"I don't want Mr. Waddington to be tormented. To be tormented too much. Not more than is reasonable. A little torment--say, his finger scorched for the fraction of a second in that hot, unpleasant place--would be good for him if it made him think. I say I don't want to torment him, but I'll just ask him one question: Does he think that a world where it's possible for a working man, just because he _is_ a working man and not an English gentleman, a world where it's still possible for him, and his wife and his children, to be turned out of house and home to suit the whim of an English gentleman; does he think that a world where things like that can happen is a safe place for anybody? "I can tell him it isn't safe. It isn't safe for you and me. And if it isn't safe for you and me, it isn't safe for the people who make these things happen; and it isn't any safer for the people who stand by and let them happen. "And if the Socialist--if the Bolshevist is the man who's going to see to it that they don't happen, if a Soviet Government is the only Government that'll see to that, then the Socialist, or the Bolshevist, is the man for my money, and a Soviet Government is the Government for my vote. I don't say, mind you, that it _is_ the only Government--I say, if it were. "Mr. Waddington doesn't like Bolshevism. None of us like it. He doesn't like Socialism. I think he's got some wrong ideas about that. But he's dead right when he tells you, if you're afraid of Bolshevism and a Soviet Government, that the remedy lies in your own hands. If there ever is a day of reckoning, what Mr. Waddington would call a revolution in this country, you, we, ay, everyone of us sitting here, will be done with according as we do." He sat down, and Mr. Waddington rose again on his platform, solemn and a little pale. He looked round the hall, to show that there was no person there whom he was afraid to face. It might have been the look of some bold and successful statesman turning on a turbulent House, confident in his power to hold it. "Unless I have misheard him, what Mr. Hitchin has just said, ladies and gentlemen, sounded very like a threat. If that is so, we may congratulate Mr. Hitchin on providing an unanswerable proof of the need for a National League of Liberty." There were cries of "Hear! Hear!" from Sir John Corbett and from Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicott. Then a horrible thing happened. Slight and rustling at first, then gathering volume, there came a hissing from the back rows packed with Colonel Grainger's and Mr. Hitchin's men. Then a booing. Then a booing and hissing together.