cloud of Christmas weather on the great grey beech-woods
and the silver cross of the cross-roads. For the four roads that meet
in the market-place of my little town make one of the largest and
simplest of such outlines on the map of England; and the shape as it
shines on that wooded chart always affects me in a singular fashion.
The sight of the cross-roads is in a true sense the sign of the cross.
For it is the sign of a truly Christian thing; that sharp combination
of liberty and limitation which we call choice. A man is entirely
free to choose between right and left, or between right and wrong.
As I looked for the last time at the pale roads under the load of cloud,
I knew that our civilisation had indeed come to the cross-roads.
As the paths grew fainter, fading under the gathering shadow,
I felt rather as if it had lost its way in a forest.

It was at the time when people were talking about some menace
of the end of the world, not apocalyptic but astronomical;
and the cloud that covered the little town of Beaconsfield might
have fitted in with such a fancy. It faded, however, as I left
the place further behind; and in London the weather, though wet,
was comparatively clear. It was almost as if Beaconsfield had
a domestic day of judgment, and an end of the world all to itself.
In a sense Beaconsfield has four ends of the world, for its
four corners are named "ends" after the four nearest towns.
But I was concerned only with the one called London End;
and the very name of it was like a vision of some vain thing at
once ultimate and infinite. The very title of London End sounds
like the other end of nowhere, or (what is worse) of everywhere.
It suggests a sort of derisive riddle; where does London End? As I
came up through the vast vague suburbs, it was this sense of London
as a shapeless and endless muddle that chiefly filled my mind.
I seemed still to carry the cloud with me; and when I looked up,
I almost expected to see the chimney-pots as tangled as the trees.

And in truth if there was now no material fog, there was any amount
of mental and moral fog. The whole industrial world symbolised
by London had reached a curious complication and confusion,
not easy to parallel in human history. It is not a question
of controversies, but rather of cross-purposes. As I went
by Charing Cross my eye caught a poster about Labour politics,
with something about the threat of Direct Action and a demand
for Nationalisa