A Fox Under My Cloak

by Henry Williamson

  “Oh, I am but a very small cog, Mr. Turney. Sylvia is the originator, the dynamo. I am sorry she is not here just now, and she will be sorry too, when I tell her you have called. She has gone to see Herbert Samuel again about sweated-labour conditions, here in the East End. Yes, Hetty, Sylvia’s is the inspiration, the will, and the intellect. She is Great-heart. Sylvia will go down in history, with Florence Nightingale.”

  They were visiting The Mothers’ Arms, a clinic made out of what until recently had been an empty public house, The Gun-makers’ Arms, a dirty dark place with floors encrusted with fishbones, and walls stinking of thick-twist tobacco smoke and paraffin soot mingled with beer and foetid human breath. Now it was clean and fresh, painted white inside; pictures were on the walls; the rooms set with cribs and cots. The Mothers’ Arms was scrubbed and soaped and polished.

  The spirit of The Mothers’ Arms was such that Hetty was like a girl again. If only she could help with the little ones! What a brave and beautiful spirit Dora had. Oh, the little children, so clean and happy, in the cots, or playing in the nursery! Yet what tragedy lay in some eyes: the fixed stare as of very old and sick people, the stare of fear, of fright fixed in the children’s eyes: their thin little arms and legs, stalk-like necks; sharp features; bony, skull-like faces. And all the result of starvation, fathers away at the front, or “fallen down”, as the widows said; and neither allowance nor pension sufficient to pay the rent and feed the mother and her children. Some of the mothers had had to pawn all their household goods, Dora said. Price of the staple food, bread, was nearly doubled: from 4½d. to 7d. the quartern. Sugar was 3¼d., instead of 1¾d. before the war; skimmed milk 7d. a tin, from 3¾d. Meat had doubled in price, and the cheapest cuts, scrag and shin, almost thrice the peace-time prices.

  “One woman’s baby at fifteen months weighed seven pounds six ounces, instead of the normal eighteen, Hetty. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of ‘Death from natural causes’. It had been fed, from necessity, on water in which white bread had been boiled. There were six other children in the family; and all that was coming in was twelve shillings and sixpence. That, I ought to add, was before the scale of allowances for a soldier’s wife and family.”

  “Poor things,” murmured Hetty, thinking of Phillip as a baby, so thin, starving, while his father sat with him all night.

  “One unhappy mother came here crying, ‘I haven’t had any food in the house for four days, and I have strangled my little boy!’ She was tried for murder, and was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.”

  Hetty broke into tears.

  “Now, now,” said Thomas Turney, blowing his nose. “You’re upsetting Hetty with such tales, Dora.”

  “Very well, I shall generalise, Mr. Turney. The War Office, until recently, refused allowances for children born less than nine months after their parents’ marriage.”

  “But what about a seven-months child, Dora? Surely——”

  “‘There hain’t no sich hanimal’, legitimately, in the eyes of the authorities, apparently, Hetty.”

  “What is the soldier’s widow’s allowance?” asked Thomas Turney.

  “It has been raised now, Mr. Turney, to seven shillings and sixpence a week, which allows a shilling for food, clothes, gas, and coal, after the average rent of six and six is paid. The first child gets five shillings; the second, third, and fourth half-a-crown, and two shillings for any others.”

  “But the mothers go out to work, surely?”

  “It is a little better, Mr. Turney, now that the factories are going again. Even so, the prices paid are very small indeed. Let me give some examples. A clothing factory near us, on army contracts, works every day until eight o’clock, including Sundays, paying wages less than those before the war—there is so much unemployment, you see, the old question of supply and demand. The wages work out at twopence farthing an hour. There are several firms giving out piece-work, you may judge for yourself when I tell you that officers’ khaki shirts, all the sewing together, all the buttons and ribbed button-holes, are paid for at the rate of two shillings and a penny, less twopence farthing for the reel of cotton——”

  “Well, that sounds very good to me, Dora—just under two shillings for a shirt——”

  “That’s for a dozen, Mr. Turney! The dark material tries their eyes, and they cannot make more than a dozen in a long day of sixteen or eighteen hours.”

  “This sounds like the times of Dickens come again, Dora! Are you sure of your facts?”

  “They are confirmed by the figures of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors and Tailoresses, sir. Complete khaki uniforms, jacket and trousers, for private soldiers, are taken for eighteen-pence. But that is not the worst. Contracts are often sub-let as many as four times——”

  “Ah, that’s the reason! The sub-contractors are making the money! Many are Jews, of course.”

  “Yes, Mr. Turney; with the result that soldiers’ trousers are being finished for as low as a penny farthing the pair. Soldiers’ kit-bags, of stiff white canvas, take four hours to finish seven, the sempstress receives under sixpence; while the eyelet holes, to be bound with stiff thread, are paid ten for a penny. A mother of three children and a six-month babe told me she received five shillings and sevenpence for the work of forty-two hours. We have written and complained to the Home Office, and to the Director of Contracts at the War Office; we have taken deputations to both places, and been put off, if not actually snubbed. Recently the Army Clothing Stores at Pimlico sold one and a half million Indian body-belts at four shillings a dozen, which were bought up at eighteen shillings, and sold again at a still higher price, to the soldiers.”

  “Well, as I told you before, there is bound to be a muddle until we change over to war-time economy, Dora. First everything was at a stand-still; now it is confusion; but things will get better, ye’ll see. Meanwhile you and your friends here are doing a fine job of work, a fine job of work. Well, Hetty, we must not keep Dora any longer from her work. Come and see us when you can spare an hour or two, Dora, won’t you?”

  “I shall be delighted, Mr. Turney. Oh, thank you, thank you!” for he had slipped a five-pound note into her hand at parting.

  “Now,” said Thomas Turney, at the turning out of Old Ford, “I want to see my broker in Lothbury. D’you think you can walk so far? It’s a fine day, we could go by bus to Liverpool Street Station if you wish, Hetty.”

  “Are you sure you will be all right, Papa?”

  “Right as rain, Hetty. Now we can go down here as far as Whitechapel, or cross over and go down the Bethnal Green road. What d’you say?”

  For Hetty the walk was of great interest; all she saw was new to her, the Yiddish lettering on coloured posters outside little picture theatres which were slightly wider than the shop-fronts; orthodox Jews, who she thought must be rabbis, dressed in long black robes, wearing hats of astrakhan and other furs, all black like their own long beards and whiskers, hair looking as though it had never been cut, but left to grow naturally. Their faces had the yellowness of old candles, skin unsunned, as though they cared only for righteousness within, fortified by truths revealed to the prophets who still lived in their minds though they had died thousands of years before. Other Jews passed, some desperately poor, in tatters. One had half a dozen hats on his head, one fitted neatly into the other, while two bulging sacks, one of waste paper and the other of cloth trimmings, were slung over his shoulder, as his broken boots shuffled in the gutter. A few soldiers were about, many ragged children; one little girl was hastening along with a pig’s trotter held tightly in one fist, a look of suppressed excitement in her face. It was all so dreadfully sad, how the poor lived.

  “You don’t see any cats round here,” chuckled Thomas Turney. “They have long ago gone into the pot.”

  A boy ran past with a loaf under an arm, swiftly, dodging in and out on bare feet. Farther down the street they passed a woman wheeling a battered pram with several loaves hidden under two grimy babies wrapped in bits an
d pieces of cloth, old stockinet and brown paper wound round them and fastened with string. Other people came by, clutching bundles under coats and aprons.

  Farther on they saw the reason: a shop front was shattered, glass lying on pavement and in gutter, a crowd jeering. “Germans! Boo, Germans!” The name painted above the shop was STRACHAN. As a policeman approached the crowd scattered.

  “It’s happened to other shops as well, sir. Over a hundred so far, and more being reported. This man is Scotch all right, but the name looks German.”

  “Poor fellow,” said Thomas Turney. “No compensation, I suppose, is payable?”

  “I could not tell you, sir. In some cases, of course, it’s done to rob. It’s housebreaking within the meaning of the law.”

  “Have a cigar,” said Thomas Turney. Thanking him, the constable put it inside his helmet.

  “The sooner we leave this neighbourhood, the better, Hetty. We come into the extension of Bishopsgate at the end, and then to Liverpool Street. This place is a rookery, you know. You’ll never get these people to change their ways, I’m afraid, despite what Dora and her friends say. ‘The poor are always with us.’ I had an idea that I would sell some of my paper shares, and find out about iron and steel. The sinkings of our tonnage will increase, I think, for Germany is still very strong, and imports of pulp and newsprint will have to make way for more necessary raw materials, and manufactured armaments from America. This is the time, I fancy, to buy shipping shares, now slumped.”

  The neighbourhood of the Stock Exchange, narrow streets and tall stone buildings drab with smoke, was in some excitement, similar to that of the district of small factories and tenements they had just left. While Hetty waited below on the marble floor by the lift-cage, Thomas Turney went up to the fifth storey to his broker’s office. There he learned that business in the House was virtually suspended; prices were so irregular, said his broker, as to be highly speculative; he advised waiting until they settled somewhat. He had a list of his client’s securities, and promised to post a statement when some sort of stability re-established itself.

  While they sat there, an office boy came in with a gleaming silk hat, explaining that he had had to wait his turn, for many others had been waiting before him, at the ironing basement.

  “I am one of the Members of the House marching to the Palace of Westminster this afternoon, Mr. Turney, to demand the internment of all Germans in London for the duration. It is an open scandal how our war effort is being hamstrung in high places. The City is riddled with spies. Deputations are coming from the leading banks, from Lloyds, and other City Houses. The sinking of the Lusitania has brought matters to a head. I will write to you as soon as the market is more settled. Good day to you, sir.”

  Hetty and her father had brought sandwiches, as usual on their jaunt; and going into an A.B.C., ordered cups of coffee and ate while discussing how best they might see the forthcoming procession.

  “History is in the making, my girl. What would not Samuel Pepys have made of our times? The pity is, life is so short; but you will read of it in due course, when the war is over; so will Phillip, and Bertie and Gerry—well, we must hope for the best. They are safe for the moment, thank goodness. This war will, as Kitchener said at the beginning, take a long time; and Europe will be devastated at the end of it. Did ye read of that fellow Bernard Shaw’s pamphlet last autumn? I cut out a quotation from the Telegraph, and remember it well. ‘There are only two flags in the world henceforth: the Red flag of democratic Socialism, and the Black flag of Capitalism.’”

  “Yes, Papa, I remember Dickie reading out about it. I’m afraid it is all above my head.”

  “History tells us that there is usually a revolution in a country which loses a war, Hetty. ‘Nothing succeeds like success’, they say; and the converse is true. Come, eat up your food, my girl; you mustn’t starve yourself, on account of the world’s troubles, you know. It will be all the same in a hundred years time, so we must make the best of life as we have it.”

  “Of course, Papa,” smiled Hetty, thinking that Phillip would be all right. Perhaps the war would be over before he would have to go out again.

  They rode on top of an omnibus, open to the air and light of the spring day. Hetty felt happier away from the spiritless interior of the tea-shop. Passing Trafalgar Square with the pedestal of Nelson’s memorial enclosed by hoardings advertising the new Government 4½% War Loan, £100 of stock being purchasable at £95, Thomas Turney pondered the advantages of gilt-edge over industrials. The bus ran down Whitehall, past the Horse Guards now in khaki, while Hetty looked at the varied uniforms of the officers to be seen there: Russian, French, Belgian, Italian, Montenegrin, among the top-hats and frock-coats of men whom she supposed to be members of the Government. How strong it all looked, the massive buildings, the calm of the people, the company of Royal Navy men marching by, spick and span, on the other side of the road, the gleaming wings of pigeons, white clouds sailing by in a sky of purest blue. O, things would come all right in the end!

  They waited by the front of Westminster Abbey, opposite the Houses of Parliament, enjoying the sun. At last the procession appeared, top-hats gleaming and bobbing with here and there a straw-yard, umbrellas held under the left arm like shot-guns, and a patriotic stiffness about the marchers, the more noticeable as on either flank of the column hastened a straggling crowd of excited nondescripts and small boys.

  “You know,” said Thomas Turney, holding his daughter’s arm, as she looked a little timid, he thought, “it is agin the law to march in procession within a mile of Parliament while it is in session, for the purpose of influencing its decisions or debates. I wonder how many policemen accompanying this lot know that?” as the head of the column actually passed through the iron gates, while the two constables on duty there stepped aside.

  After hesitation, the two followed across the road, and into the Palace Yard. There seemed to be no objection to their following into the Central Hall with the deputation, so they went on, Thomas Turney holding his rolled umbrella under his left arm, as befitted the occasion, and the Chairman of Mallard, Carter & Turney Ltd., of Sparhawk Street, High Holborn.

  “I hope,” he chuckled, “that the chairman’s head will not be found on one of the railing spikes after it is all over!”

  The crowd pressed into the hall; the two managed to get into a free space by the side, at the back, beside a burly constable. There arose a chant, “We want Asquith! We want Asquith! ——” while other sections began a counterpoint slogan, “We won’t wait and see, we won’t, we won’t wait and see!” while the noise increased. The Prime Minister did not appear; but two Members of the Commons did, one instantly recognised as that grand old seadog, Lord Charles Beresford, bluff, broad-faced, frock-coated, with another, whom the constable said was Sir Henry Dalziel, a Liberal Member.

  There was so much cheering and shouting or “Order! Order!” that the two speakers were heard only in snatches; but that they expressed the feelings of the assembly was obvious from the roar that went up with every sentence.

  “I am convinced,” shouted Admiral Lord Charles, “nay, I can prove it! That if ever Zeppelins drop incendiary bombs on London, on this great city, heart of the Empire, then many of those Germans, our hated enemies, the destroyers of civilisation, of fair play, of God Himself—I am convinced that when that happens, as it will happen, my friends—that Germans now free among us will be out and about, to set fire to the City in twenty or thirty different places!”

  When he could be heard again, “German barbers, German waiters, German bakers, they are potential dangers, I grant you, but the Germans who are the greatest threat to life and property are those in high social places! I would put them, one and all, behind barbed wire!”

  Then his fellow parliamentarian spoke, “I have consulted with the chief of one of our Government Departments, and that authority confirmed what we all already knew: that there are many men of German origin holding high positions of confidence and responsibi
lity in all departments. They are sons of naturalised Germans, born and brought up in England. I asked him if they were pro-German. ‘Not necessarily,’ he replied, ‘but they are not exactly pro-British.’ That was the gist of his reply. But what if, through only one case of treachery, arising from doubtful loyalty, some of your sons and brothers were lost in a troopship upon the High Seas? Is it not better to put them all out of harm’s way, I mean by internment, rather than take such a risk?”

  A messenger came in; passed a note to Lord Charles Beresford. “The Cabinet is at this very moment considering the position of naturalised Germans, so you may rest assured that the will of the people will prevail!” and to more cheering, and the National Anthem, the deputation broke up; and Hetty found she was trembling.

  *

  Two days later Richard was declaiming, from his armchair as he read The Daily Trident, that the Prime Minister was an Old Woman.

  “He has not done enough, Hetty!”

  Naturalised Germans were to be left at liberty, unless there were special reasons in individual cases.

  “The Trident says, ‘Intern the lot!’”

  Male Germans of military age, between seventeen and fifty-five, were to be interned; over military age, including women and children to be repatriated. Hitherto they had been registered, and kept under observation.

  “Well, we knew that,” said Richard. “I’ve spent many an hour watching that fellow Krebs’ windows, to see if he is signalling; and others, too, but that’s a secret, Hetty. We are not asleep, you know, on our beats!”

  He snorted.

  “Asquith all over! What he gives with one hand, he takes away with the other! An advisory body is to be set up, if you please, to give some Germans a chance to claim exemption from both internment and repatriation! Most of the naturalised Germans, he says, he believes to be loyal British subjects! And would you believe it, Hetty, just listen to this! He goes on to say, ‘Even the majority of the aliens who are not naturalised are, I believe, decent honest people! To initiate a vendetta against them would be, I contend, not only disgaceful from the moral point of view, but impolitic from the point of view of the country’s best interests.’ Good God, and that is the man whose wife visited the Prussian officers in their luxurious quarters in Donington Hall, whom she had known before the war as friends!”