, which they were totally unfitted to fill, by a tidal
wave of reactionary public feeling, and of the blind selfishness of a
decadence born of long freedom from any form of national discipline; of
liberties too easily won and but half-understood; of superficial
education as to rights, and abysmal ignorance as to duties.

But, while fully admitting the soundness of Martin's verdict, for my
part I feel that my experiences during that week left me with memories
not perhaps more shocking, but certainly more humiliating and
disgraceful to England, than the picture burnt into my mind by the
Westminster Riot. I will mention two of these.

By Wednesday a large proportion of the rich residents of Western London
had left the capital to take its chances, while they sought the security
of country homes, more particularly in the southwestern counties. Such
thoroughfares as Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Bond Street were no
longer occupied by well-dressed people with plenty of money to spend.
Their usual patrons were for the most part absent; but, particularly at
night, they were none the less very freely used--more crowded, indeed,
than ever before. The really poor, the desperately hungry people, had no
concern whatever with the wrecking of the famous German restaurants and
beer-halls. They were not among the Regent Street and Piccadilly
promenaders.

The Londoners who filled these streets at night--the people who sacked
the Leicester Square hotel and took part in the famous orgy which
Blackburn describes as "unequalled in England since the days of the
Plague, or in Europe since the French Revolution"; these people were not
at all in quest of food. They were engaged upon a mad pursuit of
pleasure and debauchery and drink. "Eat, drink, and be vicious; but
above all, drink and be vicious; for this is the end of England!" That
was their watchword.

I have no wish to repeat Blackburn's terrible stories of rapine and
bestiality, of the frenzy of intoxication, and the blind savagery of
these Saturnalias. In their dreadful nakedness they stand for ever in
the pages of his great book, a sinister blur, a fiery warning, writ
large across the scroll of English history. I only wish to say that
scenes I actually saw with my own eyes (one episode in trying to check
the horror of which I lost two fingers and much blood), prove beyond all
question to me that, even in its most lurid and revolting passages,
Blackburn's account is a mere record of