ondon became again an ancient city that a
man could love....

"It's worth fighting for?" Henry murmured to himself as he stood on the
terrace of Trafalgar Square, before the National Gallery, and looked
about him at the dusk-softened outlines and the rich highways of
shadows. One would not fight for the England that squealed through the
ha'penny papers ... one would gladly throttle that England ... one would
not fight for the England of the Stock Broker and the Mill Owner ... but
one would fight hard, fight until death, for the England of Old Widger
and the England of this darkened, dignified and beautiful London.

3

He had attended to his business with his publishers, and was walking
along the Strand towards Charing Cross, when he became aware of a thrill
of emotion running through the crowd that stood on either side of the
road.

"What is it?" he said to a bystander.

"The wounded!" was the answer.

He pressed forward, and stood on the edge of the pavement, and as he did
so, the ambulances came put of the station. There was a moment of deep,
hurting silence, and then came cheers and waving handkerchiefs and sobs.
... There was a parson standing at Henry's elbow, and he cheered as if
he were intoning ... little sterilised hurrahs ... and there was a woman
who murmured continually, "Oh, God bless them! God bless them all!"
while she cried openly, unrestrainedly. Unceasingly, the ambulances
seemed to pass on to the hospitals, and the soldiers, pale from their
wounds and tired after their journey by sea and train, lay back in queer
disregard of the crowd that cheered them. Now and then, one moved his
hand in greeting or smiled ... but most of them were irresponsive,
dazed, perhaps hearing still the sound of the smashing artillery and the
cries of the maimed and dying, unable to believe that they were back
again in a place where there was no fighting, where men and women walked
and talked and did their work and took their pleasure in disregard of
death and a bloody and abrupt end.... There was a private motor-car in
the middle of the procession of ambulances, and inside it was a wounded
officer with his wife ... and she did not care who looked on nor what
was said, she held him in her arms and kissed him and would not let him
go....

"Oh, my God," Henry murmured to himself, as the cars went by, "I can't
bear this!..."

He wanted to kill Germans ... it seemed to him then that nothing else
mattered but to kill