h had gone charging up and down in
"old days," a few moved sedately, with here an ancient horse bus
unearthed from oblivion. Of the lively streams of taxis, blue and green
and black and gray, the source seemed suddenly more than half to have
dried up. Some melancholy four-wheelers and hansoms had made bold to
steal out, and were finding customers. Little boys were playing soldiers
in the middle of Pall Mall, no longer a maelstrom. There was no din of
traffic to drown the frog-like music of their sixpenny drums and penny
trumpets. Looking into the doorways of the biggest shops one saw nobody
but the attendants, waiting to serve customers who were not there and
would not come. Outside the little shops the proprietors were frankly
standing, to wonder sadly what had happened to them and to London, and
what worse thing was likely to happen next? They talked in low voices to
each other, trying to smile or read the latest war edition of some
newspaper.

Most of the people who were in the streets seemed to have come there to
look at the soldiers or to read the papers, which they did regardless of
bumping into all the others who were doing the same thing. Nobody
appeared to think of buying anything, though the shopkeepers had already
pathetically changed the aspect of their windows to suit altered
circumstances. Instead of displaying lovely dresses, they showed rolls
of khaki cloth, or linen, cotton, or flannel for shirts, and gray army
blankets. Shoemakers had bundled away their attractive paste-buckled
slippers, and put forward conspicuously thick-soled brown boots to which
they drew the attention of officers and soldiers. Chemists had hung
printed cards, advising the public to "Keep up Their Strength in War
Time" by taking So and So's Tonic Wine. But no one cared. No one bought.
There was a dazed look on most of the faces. If those who read
newspapers cannoned into each other, instead of glaring or swearing they
smiled mildly, wistfully, and perhaps fell into conversation about the
war. One felt able to guess what all the millions in London and even in
all England and Europe were talking about and thinking about at any
given moment; yet it was strange to us who had come from the hot red
heart of the war to see no other sign of it except this dreamlike
silence which hid the pain of parting from those loved best.

Nobody came to meet me at the station, because, not knowing when I
should succeed in arriving, I had not tried to