6o 
LAND & WATER 
August 10, 1916 
<^ Town and Country ^ 
S\TURD \ Y August, ist, 1914. the year of Armageddon, 
was a hot summer day. with thunder clouds moving 
lazily down the sky. That afternoon I crossed London 
on the top of an omnibus. There was electricity not only 
in the air. Little knots of people gathered everywhere ; 
strangers talked to each other with suppressed excitement. In 
Trafalgar Square a " Stop the War" meeting was in progress; 
crowdf trooped to Nelson's Statue from Northumberland 
Avenue with banners that cried aloud for peace. On the 
Western plinth addressing the crowd was Mr. Cunninghame 
Graham ; a black coat and waistcoat buttoned closely to 
the throat, emphasised the pointed white beard. Not a 
word was audible, but I can still see that very P'<;turesque 
figure holding to attention a surge of people on that last 
Saturday when peace was in Europe. 
I went my way. Two hours later I returned. The streets 
were deserted ; the Square empty save for a pohceman or 
two and a litter of rain-soaked leaflets. There had been a 
single peal of thunder, followed by a brief deluge of rain 
The manifesters were dispersed. Once again during that 
week we had the strange phenomenon of a single peal ot 
thunder. People talked of it, wondered what the omen 
portended. Did Heaven resolve in that hour to be sparing 
of her artillerv, knowing how louder, far louder, than her 
thunder was m'an's artillery to roar in the coming months i 
Mr Cunninghame Graham has been mentioned by name, 
for since that day he has always stood for me as the true 
tvpe and representative of that personal liberty and freedom 
of thought, word and action, which has been in truth the 
mainspnng of Great Britain and the Greater Bntains dunng 
the past four and twenty months. 
Only two or three days before the Trafalgar Square meeting 
Mr Cunninghame Graham was lunching with friends at the 
Ritz Now moved by ideas and careless of caste or con- 
ventions he talks to the crowd and urges an unpopular cause. 
Thereafter he devotes himself to the service of his country 
and works 'strenuously to close the war by victory. Judged 
merely by surface movements these acts are contrary one 
to another ; you might almost style them hypocritical.. but 
this freedom to live one's life true t(x one' s self but not 
selfishly is, we know, entirely and typically British. 
One would like to record every incident of those 
crowded hours two vears ago. It was the beginning of a new 
revelation of human nature; one witnessed both con- 
temptible and pathetic sights. Everything was in a turmoil. 
One day I escaped far an hour to the cool quiet oi St Paul s 
Crypt. Not yet had Roberts joined Nelson and \)iglhngton. 
Have we forgotten the rush to the great Stores to lay in 
stocks of food "until the war was over " in that distant 
August' It sounds so ludicrous to-day. The worst offenders 
were Germans or of German origin. It is curious no one 
should have pointed out that before the war it was a common- 
place among Teuton residents in these islands that if ever the 
British and Germanic Empires went to war, Britain wNauld 
be starved into submission within three months. Ihey 
spoke about it as a mere matter of course ; there appeared 
to them nothing barbarous in the idea. Count Wengerski, 
the urbane General Manager of the Hamburg-American 
line in London, who, if alive, must by now be a General 
on the German Staff, was most pleasantly insistent on this 
starvation whenever we discussed international relations. 
The other immediate result of war that German friends 
kindlv predicted for England were riots in her big cities. 
(Of course, the starvation and the rioting were closely con- 
nected.) Whitechapel was to cut the throats of Mayfair 
within the first month of hostilities. One can see now how 
this propaganda was all part and parcel of the scheme to 
terrorise England into keeping the peace at any price. 
Not only has there been neither starvation, nor rioting, 
but never" have the streets of London been cleaner or 
■ safer for girls and young women than since the war began. 
The exploitation of vice in the West-End was almost entirely 
{Continued on page 6i\ 
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