The hall was packed to the door, and in all the front half there was the kind of audience I expected to see--working-men of the political type who before the war would have thronged to party meetings.

But not all the crowd at the back had come to listen.

Some were scallawags, some looked like better-class clerks out for a spree, and there was a fair quantity of khaki.

There were also one or two gentlemen not strictly sober.
The chairman began by putting his foot in it.

He said we were there tonight to protest against the continuation of the war and to form a branch of the new British Council of Workmen and Soldiers.