day and the tragic events leading up to it were made possible, not
so much by the skill and forethought of the enemy, which were notable,
as by a state of affairs in England which made that day one of shame and
humiliation, as well as a day of national mourning. No just recorder may
hope to escape that fact."

In London, the gravest aspect of that tragic week was the condition of
the populace. It is supposed that over two million people flocked into
the capital during the first three days. And the prices of the
necessities of life were higher in London than anywhere else in the
country. The Government measures for relief were ill-considered and
hopelessly inadequate. But, in justice to "The Destroyers," it must be
remembered that leading authorities have said that adequate measures
were impossible, from sheer lack of material.

During one day--I think it was Wednesday--huge armies of the hungry
unemployed--nine-tenths of our wage-earners were unemployed--were set to
work upon entrenchments in the north of London. But there was no sort of
organization, and most of the men streamed back into the town that
night, unpaid, unfed, and sullenly resentful.

Then, like cannon shots, came the reports of the fall of York, Bradford,
Leeds, Halifax, Hull, and Huddersfield, and the apparently wanton
demolition of Norwich Cathedral. The sinking of the _Dreadnought_ near
the Nore was known in London within the hour. Among the half-equipped
regulars who were hurried up from the southwest, I saw dozens of men
intercepted in the streets by the hungry crowds, and hustled into
leaving their fellows.

Then came Friday's awful "surrender riot" at Westminster, a magnificent
account of which gives Martin's big work its distinctive value. I had
left Constance Grey's flat only half an hour before the riot began, and
when I reached Trafalgar Square there was no space between that and the
Abbey in which a stone could have been dropped without falling upon a
man or a woman. There were women in that maddened throng, and some of
them, crying hoarsely in one breath for surrender and for bread, were
suckling babies.

No Englishman who witnessed it could ever forget that sight. The Prime
Minister's announcement that the surrender should be made came too late.
The panic and hunger-maddened incendiaries had been at work. Smoke was
rising already from Downing Street and the back of the Treasury. Then
came the carnage. One can well believe that not a si