as the crowd was drawn; they went as the crowd
went, up and down, restlessly, from Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to
Buckingham Palace; from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall and Trafalgar
Square. They drifted down Parliament Street to Westminster and back
again. An hour ago the drifting, nebulous crowd had split, torn asunder
between two attractions; its two masses had wheeled away, one to the
east and the other to the west; they had gathered themselves together,
one at each pole of the space it now traversed. The great meeting in
Trafalgar Square balanced the multitude that had gravitated towards
Buckingham Palace, to see the King and Queen come out on their balcony
and show themselves to their people.

And as the edges of the two masses gave way, each broke and scattered,
and was mixed again with the other. Like a flood, confined and shaken,
it surged and was driven back and surged again from Whitehall to
Buckingham Palace, from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall. It looked for an
outlet in the narrow channels of the side-streets, or spread itself over
the flats of the Green Park, only to return restlessly upon itself,
sucked back by the main current in the Mall.

It was as if half London had met there for Bank Holiday. Part of this
crowd was drunk; it was orgiastic; it made strange, fierce noises, like
the noises of one enormous, mystically excited beast; here and there,
men and women, with inflamed and drunken faces, reeled in each other's
arms; they wore pink paper feathers in their hats. Some, only half
intoxicated, flicked at each other with long streamers of pink and white
paper, carried like scourges on small sticks. These were the inspired.

But the great body of the crowd was sober. It went decorously in a long
procession, young men with their sweethearts, friends, brothers and
sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers with their children;
none, or very few, went alone that night.

It was an endless procession of faces; grave and thoughtful faces;
uninterested, respectable faces; faces of unmoved integrity; excited
faces; dreaming, wondering, bewildered faces; faces merely curious, or
curiously exalted, slightly ecstatic, open-mouthed, fascinated by each
other and by the movements and the lights; laughing, frivolous faces,
and faces utterly vacant and unseeing.

On every other breast there was a small Union Jack pinned; every other
hand held and waggled a Union Jack. The Union Jack flew from the engine