n London said he would cable to
him and let me know just as soon as word came.

Awaiting the pleasure of the naval base dictator held me two weeks in
London. While waiting I had a look over the city. It was during a period
when the moon was ripe for air-raids. There were seven of them in nine
nights. My business in life being to see things and then to write about
them, I walked the streets during two of them and viewed some of the
others from club and hotel windows.

The underground railway stations did a great business while the raids
were on; also bomb-proof basements. In a newspaper office, where I used
to visit, were precise directions how to get to their bomb-proof cellar.
And be sure to take the right one. They had two cellars, but only one
was bomb-proof. Shops in the expensive shopping districts had signs up,
advertising their bomb-proof cellars and inviting their patrons to make
use of them; but the trouble with the shops was that most air-raids took
place after they had shut up for the day.

There was a local regulation which said that when an air-raid was on any
person at all might knock at the door of any house he pleased and claim
admittance. If he were not admitted at once he could call a policeman,
who would have to see that he was admitted. We used to speculate on what
would happen if some hobo knocked at the front door of the town house of
the Duke of Westminster, say, and demanded of the butler in plush
knee-breeches that he be let in.

The chief defense against the Goths was a barrage of guns mounted mostly
on the roofs of buildings. An expected air-raid would be announced by
policemen running through the streets on bicycles, on their chests and
back were signs: AIR RAID ON. They also blew whistles.

The great search-lights would sweep the skies, and by and by there would
be a great banging of barrage guns. Bang, bang, bang--that would be the
defense guns. Boom! That would be a bomb. Bang, bang, bang, and Boo-oom!
The guns fired 3-inch shrapnel. Three miles into the air the shrapnel
shells would go! And what goes up has to come down. The next thing would
be shrapnel showering into the streets. It seemed to me that I would
rather take my chance with the bombs than with the shrapnel. A bomb came
down, exploded, and had done with it; but the shrapnel fell all over the
place.

You could see the shrapnel shells bursting high in the air--a beautiful
sight--twinkling like big yellow stars, and then fad