Towards the Goal | Page 6

ever-increasing throng of women, and to the marvellous work of the
ship-yards. No talk now of strikes, of a disaffected and revolutionary
minority, on the Clyde, at any rate, as there was twelve months ago.
Broadly speaking, and allowing for a small, stubborn, but insignificant
Pacifist section, the will of the nation, throughout all classes, has
become as steel--to win the war.
Throughout England, as in these naval officers beside me, there is the
same tense yet disciplined expectancy. As we lunch and talk, on this
cruiser at rest, messages come in perpetually; the cruiser itself is ready
for the open sea, at an hour and a half's notice; the seaplanes pass out
and come in over the mouth of the harbour on their voyages of
discovery and report, and these destroyers and mine-sweepers that he
so quietly near us will be out again to-night in the North Sea, grappling
with every difficulty and facing every danger, in the true spirit of a
wonderful service, while we land-folk sleep and eat in
peace;--grumbling no doubt, with our morning newspaper and coffee,
when any of the German destroyers who come out from Zeebrugge are
allowed to get home with a whole skin. "What on earth is the Navy
about?" Well, the Navy knows. Germany is doing her very worst, and
will go on doing it--for a time. The line of defensive watch in the North
Sea is long; the North Sea is a big place; the Germans often have the
luck of the street-boy who rings a bell and runs away, before the
policeman comes up. But the Navy has no doubts. The situation, says
one of my cheerful hosts, is "quite healthy" and we shall see "great
things in the coming months." We had better leave it at that!
Now let us look at these destroyers in another scene. It is the last day of
February, and I find myself on a military steamer, bound for a French
Port, and on my way to the British Headquarters in France. With me is
the same dear daughter who accompanied me last year as "dame

secrétaire" on my first errand. The boat is crowded with soldiers, and
before we reach the French shore we have listened to almost every
song--old and new--in Tommy's repertory. There is even "Tipperary," a
snatch, a ghost of "Tipperary," intermingled with many others, rising
and falling, no one knows why, started now here, now there, and dying
away again after a line or two. It is a draft going out to France for the
first time, north countrymen, by their accent; and life-belts and
submarines seem to amuse them hugely, to judge by the running fire of
chaff that goes on. But, after a while, I cease to listen. I am thinking
first of what awaits us on the further shore, on which the lights are
coming out, and of those interesting passes inviting us to G.H.Q. as
"Government Guests," which lie safe in our handbags. And then, my
thoughts slip back to a conversation of the day before, with Dr.
Addison, the new Minister of Munitions.
A man in the prime of life, with whitening hair--prematurely white, for
the face and figure are quite young still--and stamped, so far as
expression and aspect are concerned, by those social and humane
interests which first carried him into Parliament. I have been long
concerned with Evening Play Centres for school-children in Hoxton,
one of the most congested quarters of our East End. And seven years
ago I began to hear of the young and public-spirited doctor and man of
science, who had made himself a name and place in Hoxton, who had
won the confidence of the people crowded in its unlovely streets, had
worked for the poor, and the sick, and the children, and had now beaten
the Tory member, and was Hoxton's Liberal representative in the new
Parliament elected in January 1910, to deal with the Lords, after the
throwing out of Lloyd George's famous Budget. Once or twice since, I
had come across him in matters concerned with education--cripple
schools and the like--when he was Parliamentary Secretary to the
Board of Education, immediately before the war. And now here was the
doctor, the Hunterian Professor, the social worker, the friend of schools
and school-children, transformed into the fighting Minister of a great
fighting Department, itself the creation of the war, only second--if
second--in its importance for the war, to the Admiralty and the War
Office.

I was myself, for a fortnight of last year, the guest of the Ministry of
Munitions, while Mr. Lloyd George was still its head, in some of the
most important Munition areas; and I was then able to feel the current
of hot energy, started by the first Minister, running--not of course