McGregor and Mosby
organised another company of marchers and a young man who had been a
sergeant in a company of regulars was induced to help with the
drilling. To the men themselves it was all a joke, a game that
appealed to the mischievous boy in them. Everybody was curious and
that gave the thing tang. They grinned as they marched up and down.
For a while they exchanged gibes with the spectators but McGregor put
a stop to that. "Be silent," he said, going about among the men during
the rest periods. "That's the best thing to do. Be silent and attend
to business and your marching will be ten times as effective."
The Marching Men Movement grew. A young Jewish newspaper man, half
rascal, half poet, wrote a scare-head story for one of the Sunday
papers announcing the birth of the Republic of Labour. The story was
illustrated by a drawing showing McGregor leading a vast horde of men
across an open plain toward a city whose tall chimneys belched forth
clouds of smoke. Beside McGregor in the picture and arrayed in a gaudy
uniform was Mosby the ex-army officer. In the article he was called
the war lord of "The secret republic growing up within a great
capitalistic empire."
It had begun to take form--the movement of the Marching Men. Rumours
began to run here and there.
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