Thus it happened, but from the mouth of men and women, and prompted deeply in their yearning soul, rose clouds of prayers that night, for the safety of the King, and ever and anon as troops marched over the roads in the cold summer night the hymn: Lord of the Wave and Deep, Save those at Sea, Their path upon the Ocean keep, And let them see Thy hand each passing day, Thy Ministry of Peace. was played with bewitching plaintiveness. Men and women stopped and sang it aloud as the regiments went by, and sometimes a company of troopers added with resounding vigor their sonorous refrain. The Prime Minister and Mr. Birrell, and Mr. Asquith, who had been associated in 1906, in the famous dead lock between the Commons and the House of Lords over the Educational Bill, prepared on the departure of the King a statement which really was a programme of evacuation. It contemplated a progressive transference of the people from England, a slowly consummated shrinkage of the business facilities and the moderated outflow of capital to the new centres of English activity. In this way some check would ensue to the frightful fall in the land values and rentals, apart from the practical consideration of the physical impossibility of at once removing forty millions of people. The government had usurped unusual powers in the creation of a Committee of Direction, which by a house to house canvass, an exhaustive survey of all titles, and a comparative estimate of the hardship imposed by emigration to different families, with immense labor, had prepared an itemized list of departure of the families of London. This plan had been copied in the large cities of the kingdom, and a co-operative scheme framed, which comprised a detailed prescription of the time of sailing, and the places of settlement for all persons listed. These lists were commonly referred to as the “Doomsday Rolls.” The scope of the committee’s power was comprehensive. It prohibited to individuals and to societies, federations and unions, independent action, without explicit conference with the committee. It proved to be a most helpful device, and lessened to the lowest possible percentage of hardship the suffering of the people. Leacraft and his new friends freed themselves from the jurisdiction of the committee, by announcing their intention to go to America, and upon ample evidence of their ability to do so, and their independent financial standing.