Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/265

 *case with pamphlets and fly-leaves, and arrived in the middle of the night at the little town of Amersfoort, an important railway junction, to bring my message from headquarters that a strike would be declared that night in the whole country. Expecting the Government to be very active and energetic and not unlikely to arrest me, I took an assumed name, and was dressed like a laborer

I stayed a week in that little town, living in the houses of the strikers, sharing their meals and their hours of suspense and anxiety. There was a dark, dingy meeting-room where they all preferred to gather, rather than stay at home. The women also regularly attended these meetings, sometimes bringing their children, and they all sought the comfort of being in company, talking of hopes and fears, cheering each other up by songs, and trying to raise each other's spirits during the long days of inaction. I addressed them, three or four times a day, trying to give them sound notions on social conditions and preparing them for the defeat which I soon knew to be inevitable. I may say, however, that, though I was of all the forty delegates the least hopeful of ultimate success, my little party was the last to surrender and showed the smallest percentage of fugitives.

I saw in those days of strife that of the two contending parties, the stronger, the victorious one, was by far the least sympathetic in its moral attitude and methods. The strikers were pathetically stupid and ignorant about the strength of their opponents and their own weakness. If they had unexpectedly gained a complete victory they would have been utterly unable to use it. If the political power had shifted from the hands of the Government to those of the leading staff of that general strike, the