do not know, how time and chance will
prove them I cannot guess; that is how they have mirrored themselves on
one contemporary mind.

II

Concurrently with writing the last chapter of this book I have been much
engaged by the affairs of a new destroyer we have completed. It has been
an oddly complementary alternation of occupations. Three weeks or so ago
this novel had to be put aside in order that I might give all my time
day and night to the fitting and finishing of the engines. Last Thursday
X 2, for so we call her, was done and I took her down the Thames and
went out nearly to Texel for a trial of speed.

It is curious how at times one's impressions will all fuse and run
together into a sort of unity and become continuous with things that
have hitherto been utterly alien and remote. That rush down the river
became mysteriously connected with this book.

As I passed down the Thames I seemed in a new and parallel manner to be
passing all England in review. I saw it then as I had wanted my readers
to see it. The thought came to me slowly as I picked my way through the
Pool; it stood out clear as I went dreaming into the night out upon the
wide North Sea.

It wasn't so much thinking at the time as a sort of photographic thought
that came and grew clear. X2 went ripping through the dirty oily water
as scissors rip through canvas, and the front of my mind was all intent
with getting her through under the bridges and in and out among the
steam-boats and barges and rowing-boats and piers. I lived with my
hands and eyes hard ahead. I thought nothing then of any appearances but
obstacles, but for all that the back of my mind took the photographic
memory of it complete and vivid....

"This," it came to me, "is England. That is what I wanted to give in my
book. This!"

We started in the late afternoon. We throbbed out of our yard above
Hammersmith Bridge, fussed about for a moment, and headed down stream.
We came at an easy rush down Craven Reach, past Fulham and Hurlingham,
past the long stretches of muddy meadow And muddy suburb to Battersea
and Chelsea, round the cape of tidy frontage that is Grosvenor Road and
under Vauxhall Bridge, and Westminster opened before us. We cleared
a string of coal barges and there on the left in the October sunshine
stood the Parliament houses, and the flag was flying and Parliament was
sitting.

I saw it at the time unseeingly; afterwards it came into my mind as the
centre of the wh