orrecting, passed
each other on the stairs and asked for their Chance. It was a chance
of seeing the greatest drama in life with real properties, real corpses,
real blood, real horrors with a devilish thrill in them. It was not to be
missed by any self-respecting journalist to whom all life is a stage
play which he describes and criticises from a free seat in the front of
the house.

Yet in those newspaper offices in Fleet Street there was no real
certainty. Even the foreign editors who are supposed to have an
inside knowledge of international politics were not definite in their
assertions. Interminable discussions took place over their maps and
cablegrams. "War is certain." "There will be no war as far as England
is concerned." "Sir Edward Grey will arrange an international
conference." "Germany is bluffing. She will climb down at the
eleventh hour. How can she risk a war with France, Russia, and
England?" "England will stand out." "But our honour? What about our
understanding with France?"

There was a profound ignorance at the back of all these opinions,
assertions, discussions. Fleet Street, in spite of the dogmatism of its
leading articles, did not know the truth and had never searched for it
with a sincerity which would lead now to a certain conviction. All its
thousands of articles on the subject of our relations with Germany
had been but a clash of individual opinions coloured by the traditional
policy of each paper, by the prejudice of the writers and by the
influence of party interests. The brain of Fleet Street was but a more
intense and a more vibrant counterpart of the national psychology,
which in these hours of enormous crisis was bewildered by doubt
and, in spite of all its activity, incredulous of the tremendous
possibility that in a few days England might be engaged in the
greatest war since the Napoleonic era, fighting for her life.

6

On my own lips there was the same incredulity when I said good-bye.
It was on July 29, and England had not yet picked up the gauntlet
which Germany had flung into the face of European peace.

"I shall be back in a few days. Armageddon is still a long way off. The
idea of it is too ridiculous and too damnable!"

I lay awake on the night before I left England with the credentials of a
war correspondent on a roving commission, and there came into my
head a vision of the hideous thing which was being hatched in the
council chambers of Europe, even as the little