ps.

The thought of this development of Sylvia Wheeler's character interested
me so much that I wrote to her that evening, tentatively sympathizing
with her determination not to be frightened away from her own place. The
whole thing was a curious misapprehension on my part; but Sylvia's reply
(explaining that it was her particular place of worship she refused to
leave, and that she was staying "with his Reverence's sister"), though
written within twenty-four hours, did not reach me until after many
days--days such as England will never face again.

XIX

THE TRAGIC WEEK

England can never have an efficient army during peace, and she must,
therefore, accept the rebuffs and calamities which are always in
store for the nation that is content to follow the breed of cowards
who usually direct her great affairs. The day will come when she
will violently and suddenly lose her former fighting renown to such
an unmistakable extent that the plucky fishwives will march upon
Downing Street, and if they can catch its usual inmates, will rend
them. One party is as bad as the other, and I hope and pray that
when the national misfortune of a great defeat at sea overtakes us,
followed by the invasion of England, that John Bull will turn and
rend the jawers and talkers who prevent us from being prepared to
meet invasion.--_From a letter written by Lord Wolsley,
ex-Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, to Lord Wemyss, and
published, and ignored by the public, in the year 1906._

It is no part of my intention to make any attempt to limp after the
historians of the Invasion. The Official History, the half-dozen of
standard military treatises, and the well-known works of Low, Forster,
Gordon, and others, have allowed few details of the Invasion to escape
unrecorded. But I confess it has always seemed to me that these writers
gave less attention to the immediate aftermath of the Invasion than that
curious period demanded. Yet here was surely a case in which effect was
of vastly more importance than cause, and aftermath than crisis. But
perhaps I take that view because I am no historian.

To the non-expert mind, the most bewildering and extraordinary feature
of that disastrous time was the amazing speed with which crisis
succeeded crisis, and events, each of themselves epoch-making in
character, crashed one upon another throughout the progress toward Black
Saturday. We kno