Friday, April 15, 1921, is a day to mark in the Kalendar. We are still so near to it that there is no need to detail the Conferences, Proclamations, Appeals, and Letters which marked the stages of the fever of that hectic week ; enough that on Friday morning the Army, the Special Reserve and the new Defence Force were ready for war, that the Triple Alliance had called on the workers of the country for a General Strike, and that 10 p.m. was to have seen Great Britain as near to the modern equivalent of civil war as at any time since 1642. Yet that night one placard at least proclaimed the general relief. It blazoned one word—Peace.

On the Saturday, the Press offered a bewildered country its explanations. One section had it, in the words of the Morning Post, that “The Great Bluff” of Labour had “failed.” Other papers told that Mr. Thomas had stared revolution in the face and had been too timid—or too brave, which you please— to face it. Others attributed the dramatic end to a realization on the part of the leaders of the Triple Alliance that their men were not staunch behind them. At least one crowned the Premier with fresh laurels. A new Cromwell had saved his country with the threat of something that approximated to 500,000 bayonets. At any rate it was “ peace.”