When at last Dawson was summoned to the sitting; of the War Committee, he found himself in the presence of some half a dozen elderly and embarrassed-looking gentlemen arranged round a big table. They had been discussing him, and trying to devise some decent civil means to get rid of him. He and his story of the coming strike in the North were a distressful inconvenience, an intolerable intrusion upon a quiet life. When he entered, he was without a friend in the room, except the War Minister who loved a man who knew his own mind and was prepared to accept big responsibilities. But even he doubted whether it were possible to achieve the results aimed at with the means required by Dawson. Our friend suffered from no illusions. "I knew what I was up against," he said to me long afterwards. "I knew that they were all longing to be quit of me and to go to sleep again. But I had made up my mind that they should get some very plain speaking. I would compel them to understand that what I offered was a forlorn chance of averting a civil war, and that if they refused my offer they would be left to themselves--not to stamp out a spark of revolution, but to subdue a roaring furnace. They could take their choice in the certain knowledge that if they chose wrongly the North would be in flames within forty-eight hours. It was a great experience, Mr. Copplestone. I have never enjoyed anything half so much." Dawson was offered a chair set some six feet distant from the sacred table, but he preferred to stand. His early training held, and he was not comfortable in the presence of his superiors in rank or station except when standing firmly at attention. The Prime Minister fumbled with some papers, looked over them for a few embarrassed minutes, and then spoke.