to the few customers.
Everyone was waiting; there was an expectancy so great and so stirring
that ordinary life had stopped. The last hour seemed endless in its slow
passing. I do not remember ever to have experienced the same anxious
tension, which was felt so strongly by us all that, in a way I cannot
explain, we seemed to gain liberation from ourselves, and, losing
individuality, were brought to share a universal impulse. The colossal
importance of that hour made itself felt.

Then at last the peace guns sounded. We knew the armistice had been
signed: Germany had accepted the terms offered by the Allies. The fear
of utter misery was lifted: the war was over. The streets filled as if
by magic, sellers of newspapers appeared, nobody knew from where, and
were besieged. As the news spread, a delirium of enthusiasm caught the
people. There never was such a day, and there never can be such a day
again. From noon onwards in ever increasing numbers the streets were
thronged with people. Strangers who had never set eyes on one another
before rejoiced together as sisters and brothers. Heedless of rain, and
mud, and slush, Londoners turned the city into a carnival of joy. Then
as the hours advanced the fun grew wilder. People linked hands and
danced, and--maddest of all--indulged in wild "ring of roses" around
lamp-posts and in the centers of the great thoroughfares. From the
Strand and into the West End and beyond was one packed concourse of
people, a never-ending stream spread from pavement to pavement across
the way, in processions, in pairs, in groups, in taxi-cabs, on the top
of taxi-cabs, in and on and all over motor-omnibuses, hanging to the
backs of cabs, on great munition lorries--everywhere clustering and
hanging like swarming flies. There were soldiers, crowds of Dominion
boys, young officers and privates, old men and young men from civil
life, and thousands upon thousands of women and girls of every age and
representative of every class.

It was the women that I noticed most: they were wilder than the men,
making more noise, cheering, shouting and singing themselves hoarse,
dancing and romping themselves tired. Quite undisguisedly the soldiers
were led by them. It was Woman's Carnival as well as Victory Night.

It is very hard to find words to speak of what I felt. The universal
gladness was intoxicating, and yet, none the less, as I watched and
noted, the scene was a spectacle that for me at least, was shot
stra