were over the retirement of a batsman who had just been given out,
leg before wicket.

When we reached London we found no idle boasting, no vainglorious
jingoism. The war that Germany had forced upon them the English
accepted with a grim determination to see it through and, while they
were about it, to make it final. They were going ahead with no false
illusions. Fully did every one appreciate the enormous task, the
personal loss that lay before him. But each, in his or her way, went
into the fight determined to do his duty. There was no dismay, no
hysteria, no "mafficking."

The secrecy maintained by the press and the people regarding
anything concerning the war, the knowledge of which might
embarrass the War Office, was one of the most admirable and
remarkable conspiracies of silence that modern times have known.
Officers of the same regiment even with each other would not discuss
the orders they had received. In no single newspaper, with no matter
how lurid a past record for sensationalism, was there a line to suggest
that a British army had landed in France and that Great Britain was at
war. Sooner than embarrass those who were conducting the fight, the
individual English man and woman in silence suffered the most cruel
anxiety of mind. Of that, on my return to London from Brussels, I was
given an illustration. I had written to The Daily Chronicle telling where
in Belgium I had seen a wrecked British airship, and beside it the
grave of the aviator. I gave the information in order that the family of
the dead officer might find the grave and bring the body home. The
morning the letter was published an elderly gentleman, a retired
officer of the navy, called at my rooms. His son, he said, was an
aviator, and for a month of him no word had come. His mother was
distressed. Could I describe the air-ship I had seen?

I was not keen to play the messenger of ill tidings, so I tried to gain
time.

"What make of aeroplane does your son drive?" I asked.

As though preparing for a blow, the old gentleman drew himself up,
and looked me steadily in the eyes.

"A Bleriot monoplane," he said.

I was as relieved as though his boy were one of my own kinsmen.

"The air-ship I saw," I told him, "was an Avro biplane!"

Of the two I appeared much the more pleased.

The retired officer bowed.

"I thank you," he said. "It will be good news for his mother."

"But why didn't you go to the War Office?" I asked.

He reproved