influence of party interests. The brain of Fleet Street was but a more
intense and a more vibrant counterpart of the national psychology,
which in these hours of enormous crisis was bewildered by doubt
and, in spite of all its activity, incredulous of the tremendous
possibility that in a few days England might be engaged in the
greatest war since the Napoleonic era, fighting for her life.


6


On my own lips there was the same incredulity when I said good-bye.
It was on July 29, and England had not yet picked up the gauntlet
which Germany had flung into the face of European peace.

"I shall be back in a few days. Armageddon is still a long way off. The
idea of it is too ridiculous and too damnable!"

I lay awake on the night before I left England with the credentials of a
war correspondent on a roving commission, and there came into my
head a vision of the hideous thing which was being hatched in the
council chambers of Europe, even as the little clock ticked on my
bedroom mantelpiece. I thrust back this vision of blood by old
arguments, old phrases which had become the rag-tags of political
writers.

War with Germany? A war in which half the nations of Europe would
be flung against each other in a deadly struggle--millions against
millions of men belonging to the peoples of the highest civilization?
No, it was inconceivable and impossible. Why should England make