theastern
suburb. I made my return to town as one among an army of refugees. The
people had begun flocking into London from as far north and east as
Brentwood. The Great Eastern Railway was disorganized. The northern
highways leading into London were occupied by unbroken lines of people
journeying into the city for protection--afoot, in motor-cars, on
cycles, and in every kind of horse-drawn vehicle, and carrying with them
the strangest assortment of personal belongings.

At the earliest possible hour I made my way toward South Kensington. I
told myself there might be something I could do for Constance Grey.
Beyond that there was the fact that I craved another sight of her, and I
longed to hear her comment when she knew I had finished with _The Mass_.

A porter on the Underground Railway told me that the Southwestern and
Great Western termini were blocked by feverish crowds of well-to-do
people, struggling, with their children, for places in trains bound
south and west. Huge motor-cars of the more luxurious type whizzed past
one in the street continuously, their canopies piled high with bags,
their bodies full of women and children, their chauffeurs driving hard
toward the southern and western highways.

Outside South Kensington station I had my first sight of a Royal
Proclamation upon the subject of the invasion. Evidently the Government
realized that, prepared or unprepared, the state of affairs could no
longer be hidden from the public. The King was at Buckingham Palace that
day I knew, and it seemed to me that I read rather his Majesty's own
sentiments than those of his Cabinet in the Proclamation. I gathered
that the general public also formed this impression.

There is no need for me to reproduce a document which forms part of our
history. The King's famous reference to the Government--"The
Destroyers"--"Though admittedly unprepared for such a blow, my
Government is taking prompt steps for coping in a decisive manner,"
etc.; and again, the equally famous reference to the German Emperor, in
the sentence beginning: "This extraordinary attack by the armed forces
of my Royal and Imperial nephew." These features of a nobly dignified
and restrained Address seemed to me to be a really direct communication
from their Sovereign to the English people. Whatever might be said of
the position of "The Destroyers" in Whitehall, it became evident, even
at this early stage, that the Throne was in no danger--that the
sanctity p