An Evangel of Unrest: The Life Story of Bonar Thompson by Bonar Thompson ( (Marble Arch, W.l. 1926)

From the commencement of the conflict until my arrest in 1916, I spoke against it, in various parts of London, particularly in Finsbury Park—the scene of many a deed and vow.

The "Daily Herald" League, from whose platform I hurled the challenge to every warmonger in London, was a magnificent band of rebels who carried the war against war into the enemy’s camp with unrelenting vigour and audacity, contesting the ground inch by inch without qualification or reservation.

* * *

The campaign of “rounding up,” "roping in” and "combing out” was prosecuted by the enemy with the utmost determination. Every art and artifice, every dodge and device, by which to lure the young men into the war-trap, was employed by an unscrupulous and unprincipled governing class.

Touts and informers were lurking at every street corner on the look out for any poor devil who might not care to offer his carcase as a bullet stopper. Such as these were dubbed ”shirkers" and ”slackers,” and no effort was spared to land them in the net. I had many an encounter with the harpies and hirelings who lay in wait for the likely recruit, the following dialogue invariably taking place :—

Question: ”Why aren’t you in khaki?”

Answer: "Because there's a war on."

Question : ”What would you do if the Germans came here ?”

Answer: "Volunteer for foreign service.”

With the Recruiting Officer a similar interchange occurred :—

R. O. : " Well, lad, have you thought about it?” 

B. T. : ” Yes.”

R. O. : ” Going to join up?”

B. T.: “No!”

R. O. : ” How’s that?”

B. T. : ”I’ve thought about it.”

The Fleet Street Scribblers were working overtime in their lie-foundries manufacturing elaborate fabrications for the delectation of a gullible population. German spies, plots, atrocity stories, children’s hands cut off, corpse factories, and a hundred likely and unlikely stories festering in the fevered fancy of the rabble rousers of the reptile Press.

The ordinary Englishman had an impression in his head at the beginning of the war that the German people were neither better nor worse than anybody else.

This illusion had to be destroyed. All such errors must be swept from his mind. The Germans were not ordinary human beings. They were fiends in human form, vermin who must be destroyed like rats.

As one eminent Churchman, Father Bernard Vaughan, so veil put it: "There are two classes in the world to-day— human beings and Germans. The duty of every Christian is to kill Germans, and go on killing Germans."

These noble words rang out like a clarion call to the nation, rousing the laggards from their lethargy, opening men’s eyes to a realisation of the situation.

Very soon the whole population—with the exception of a negligible number of morbid and dangerous fanatics—was in the grip of the gospel of Hun-hating, waves of patriotic enthusiasm sweeping them along on their holy mission.

Some brave fellows, itching to do their bit in the sacred cause of ”right against might,” could not wait until they got to France to show their patriotism, and commenced operations on the Home Front by raiding shops kept by poor German shopkeepers in the East End, many a deathless deed of devotion and heroism being recorded in the great onslaught on those poor German pork butchers' establishments.

The Speakers by Heathcote Williams (Grove Press 1964)

The Park

The large group under the trees have not noticed that there is no one speaking at the centre, until two pairs of policemen enter the park and start to break up the meetings.

Lomas observes that they travel in pairs because they are neurotic. If they travelled alone, they would start talking to themselves.

Freddie Kilennen walks up to a pair and asks them whether they would like to take part in the premiére trial run of his pneumatometer, which is a machine for measuring how much of the Holy Ghost there's left in a man's soul, and he belches.

One of the policemen says: Shut your mouth and clear out of the park . . . because I say so; and Cafferty observes that if you have a hat shaped like a bomb, egocentricity is rather out of place.

The police close Cumberland Gate and herd the people towards the other. Harry, Norman and the man with feathers in his hair wander about the tarmac unconsciously repeating themselves: the unconscious repetition which leads to neurosis. The neuroses will be sold to the tourists the next day.

The man with the silent message has left his platform, on which he stands saying nothing at all, and sits in the mirrored section of Fortes studying form: . . . to spot a winner, he says, demands a rare constriction in the mind, a constriction in the colours in the street, a constriction in the typography of the Sporting Life, a constriction in the air you breathe . . .  never change your mind once you have, through your training, lapsed into this constriction, and you'll win . . . you'll surely win.

Lomas comes over to him and observes that Saturday night in winter in the park, when only the regulars are there, is like the service of compline in preparation for communion next day.

The man with the silent message says: As Aristotle, the great Italian sculptor said, a man is a man for all that.

Harry goes back to Chiswick, Norman goes back to Shepherd's Bush, Lil goes back to Stepney, Aggie wanders through the streets buttonholing people until she comes to the tea stand at the end of Hungerford Lane, Solly Sachs takes his dog back to Notting Hill; a man helps the woman from the Catholic Evidence Guild to fit her platform into the platform rack behind the New Inn, the man with the silent message goes back alone to the North End Road, and Lomas, Cafferty and Freddie Kilennen walk back to Kilburn.