man
superiority in numbers, discipline, metal, and material being quite
overwhelming. But the German commander was greatly angered by the
resistance offered, and, as soon as he ascertained that civilians had
taken part in this, the town was first shelled and then stormed. It was
surrounded by a cordon of cavalry, and--_no prisoners were taken_.

The town was burned to the ground, though many valuable stores were
first removed from it; and those of the inhabitants who had not already
fled were literally mown down in their native streets, without parley or
quarter--men, women, and children being alike regarded as offenders
against the edict forbidding any civilian British subject, upon pain of
death, to offer any form of resistance to German troops. I myself spoke
to a man in Knightsbridge that evening who had definite news that his
nineteen-year-old daughter, a governess in the house of a Colchester
doctor, was among those shot down in the streets of the town while
endeavouring to make her escape with two children. The handful of
British regulars had been shot or cut to pieces, and the barracks and
stores taken over by the Germans.

As I left Constance Grey's flat that evening I passed a small baker's
shop, before which an angry crowd was engaged in terrifying a small boy
in a white apron, who was nervously endeavouring to put up the window
shutters. I asked what the trouble was, and was told the baker had
refused to sell his half-quartern loaves under sevenpence, or his
quartern loaves under a shilling.

"It's agin the law, so it is," shouted an angry woman. "I'm a
policeman's wife, an' I know what I'm talking about. I'll have the law
of the nasty mean hound, so I will, with his shillin' for a fivepenny
loaf, indeed!"

Long before this time, and while Britain still held on to a good
proportion of her foreign trade, it had been estimated by statisticians
that in the United Kingdom some ten to twelve million persons lived
always upon the verge of hunger. But since then the manufacturers of
protected countries, notably Germany and the United States, had, as was
inevitable in the face of our childish clinging to what we miscalled
"free" trade, crowded the British manufacturer out of practically every
market in the world, except those of Canada. Those also must of
necessity have been lost, but for the forbearing and enduring loyalty of
the Canadian people, who, in spite of persistent rebuffs, continued to
extend and to