but the bewildering inconsequence of war was suggested by its activities.
Reason was not there. It was ruled by a blind and fixed idea. The
glaring artificial light, the headlong haste of the telegraph
instruments, the wild litter on the floor, the rapt attention of the men
scanning the news, their abrupt movements and speed when they had to
cross the room, still with their gaze fixed, their expression that of
those who dreaded something worse to happen; the suggestion of tension,
as though the Last Trump were expected at any moment, filled me with
vague alarm. The only place where that incipient panic is not usual is
the front line, because there the enemy is within hail, and is known to
be another unlucky fool. But I allayed my anxiety. I leaned over one of
the still figures and scanned the fateful document which had given its
reader the aspect of one who was staring at what the Moving Finger had
done. Its message was no more than the excited whisper of a witness who
had just left a keyhole. But I realized in that moment of surprise that
this office was an essential feature of the War; without it, the War
might become Peace. It provoked the emotions which assembled civilians in
ecstatic support of the sacrifices, just as the staff of a corps
headquarters, at some comfortable leagues behind the trenches, maintains
its fighting men in the place where gas and shells tend to engender
common sense and irresolution.

I left the glare of that office, its heat and half-hysterical activity,
and went into the coolness and quiet of the darkened street, and there
the dread left me that it could be a duty of mine to keep hot pace with
patriots in full stampede. The stars were wonderful. It is such a
tranquillizing surprise to discover there are stars over London. Until
this War, when the street illuminations were doused, we never knew it. It
strengthens one's faith to discover the Pleiades over London; it is not
true that their delicate glimmer has been put out by the remarkable
incandescent energy of our power stations. There they are still. As I
crossed London Bridge the City was as silent as though it had come to the
end of its days, and the shapes I could just make out under the stars
were no more substantial than the shadows of its past. Even the Thames
was a noiseless ghost. London at night gave me the illusion that I was
really hidden from the monstrous trouble of Europe, and, at least for one
sleep, had got out of the War.