had I got there than I was seized with a
restlessness, an uncontrollable desire to see my godfather--Kitchener.
Only to see him, to lay eyes on him. I wish I might express to you the
push of that feeling. It was thirst in a desert. With that spell on me I
stood down in front of the stone lions and stared up at Nelson on his
column, and listened to the speakers. They were mad, quite, those
speakers. The crowd was mad, too. It overflowed that great space, and
there were few steady heads in the lot. You'll realize it looked a bit
of a close shave, with the German navy coming and our fleet being
destroyed, no one knew how fast, and the army in France, and struck down
by illness. At that moment it looked a matter of three or four days
before the Huns would be landing. Never before in a thousand years was
England as near the finish. As I stood there fidgeting, with the
starvation on me for my godfather, it flashed to me that there's a
legend in every nation about some one of its heroes, how in the hour of
need he will come back to save the people--Charlemagne in France, don't
you know, and Barbarossa and King Arthur and--oh, a number. And I spoke
aloud, so that the chap next prodded me in the ribs and said: 'Stop
that, will you? I can't hear'--I spoke aloud and said:

"'This is the hour. Come back and save us.'

"The speakers had been ranting along, urging on the people to force the
government to give in and make terms with those devils who'd crushed
Belgium. Of course there were plenty there ready to die in the last
ditch for honor and the country, but the mob was with the speakers.
Quite insane with terror the mob was. And I spoke aloud to Kitchener,
like a madman of a sort also, begging him to come from another world and
save his people.

"'This is the hour; come and save us,' said I, and said it as if my
words could get through to Kitchener in eternity.

"With that a taxicab forced through the crowd, close to the platform,
and it stopped and somebody got out. I could see an officer's cap and
the crowd pressing. My eyes were riveted on that brown cap; my breath
came queerly; there was a murmur, a hush and a murmur together, where
that tall officer with the cap over his face pushed toward the speakers.
I felt I should choke if I didn't see him--and I couldn't see him. Then
he made the platform, and before my eyes, before the eyes of twenty
thousand people, he stood there--Kitchener!"

General Cochrane stared defiantly