o
attack the stars. For a time it stood up in the air as naturally as a
tower; then it went a little wrong in its outline, like a tower that
might some day fall. When it fell it was as if a powder magazine blew
up.

.....

I have never seen such a sea. All the time there blew across the land
one of those stiff and throttling winds that one can lean up against
like a wall. One expected anything to be blown out of shape at any
instant; the lamp-post to be snapped like a green stalk, the tree to be
whirled away like a straw. I myself should certainly have been blown out
of shape if I had possessed any shape to be blown out of; for I walked
along the edge of the stone embankment above the black and battering sea
and could not rid myself of the idea that it was an invasion of England.
But as I walked along this edge I was somewhat surprised to find that
as I neared a certain spot another noise mingled with the ceaseless
cannonade of the sea.

Somewhere at the back, in some pleasure ground or casino or place of
entertainment, an undaunted brass band was playing against the cosmic
uproar. I do not know what band it was. Judging from the boisterous
British Imperialism of most of the airs it played, I should think it was
a German band. But there was no doubt about its energy, and when I came
quite close under it it really drowned the storm. It was playing such
things as "Tommy Atkins" and "You Can Depend on Young Australia," and
many others of which I do not know the words, but I should think they
would be "John, Pat, and Mac, With the Union Jack," or that fine though
unwritten poem, "Wait till the Bull Dog gets a bite of you." Now, I
for one detest Imperialism, but I have a great deal of sympathy with
Jingoism. And there seemed something so touching about this unbroken and
innocent bragging under the brutal menace of Nature that it made, if I
may so put it, two tunes in my mind. It is so obvious and so jolly to
be optimistic about England, especially when you are an optimist--and
an Englishman. But through all that glorious brass came the voice of the
invasion, the undertone of that awful sea. I did a foolish thing. As I
could not express my meaning in an article, I tried to express it in
a poem--a bad one. You can call it what you like. It might be called
"Doubt," or "Brighton." It might be called "The Patriot," or yet again
"The German Band." I would call it "The Two Voices," but that title has
been taken for a grossly in