MARGINAL COMMENTS
By ROSE MACAULAY
attendant beam of spot-light (mauve). Between massed ranks of his frenzied approvers, the Leader proceeded up the hall to the platform, wearing an air of exalted uplift which he maintained despite a sudden derisive laugh which broke out from somewhere in the hall. The whole business had a comically histrionic air.
Then (said the programme) THE LEADER SPEAKS. And Speak the Leader did, for two solid hours. It was the old familiar fascery and tushery, such stuff as. Blackshirt dreams are made on : how, when We come into power, we shall stop all this talking at Westminster, ally, on highly advantageous terms, with the other Fascist States and with Japan, and break and- 'exile British communists and Jews. At every reference to British Jews, Sir Oswald appeared to experience a oil- siderable and painful excitement ; he cried out he gestured, he pointed. The affair became more and'mOie like a violent revivalist meeting of Holy R011ers, Shaliers,, or what not. The Fascist part of the audience, answering hysteria with hysteria, responded with frenzied applause, Crowds are like that. If anyone shouts to them with enough repetition, vehemence, and spot-light that any section of persons, such as Jews, Christians, land- lords, lawyers, soldiers, pacifists, witches, Germans, French, or Portuguese, are the cause of all their ,troubles and must be punished, it seems that they will believe. and applaud. Thus are set afoot hunts after old woolen; spies, aliens, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and those who differ from the huntsmen in polities or race.- Crowds have the half-ludicrous, half-sinister suggestibility of the pack, who may be sent by the huntsman's word after any quarry. One felt, woe to any Jew who should that night cross the path of that applauding niob. lid 'yet, taken singly, most of them were probably the ordinary, stupid, kindly Briton, who can be persuaded of anything.
Those who had come to see disturbances were rewarded by several somewhat violent ejections. Heckling by political opponents is obviously not part of what- We mean to allow. Definitely, We. do not believe in free speech. This is one of the great differences between Us and the old effete constitutional parties. At the end of .the meeting, the audience were invited to send up questions to be answered. Many did so ; but only a few. were answered. Like other examination candidates, Sir Oswald apparently selected the easy ones. People near me sent up questions about freedom, British tolerance, and so on : these were-overlooked. The reply I liked best, following as it did the diatribe against Jews; was, We- believe in complete tolerance of all religious sects.
Certainly an odd meeting. I suggested lately _that we might go to it for entertainment, , But I was wxong. It was too like a meeting in a mental home for that,
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