"To be frank," he said, "I don't like these insinuations. Fenn's
been our secretary from the first. He opened the negotiations,
and he's carried them through. We either trust him, or we don't.
I trust him."
"And I'm not saying you're not right, lad." Cross declared. "I'm
for being cautious, but it's more with the idea that our German
friends themselves may be a little too sanguine."
"I will pledge my word," Fenn pronounced fiercely, "to the truth
of all the facts I have laid before you. Whatever my work may
have been, to-day it is completed. I have brought you a people's
peace from Germany. This very Council was formed for the purpose
of imposing that peace upon the Government. Are you going to back
out now, because a dilettante writer, an aristocrat who never did
a stroke of work in his life, casts sneering doubts upon my
honesty? I've done the work you gave me to do. It's up to you to
finish it, I represent a million working men. So does David Sands
there, Evans and Cross, and you others. What does Orden
represent? Nobody and nothing! Miles Furley? A little band of
Socialists who live in their gardens and keep bees! My lord
Bishop? Just his congregation from week to week! Yet it's these
outsiders who've come in and disturbed us. I've had enough of it
and them. We've wasted the night, but I propose that the
telegrams go out at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Hands up for
it!"
It was a counter-attack which swept everything before it.
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