The Master Spirit was incapable of hesitation. In uniforms of a Cromwellian cut, designed after the most careful consideration of the proper wear for expelling legislative assemblies and made under pressure at remarkable speed, the chiefs of the Duty Paramount movement and a special bodyguard armed with revolvers and swords, marched under his leadership to Westminster at the head of a great popular demonstration. The Houses of Parliament were surrounded. The police offered a half-hearted resistance, for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was himself a strong man and could understand what was happening to the world. An attempt, essentially formal, was made to treat this historical March upon Westminster as ordinary traffic and divert it towards Chelsea; this failing, the police, in accordance with a prearranged scheme, evacuated the building, paraded in good order in Parliament Square, and marched off in Indian file, leaving the League in possession. For some minutes Miss Ellen Wilkerson offered a formidable resistance in one of the corridors, but reinforcements arrived, and she was overpowered. The “Talking Shop” had fallen.
The House of Commons was in session and did not seem to know how to get out of it. The Master Spirit, supported by the staff he had gathered about him — except Sir Bussy, who was again unaccountably missing — entered by the Strangers’ entrance and came through the division lobby onto the floor of the House. At the significant brown band across the green carpet he stopped short.
The atmosphere of the place was tensely emotional as this tall and slender and yet most portentous figure, supported by the devoted lieutenants his magic had inspired, stood facing the Speaker and his two bewigged satellites. Someone had set the division bells ringing, and the House was crowded, the Labour party clustered thickly to his left, Commander Benworthy bulky and outstanding. There was little talk or noise. The great majority of the members present were silently agape. Some were indignant, but many upon the right were manifestly sympathetic. Above, the attendants were attempting, but not very successfully, to clear the Strangers’ and Distinguished Strangers’ galleries. The reporters stared or scribbled convulsively and there was a luminous abundance of ladies in their particular gallery.
Methodical and precise as ever, the tapes in the dining and smoking rooms had announced, “Dictator enters House with armed force. Business in suspense,” and had then ceased their useful function. From behind the Speaker’s chair a couple of score of the bodyguard, with swords drawn, had spread out to the left and right and stood now at the salute.
It would have needed a soul entirely devoid of imagination to ignore the profound historical significance of this occasion, and the Master was of imagination all compact. His stern determination was mellowed but not weakened by a certain element of awe at his own immense achievement. To this House, if not to this particular chamber, Charles the First had come in pursuit of the tragic destiny that was to bring him to Whitehall, and after him, to better effect had come Cromwell, the great precursor of the present event. Here, through a thousand scenes of storm and conflict, the mighty fabric of the greatest empire the world had ever seen had been welded and reshaped. Here had spoken such mighty rulers and gladiators as Walpole and Pelham, Pitt and Burke, Peel and Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli. And now this once so potent assembly had waxed vulgar, senile, labourist, garrulous and ineffective, and the day of rejuvenescence, the restoration of the Phoenix, was at hand. The eyes of the Master Spirit, grave and a little sorrowful, were lifted as if for guidance to the fretted roof and then fell thoughtfully upon the mace, “that bauble,” which lay athwart the table before him. He seemed to muse for a moment upon the mighty task he had undertaken, before he addressed himself to the wigged and robed figure at the head of the assembly.
“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I must ask you to leave the chair.” He turned half-face to the government benches. “Gentlemen, the Ministers of the Crown, I would advise you to yield your portfolios without demur to my secretaries. For the good of His Majesty’s realm and the needs of our mighty Empire I must for a time take these things over from you. When England has found her soul again, when her health has been restored, then all her ancient liberties of speech and counsel will return to her again.”
For a perceptible interval everyone present might have been a wax-work image, so still and intent did they all stand. It might have been some great historical tableau set out at Madame Tussaud’s. It seemed already history, and for all the length of that pause it was as if the Lord Paramount were rather witnessing what he had done than actually doing it. It became flattened but bright like a coloured picture in a child’s book of history. . . .
The action of the piece was resumed by a little significant detail. Two bodyguards came forward and placed themselves at either elbow of the Speaker.
“I protest in the name of the Commons of England,” said the Speaker, standing and holding his robes ready to descend.
“Your protest ............