, as they had now a
considerable body of men who were quite prepared for extremities. But they were
determined to try first a weapon which they thought stronger than street
fighting.
    The members of the Committee went off quietly to prison; but they had left
their soul and their organisation behind them. For they depended not on a
carefully arranged centre with all kinds of checks and counter-checks about it,
but on a huge mass of people in thorough sympathy with the movement, bound
together by a great number of links of small centres with very simple
instructions. These instructions were now carried out.
    The next morning, when the leaders of the reaction were chuckling at the
effect which the report in the newspapers of their stroke would have upon the
public - no newspapers appeared; and it was only towards noon that a few
straggling sheets, about the size of the gazettes of the seventeenth century,
worked by policemen, soldiers, managers, and press-writers, were dribbled
through the streets. They were greedily seized on and read; but by this time the
serious part of their news was stale, and people did not need to be told that
the GENERAL STRIKE had begun. The railways did not run, the telegraph-wires were
unserved; flesh, fish, and green stuff brought to market was allowed to lie
there still packed and perishing; the thousands of middle-class families, who
were utterly dependant for the next meal on the workers, made frantic efforts
through their more energetic members to cater for the needs of the day, and
amongst those of them who could throw off the fear of what was to follow, there
was, I am told, a certain enjoyment of this unexpected picnic - a forecast of
the days to come, in which all labour grew pleasant.
    So passed the first day, and towards evening the Government grew quite
distracted. They had but one resource for putting down any popular movement - to
wit, mere brute-force; but there was nothing for them against which to use their
army and police: no armed bodies appeared in the streets; the offices of the
Federated Workmen were now, in appearance, at least, turned into places for the
relief of people thrown out of work, and under the circumstances, they durst not
arrest the men engaged in such business, all the more, as even that night many
quite respectable people applied at these offices for relief, and swallowed down
the charity of the revolutionists along with their supper. So the Government
massed soldiers and police here and there - and sat still for that night, fully
expecting on the