is puerile
invention is a Navy League supporter, who reached London in a motor-car
from Harwich soon after daylight this morning, our advice to him is to
devote the rest of the day to sleeping off the effects of an
injudicious evening in East Anglia."

Failing the East Anglian Pageant, the paper's "first feature," I
noticed, consisted of a lot of generously headed particulars regarding
the big Disarmament Demonstration to be held in Hyde Park that
afternoon. It seemed that this was to be a really big thing, and I
decided to attend in the interests of _The Mass_. The President of the
Local Government Board and three well-known members on the Government
side of the House were to speak. The Demonstration had been organized by
the National Peace Association for Disarmament and Social Reform, of
which the Prime Minister had lately been elected President. Delegates,
both German and English, of the Anglo-German Union had promised to
deliver addresses. Among other well-known bodies who were sending
representatives I saw mention of the Anti-Imperial and Free Tariff
Society, the Independent English Guild, the Home Rule Association, the
Free Trade League, and various Republican and Socialist bodies. The
paper said some amusement was anticipated from a suggested counter
demonstration proposed by a few Navy League enthusiasts; but that the
police would take good care that no serious interruptions were allowed.

As the Demonstration was fixed for three o'clock in the afternoon, I
decided to go up the river by steamboat to Kew after my late breakfast.
It was a gloriously fine morning, and on the river I began to feel a
little more cheerful. As we passed Battersea Park I thought of Beatrice,
who always suffered from severe depressions after her little outings.
Her spirits were affected; in my case, restaurant food, inferior wine,
and the breathing of vitiated air was paid for by nothing worse than a
headache and a morning's discomfort.

(One of the curses of the time, which seemed to grow more acute as the
habit of extravagance and the thirst for pleasure increased, was the
outrageous adulteration of all food-stuffs, and more particularly of all
alcoholic liquors, which prevailed not alone in the West End of London,
but in every city. Home products could only be obtained in clubs and in
the houses of the rich. Their quantity was insufficient to admit of
their reaching the open markets. In the cities we lived entirely upon
foreign pr