uman
history, but sank instantly back again into chaos.

One might fancy that this was no crowd of human beings, but some new,
unknown creature, dragging its coils from the sluggish bed of some
hidden river, stamping to destruction as it went.

Then as though one were watching a show, with a click, the human element
was back again. There two girls, their hats pushed aside, their hair
half uncoiled, their cheeks flushed, their eyes partly bold and partly
frightened, were screaming:

"Oo're yer 'itting? Don't again then. Good old England! Gawd save----"

It was not on the whole a crowd stirred only by national joy and pride.
It may, in its units, when it first left its many homes, have announced
its intention of giving "a jolly 'ooray" for our splendid country and
our Beloved Queen, but, once in a position from which there was no
returning, once in the hands of a force that was stronger than any felt
before, it had forgotten the country and its defeats and successes. Only
two courses open. Either admit fear, feel that the breath of you is
slowly but quite surely in process of being crushed out of you, feel
that your arms and legs are being torn from you, that your ribs are
being smashed into powder and that your heart is being pressed as flat
as a pancake, let then panic overwhelm you, fight and scream to get out
and away from it, see yourself finally falling, trampled, kicked, your
face squashed to pulp, your eyes torn out, your breath strangled in your
body ... so much for Fear. Or, on the other hand arouse Frenzy!

Be above and beyond your body, scream and shout, rattle rattles and blow
whistles, trample upon everything that is near you, smack faces with
your hand, pull off clothing and scatter hats and bonnets, scream aloud,
no matter what it is that you are screaming, let your voice exclaim that
at length, at length, you, a miserable clerk on nothing a week, in the
City, are, for the first time in your existence, the Captain of your
soul, the ruthless master of a wretched, law-making tyrannous world....
So much for Frenzy!

Either way, be it Frenzy or Fear, the Country has not much to say to it
at all. With every moment it seems that from the Circus more bodies,
more arms and legs are being pressed and crushed and packed; with every
moment the clanging of the bells is louder, the fire in the sky higher
and wilder, the singing, the screaming, the oaths and the curses are
nearer, the defiance that loss of individ