brigade. After all I was an amateur soldier, and I wasn't certain of my
powers with a bigger command.

In Charing Cross Road I thought of Mary, and the brigade seemed
suddenly less attractive. I hoped the war wouldn't last much longer,
though with Russia heading straight for the devil I didn't know how it
was going to stop very soon. I was determined to see Mary before I
left, and I had a good excuse, for I had taken my orders from her. The
prospect entranced me, and I was mooning along in a happy dream, when I
collided violently with in agitated citizen.

Then I realized that something very odd was happening.

There was a dull sound like the popping of the corks of flat soda-water
bottles. There was a humming, too, from very far up in the skies.
People in the street were either staring at the heavens or running
wildly for shelter. A motor-bus in front of me emptied its contents in
a twinkling; a taxi pulled up with a jar and the driver and fare dived
into a second-hand bookshop. It took me a moment or two to realize the
meaning of it all, and I had scarcely done this when I got a very
practical proof. A hundred yards away a bomb fell on a street island,
shivering every window-pane in a wide radius, and sending splinters of
stone flying about my head. I did what I had done a hundred times
before at the Front, and dropped flat on my face.

The man who says he doesn't mind being bombed or shelled is either a
liar or a maniac. This London air raid seemed to me a singularly
unpleasant business. I think it was the sight of the decent civilized
life around one and the orderly streets, for what was perfectly natural
in a rubble-heap like Ypres or Arras seemed an outrage here. I remember
once being in billets in a Flanders village where I had the Maire's
house and sat in a room upholstered in cut velvet, with wax flowers on
the mantelpiece and oil paintings of three generations on the walls.
The Boche took it into his head to shell the place with a long-range
naval gun, and I simply loathed it. It was horrible to have dust and
splinters blown into that snug, homely room, whereas if I had been in a
ruined barn I wouldn't have given the thing two thoughts. In the same
way bombs dropping in central London seemed a grotesque indecency. I
hated to see plump citizens with wild eyes, and nursemaids with scared
children, and miserable women scuttling like rabbits in a warren.

The drone grew louder, and, looking up, I could see the