ny do it?"

"Eh? No; certainly not. Do you?"

"Me? Oh, sare, I don' know nozzing. Vaire shstrong, sare, ze Sherman
Armay."

The fellow's face annoyed me in some way. It, and his grins and
gesticulations, had a sinister seeming. My trade brought me into contact
with so many low-class aliens. I told myself I was getting insular and
prejudiced, and resumed my meal with more thought for myself and my
tendencies and affairs than for the East Anglian business. I have
wondered since what the waiter thought about while I ate; whether he
thought of England, Germany, and of myself, as representing the British
citizen. But, to be sure, for aught I know, his thoughts may have been
ordered for him from Berlin.

The Demonstration drew an enormous concourse of people to Hyde Park. The
weather being perfect, a number of people made an outing of the
occasion, and one saw whole groups of people who clearly came from
beyond Whitechapel, the Borough, Shepherd's Bush, and Islington. As had
been anticipated, a few well-dressed people endeavoured to run a
counter-demonstration under a Navy League banner; but their following
was absurdly small, and the crowd gave them nothing but ridicule and
contempt.

The President of the Local Government Board received a tremendous
ovation. For some minutes after his first appearance that enormous crowd
sang, "He's a jolly good fellow!" with great enthusiasm. Then, when this
member of the Government at last succeeded in getting as far as: "Mr.
Chairman, ladies and gentlemen," some one started the song with the
chorus containing the words: "They'll never go for England, because
England's got the dibs." This spread like a line of fire in dry grass,
and in a moment the vast crowd was rocking to the jingling rhythm of the
song, the summer air quivering to the volume of its thousand-throated
voice.

The President of the Local Government Board had been rather suspected of
tuft-hunting recently, and his appearance in the stump orator's role,
and in the cause of disarmament, was wonderfully popular. In his long
career as Labour agitator, Socialist, and Radical, he had learned to
know the popular pulse remarkably well; and now he responded cleverly to
the call of the moment. His vein was that of the heavy, broad
bludgeoning sarcasm which tickles a crowd, and his theme was not the
wickedness, but the stupidity and futility of all "Jingoism,"
"spread-eagleism," "tall-talk," and "gold-lace bunkcombe."

"I am