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“Very good, gentlemen. I have most of the preliminaries worked out in sufficient detail to let us get ahead. To-morrow we meet again here at nine in the morning, and by that time I hope to have further information for each of you. In the meantime, will you be good enough to think over the points at which this scheme will touch your own special branches of industry? We have an immense amount of improvisation before us; and we must be ready for things as they come. Thank you.”

He seated himself; and for the first time I realised what he had done. By sheer force of personality and a clear mind, he had carried us along with him and secured our assent to a scheme which, wild-cat though it might appear, seemed to be the only possible way out of the crisis. He had constituted himself a kind of Dictator, though without any of the trappings of the office; and no one had dared to oppose him. The cold brutality with which he had treated the politicians was apparently justified; for I now saw whither their procrastination would have led us. But I must confess that I was dazed by the rapidity with which his moves had been made. Possibly in my account I have failed to reproduce the exact series of transitions by which he passed from stage to stage. I was too intent at the time to take clear mental notes of what occurred; but I believe that I have at least drawn a picture which comes near to the reality.