The other long telegram was from Babberly. I must say that Babberly at this crisis displayed immense energy and something like political genius. Having been all his life a strong Conservative, and a supporter of force as a remedy for every kind of social unpleasantness, he turned a most effective somersault and appealed suddenly to the anti-militarist feelings of the Labour Party. He succeeded--I cannot even imagine how--in organizing a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square to protest against the murder of the working-men of Belfast in the streets of their own city, by the hired mercenaries of the capitalist classes. The meeting was actually engaged in making its protest while Moyne and I were reading the telegrams. Babberly's case was really extraordinarily strong. Soldiers were shooting off guns in Belfast, and the people they fired at--or as we knew, fired over--were working-men. There was occasion for a strong and eloquent appeal to the sentiment of the solidarity of labour. Babberly was just the man to make it with the utmost possible effectiveness. I pictured him perched on the head of one of the British lions which give its quite peculiar dignity to Trafalgar Square, beseeching a crowd of confused but very angry men not to allow the beast to open its mouth or show its teeth. I could easily imagine that the news of Babberly's exertions, dribbling in during the day to the offices of harassed Ministers, might have reinforced with grave political considerations the hysterical humanitarian telegrams which Clithering was shooting off from the seat of war. A Tory Government might survive a little bloodshed. A Liberal Government convicted of having incited a soldier to shoot a working-man would be in a perilous position. "I must say," I said, "that Babberly is infernally clever. I don't quite know where he'll find himself afterwards, but--" "What does it matter about afterwards?" said Moyne, "if only we get out of the mess we're in, nothing that happens afterwards need trouble us in the least." "If this meeting of his is really a success," I said, "we may feel pretty confident that there'll be no more shooting anyhow." The next telegram, the short one, rather dashed our hopes of immediate peace. It was from Lady Moyne. "The Channel Fleet," she said, "has been ordered to Belfast Lough. Expected to arrive to-morrow morning. Advise unconditional surrender." Moyne is very fond of his wife, and has a sincere admiration for her abilities; but on the receipt of this telegram he lost his temper. "What on earth," he said, "is the use of advising unconditional surrender when Conroy and Malcolmson are engaged at this moment in making plans for sinking the Fleet with rifles?" "I quite agree with you," I said. "There's no kind of use our going to them again. But I don't expect they're relying entirely on rifles. Malcolmson always said he understood explosives. He may be laying submarine mines opposite Carrickfergus."