Читать книгу The Anxious Days - Philip Gibbs - Страница 5

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The nation was awaiting the results of a political campaign which had stormed unceasingly for weeks in every newspaper, on thousands of platforms, in village halls, at street corners, and in public squares, where brazen voices or shrill, squeaky voices had appealed to the hopes and fears of a people impatient of bad trade, a rising tide of unemployment, and a Government which had promised many things and had done nothing.

For more than two weeks the very air had quivered with political propaganda. Electrical vibrations had carried the appeals of the political leaders into every home in Great Britain where there was a loud speaker on a corner cabinet. Young people who had been dancing to jazz music in rooms with the carpets turned up listened for a few minutes to these speeches with smiling impatience. “Perhaps we had better hear what that old blighter has to say. The same old tosh. Wah, wah, wah!”

Mr. Baldwin had said, “Safety first!” Extraordinarily characteristic of a man who believed that a genial smile with a pipe between his lips was the right attitude before a people who did not, he thought, believe in wild-cat schemes or dangerous adventures of revolt against established institutions. And yet, by some queer trick of mind, he had given the vote to every young woman of twenty-one. It was the Flappers’ Vote which was to be used at the polls for the first time. All those battalions of young girls who went by morning bus to city office or big store, all the little factory girls in industrial towns, all the lipsticked little ladies who paraded before the shop windows where their underclothes were exhibited, were to have a say in the government of England. Their votes would help to decide the fate of India, which they could hardly find on the map, and intricate problems of world economics, though they were weak in the arithmetic of their own pocket money. They had listened to those speeches over the wireless and said, “How boring!” They had glanced at that poster of “Safety first” and said, “How unadventurous!”

A ribbon of light had travelled endlessly above the buildings in Trafalgar Square with a message to the people from an old Liberal leader named David Lloyd George. “We can conquer unemployment.” Haggard men, shuffling by, had stared up at those words of light. Some of them had been out of work for two years, three years, or all the time since the war. We can conquer unemployment. Well, that sounded all right. That old wizard had prepared a scheme which he was ready to begin, if the nation brought him back. He would raise a loan of two hundred million pounds. He would build new roads, bridges, docks, canals, and all kinds of public works which add to the productivity of a nation. Two hundred million pounds. Quite a bit of money for a nation which was already taxed intolerably, but perhaps cheaper than a dole which was supporting two million men in miserable idleness. For a moment men stared at that promise in lighted words against a black sky, and then some of them shook their heads or shrugged their shoulders, and passed on. That old man had let them down before. No one could trust him. Who could trust any politician out for place and power, ready to promise anything in return for votes?

The Labour leaders were promising other things—further benefits to the unemployed, an easier way of getting the dole, less work for more money. The rich would be still more taxed for the welfare of the poor. There would be land nationalization, a control of the banking system in the interests of trade, a levelling up and a levelling down, a redistribution of wealth, so that the underdog would get his day. Great promises! Splendid dreams for those who had nothing else but dreams, and believed in the bottomless purse of the wealthy classes. A noble phrase—the redistribution of wealth! It appeals to the burglar instinct as well as to the idealist.

The last appeal had been made. All day long in every city streams of people had gone to the polling booths to put a cross against a name pledged to this policy or that. The “flappers” had used their votes for the first time, if they had not craved another half hour’s sleep before catching the morning bus after a late evening at the pictures. The unemployed—two million of them—had voted for their dole, and a bit more if possible. Old ladies who loved Mr. Baldwin—that dear, good man—had gone gallantly out into a damp day to support his representatives. Fathers of families—anxious men because of income tax returns which had caused them sleepless nights—had hurried to the polling stations before going to offices where business was bad. Now the secret ballot was made. Little slips of paper were being passed from hand to hand, and all the crosses counted by those appointed to add them up. The nation was waiting for this decision of democracy, this uncertain lottery of the mass mind.

In London by nine o’clock dense crowds were moving towards centres where the Election results were to be exhibited by newspaper offices or advertising firms. A mist was creeping up from the river and low-lying ground. It blurred the lights in Trafalgar Square, where a dense crowd was massed below the Nelson Monument and on the steps of St. Martin’s. Loud speakers blared out dance tunes to the rhythm of which the people shuffled their feet. Enormous voices, with the deep reverberation of magnified sound, bellowed across the square, announcing the names of unopposed members. The crowd coughed, laughed, chattered, swayed like one stupendous and noisy monster.

Commander Compton, late of the Federated Malay States, edged his way along the pavement until he was caught up in that maelstrom of excited humanity.

“Don’t push!” cried a girl’s voice behind him. “Don’t you see the gentleman ’as lost ’is arm?”

Other people noticed his empty sleeve, or were careful of that left shoulder. It was the same good-natured multitude which he remembered on many days of history since early boyhood. Queen Victoria’s Jubilee—his earliest memory of crowds; Mafeking Night, when he was a “snotty”; Lord Mayor’s Show day, a score of times. But it was a queer thing to come back from a Malay forest to this scene in London on his first night home.