Munt poised oyster the second. “You’ve got to make up your mind to one on ’em. If you want war you’ll vote for this little Colonial Snot.”—Sensation!—“If you don’t want war you’ll vote for John Endor.”
A pin might have been heard to fall on the Club mahogany.
“The time has come, Murrell, when some on us in this City has got to do a bit o’ clear thinkin’. But before we can do anything we must have the dust out of our eyes. What is the Universal Press up to?—that’s the first question to ask ourselves. For years it has been preaching Disarmament in one column and quoting Rudyard Kipling in the next. You may be very bright and clever and quite well up in your business, but oil and vitriol don’t always mix. Seems to me, Murrell, it’s time we came to brass tacks.”
Alderman Murrell and his fellow Imperialists sat up now and took notice. They had always been proud to think that Sir Munt whose force of will and breadth of view they deeply admired was one of themselves. He was very much one of themselves in point of fact. Was he not a trustee of the Club and permanent chairman of its house committee? For him to break loose in this unprecedented manner was indeed significant.
“I’ve just been having a heart-to-heart talk with Mr. Endor.” A swift exchange of glances between the sconce-bearers of Sir Munt confirmed them in the view that he undoubtedly had. “He says the long and short o’ the matter is, the U. P. is trying to force the Government into a war with China.”
Sensation!
“The prime minister is against it, but the Cabinet is in such fear of what the U. P. can do at the next General Election that it means to force his hand.”
“What can the U. P. do at the next General Election?” inquired a mild voice on the left.
“Most people think,” said Sir Munt, “that the U. P. can put out the present government as easily as it put it in.”
“But why should Saul Hartz want a war with China?” persisted the mild voice.
“Labor is getting out of hand. And he thinks it may do good all round—buck up trade, keep up prices, get the country and the colonies to pull together, and so on.”
“There may be something in it.”
“I don’t think so, Jennings,” said Sir Munt. “We’ve got to look ahead. If we get monkeying with China, the next thing on the tapis—so says Mr. Endor, and he sees as far through a brick wall as most, does that jockey—will be trouble between America and Japan.”
“Is that going to matter?” inquired a second Imperialist.
“We can’t afford to let Japan go under,” said Sir Munt sternly. “Our commitments in that quarter are too deep.”
“A thousand pities, it seems to me,” interposed the slow dry voice of the manager of the National Bank, “that America ever jacked up the League of Nations. Seems to me that the world missed one of the opportunities that can never recur.”
“Mr. Thorp, I’m with you there.” Sir Munt sighed heavily. “And she’s thought so, too, more than once, I’ll bet a dollar. However, there it is. And here’s the situation we’ve got to look at now. Every vote given for the Colonial gentleman is a vote for the U. P. And to-day, says Mr. Endor, and I for one can believe him, the U. P. means war with China. And to-morrow it may mean war with somebody of more importance than China.”
“Serve ’em right.”
The ill-timed remark from the other end of the table was drowned in a chorus of stern dissent. Even to these ardent minds such a contingency was not to be thought of. But on one point the great man at the table head was emphatic. Until the U. P. was brought under control there could be no security for any nation, any body of persons, any private individual. And the moment being opportune, Sir Munt clinched his argument with the story of the recent singular occurrence in that city. Several of those who heard it, although not among the admirers of John Endor—his views were much too “woolly” for thoroughgoing Imperialists—had been present at the famous luncheon. These now bore reluctant witness to the fact that he had been misreported. Not that it particularly mattered. Speechifying didn’t cut much ice in these times. And it was reasonable to allow every orator a certain amount of latitude at a champagne luncheon.
“All very well,” growled Sir Munt. “But that speech has gone round the world. His friends here, knowing the man and knowing the circumstances in which the speech was made, are content to believe that some one has blundered. I don’t put it higher than that. But at Hellington the next day he got a broken head instead of a hearing.”
Honest Sir Munt, having made his point, subsided now in a brief period of deglutition.
A few minutes later, in a favorite corner of the smoking room, he had a little serious talk with Alderman Murrell.
“I don’t like voting Yellow,” the Imperialist confided in a rather perplexed voice. “Somehow it goes against the grain, as it did against that of my father before me, but if Mr. Endor can satisfy us that he is not in favor of playing tricks with the Navy and the two-power standard will be maintained, I’m not sure it isn’t my duty on this occasion”—even in the sanctity of the Club precincts the worthy alderman could not resist a rhetorical flourish—“on this occasion to record my vote for the Clean, the Decent, the Aboveboard.”
Sir Munt looked in quite “an old-fashioned way” at his friend. “You must be careful, Murrell, my boy,”—the grin of the great man was almost saturnine—“you must be vur-ry careful how you interfere wi’ the liberties o’ the Press.”