The scene was Hyde Park; the day, a Saturday in June.
Dressed in green and wearing a sword, Everard Webley was addressing a thousand British Freemen from the back of his white horse, Bucephalus. With a military precision which would have done credit to the Guards, the Freemen had formed up on the embankment at Blackfriars, had marched with music and symbolic standards to Charing Cross, up Northumberland Avenue, through Trafalgar Square and Cambridge Circus to the Tottenham Court Road, and thence along the whole length of Oxford Street to the Marble Arch. At the entrance to the park they had met an Anti-Vivisection procession and there had been some slight confusion -- a mingling of ranks, a musical discord, as the bands collided, of "The British Grenadiers" and "My Faith Looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary"; an entangling of banners, "Protect our Doggies" with "Britons never shall be slaves," "Socialism is Tyranny" with "Doctors or Devils? " But the admirable discipline of the Freemen had prevented the confusion from becoming serious and after a short delay the thousand had entered the park, marched past their leader, and finally formed themselves into three sides of a hollow square, with Everard and his staff at the centre of the fourth side. The trumpets had sounded a fanfare and the thousand had sung the four verses of Everard's rather Kiplingesque "Song of the Freemen. " When the singing was done Everard began his speech.
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