I LOOK back on the spring of 1914 and it stands apart.

As a rest from strenuous organising, I spent joyous days at the week-end with a chosen companion exploring out-of-the-way parts of London, and when the days lengthened we went further afield in a Ford car purchased for £140. It was ten years since my previous experience as a car-owner. "The little Ford---LL 800---two-seater is a wonder, it is no trouble and able to go up any hill and averages comfortably, without rushing, 25 miles an hour." (Letter to parents.) The Ford served me faithfully for eight years, and after the war, when there was a car shortage, I was offered what I gave for it.

The English spring slowly unfolded. I saw its wonder with new eyes---the eyes of the Australian or the Canadian, who beholds its magic for the first time. Those eighteen months wandering round the Empire had given me new standards of comparison.(1) Here was no sudden transition from winter to summer. Spring lasted from the winter jasmin of January to the dog-roses of June. The countryside of the Motherland was a shrine of loveliness for citizens of the new Englands across the seas to claim as their own.

I watched the miracle of spring week by week, almost day by day. There were the first timid snowdrops, near the Bandstand in Hyde Park, peeping out fearfully at the bleak and windswept world. Then came the catkins in the hedges, and the great carpet of gold, purple and white crocuses under the elms at Hampton Court Palace, where the ducks delighted to waddle by the side of the wind-rippled water. Outside the gate an old almond tree, a mass of pink blossom, stood on guard, challenging the March winds to do their worst.

On Saturday mornings, as I went to fetch my car from a Pimlico garage, I was sped on my way by the music of a German band, one of the many that journeyed about England. To the strains of "The Rosary," or perhaps "The Tales of Hoffmann," I would set out on my trip of discovery.

When the reign of the crocuses was over the dancing golden daffodils came into their own. "To Kew, treading on air, breathing in the spring. Mounds of golden daffodils swaying gently in the wind with a carpet of blue squills, and a realisation of the marvel of life." (Diary.) Whenever daffodils come to mind it is of Kew in early spring that I think, with the blackbirds and thrushes singing their hearts out in their enchanted kingdom. Outside, a hundred yards away, was the ordinary world with its red buses, "Underground," policemen and rows of villas. Was there ever such value for a penny ?

In Easter week my Ford and I found ourselves on the Norfolk coast.

This is a house consisting of three coastguard cottages knocked into one, on the very edge of the shore, so that when the windows are open you look right on to the sea and do not even notice the beach. One has the feeling of being on board a steamer. The interior is charming and is done up in white. Everywhere there are glass bowls with primrose blossoms floating on the surface of the water. I sleep in a dear little farmhouse three minutes away. Apple blossoms sway in the breeze outside my bedroom window, which overlooks a mere on which wild fowl swim to and fro. (Letter to parents.)

The mornings were spent on the Sheringham golf links and the afternoons were devoted to long walks along the cliffs, where the gorse made great splashes of gold against the pale-blue April sea. The air, straight from far regions, had a Northern tang, for which residents in the tropics would have given a year's salary. Hovering larks, far overhead, proclaimed unceasingly the joy of living

In the evenings after dinner our hostess turned out the lights in the sitting-room, and the windows overlooking the sea were thrown open. A log fire crackled, and Filson Young, a member of the party, conjured up for us the experiences of the day in improvisations at the piano. The swish of the sea was in our ears as we sat enthralled. The firelight made patterns on the hearth.

I remember asking a squatter in Queensland what was the most beautiful sight he had seen in the Old Country during his one and only visit "home." Without a moment's hesitation came the answer "The bluebells and the primrose copses in May." I agreed with him. Before the days of mass-motoring the acres of bluebells and the primrose copses in the home counties were safe from marauding bands.

My Ford was kept busy visiting places of historic interest to our oversea cousins near London: among them Wolfe's home at Westerham, Vancouver's grave at Petersham, Sulgrave Manor, the home of the Washington family, and Brington Church. I cherished an ambition to write one day a comprehensive handbook on such places, for the benefit of visitors from the Dominions and the United States. With the desire to trace the Mother Country's links with the New World I scoured the countryside and not a week-end passed without a visit to some village church. Here I touched the heart of England ---the England that had given birth to great new nations across the sea. Even the motor age has not been able to spoil the village church, nestling behind its row of elms or trembling poplars, with a yew tree, silent sentinel, by the moss-grown lych-gate.

There is a wealth of material awaiting the author of the epic of the English-speaking race in the churchyards of Britain. There he can study the story of the evolution of an island people into a world commonwealth astride the continents. Many of the men lying buried in these ancient graveyards unknowingly gave their lives so that the English language should gradually become the medium of exchange for men's thoughts in two hemispheres. If the great colonising powers of the past have had to give place to the English-speaking peoples there has been a heavy price to pay. Many a village church contains tablet or tomb to the memory of a son of Britain whose life was given in the service of the State in some far corner of the world. On the Spanish Main, in the American colonies, in India, South Africa or at the Antipodes Empire-building has demanded its toll of young life.

The climax of joy was a visit to Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, familiar to readers of John Inglesant. The pilgrimage was made by car from Huntingdon along a road flanked by hawthorn trees in blossom. We walked through lush meadows, where lambs lay among the buttercups, to Little Gidding Church---remote and unspoilt. The caretaker withdrew and left us to picture Mary Collet at her prayers. No wonder that John Inglesant carried away a lasting picture of the scene.

Sunday, 28 June, 1914, is a date which will remain engraved on the minds of men for all time. I turned up an old diary to ascertain how I had spent that fateful day. In the morning I sat with a companion under an elm in Kensington Gardens reading The Lost Word. Healthy and rosy-checked children were noisily playing round, having strayed away from their neat nursemaids. In the afternoon we went to Jordans, near Beaconsfield, where William Penn lies buried in the grass plot adjoining the little Meeting House of the Friends. A simple tombstone marks the grave of the founder of Pennsylvania. I contrasted the quiet of his resting-place with the bustling scene upon which his effigy in bronze looks down from the City Hall of Philadelphia, "the city of brotherly love." From Jordans we went to the churchyard at Harrow-on- the-Hill, referred to in my guide book as "that crowning point of the Middlesex Alps!" I forgive the author his hyperbole, for he was responsible for arousing in me the desire to make a scrutiny of the local epitaphs. Among them I found the sad story of a certain Thomas Port, who "was killed by losing both legs in a railway accident in 1838, aged 33 years"

"Bright rose the morn, and vig'rous rose poor Port
Gay on the train, he used his wonted sport;
Ere noon arrived his mangled form they bore,
With pain distorted, and o'erwhelmed with gore,
When evening came to close the fatal day,
A mutilated corpse the sufferer lay."

When I return to Harrow church, I do not do so to gaze on the tomb of obscure Peachey---on which Byron lay looking at the surrounding countryside---but to revisit poor Port's last resting-place. From the churchyard we went to an hotel garden, where we had strawberries and cream, blissfully ignorant of the history that was being made a thousand miles away.

Next morning, as I read my papers, my attention was gripped by the flaming headline announcing the murder by Gavrilo Princip, a Servian student, of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir-presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and of his morganatic wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg. I read every word about the tragedy in my three papers, for I had been in Bosnia and was acquainted with the Balkan countries and their problems. My visit to Serajevo in 1901 had left a vivid impression on my mind because it was in a way a microcosm of East and West---a small Stamboul. The Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Muslim religions were practised there; and there Slav, Magyar, Teuton, Latin and Turk rubbed shoulders. After a night's journey from Budapest by train, it was surprising to find oneself in the East---right in the heart of Europe. The muezzin calling the Faithful to prayer from the minarets, the veiled women, the jostling crowds and the bazaars were surely there by mistake. Wandering in the welcome shade of the trees near the plashing fountain in the courtyard of the mosque, where the Turks were performing their ablutions before prayer, I realised anew that Austria was a Colonial Power, with problems like those confronting Great Britain. Bosnia was her Egypt; and Herr von Kallay, the Governor-General---a very remarkable Pro-Consul---was the Austrian Cromer.

As we travelled through the country, it was remarkable, I noted, to find "the people, half Christian and half Muslim, living in peace side by side." (Diary.) The Austrian Government did not look with favour on political agitation, for the doctrine of "self-determination" had not yet received recognition in Eastern Europe. But if Austrian rule was firm, it was also beneficent. Herr von Kallay said to my father, " Bosnia is my child." On all sides we could see the interest he took in his offspring. The state was doing much to improve conditions in the country. Model houses were given to selected villagers in the hope that they would excite in others the desire for a higher standard of living. There were experimental farms, fruit-tree nurseries, fish-breeding establishments; while improved strains of horses, cattle, pigs and poultry were being introduced---work very similar to that my father was helping to do in Ireland. But unsatisfied Nationalism, with which I was so familiar in Ireland, was not prepared to accept a paternal government in place of freedom. I wondered what the final fate of the Balkans would be. In the nineties at Constantinople the days of the Turk in Europe had seemed numbered, but still he remained. The Turkish leaders rightly reckoned on dissension among the European nations.

I reflected on the reasons which could have prompted a youth of twenty to murder two inoffensive human beings whom he had never seen. I thought of the extent to which patriotic fervour can warp men's minds. Give men a political grievance and there are no lengths to which they are not prepared to go. I had discussed the "greater Servia" ideal in Belgrade and elsewhere in the Balkans. I knew of the antagonism to the Hapsburgs. I recalled a voyage down the Danube in 1903, when on the moonlit deck, to the accompaniment of the rhythmic thud of the ship's engines, I had listened to the plaintive patriotic songs of Servian students. Their haunting melody long remained with me. Gliding down the swift-flowing Danube past half-a-dozen countries was good training for a student of international relations. A few hours after we had left Servia and Hungary behind we were steaming along between Roumania and Bulgaria. Gone were the Servian students, and my diary records that Roumanian peasants in costume were dancing on deck. After a while I joined in. We grinned at each other instead of speaking, and I stamped my feet with all the vigour and enthusiasm of twenty-one, much to their delight.

The papers stated that the murder was a political crime, and Gavrilo Princip was said to be a cog in the wheel of the Pan-Serb movement. Why did Franz Josef not take a leaf out of our book and grant Dominion status to his disaffected domains here, in Croatia, and in Bohemia? Sooner or later there would have to be autonomy in these countries. Anyhow, the Balkan stew would probably go on bubbling during my life and one more Balkan crisis did not matter much. Fortunately, the British Empire was far removed from the Balkans. During my pilgrimage round the Empire in 1912, a Balkan war was in progress. When I was busy crusading in Australia and New Zealand there were occasional brief messages in the papers with the latest war news, but "down under" the citizen did not pay much attention to them. Why should he? What had he to say to these foreigners and their hates? Thank God the British Empire was right away from all that madness!

AS a director of the Continental Daily Mail I had to pay frequent visits to Paris. In the middle of July I decided to prolong my monthly stay, and in addition to attending to office affairs to carry out a long-cherished plan. I wanted to spend ten days in the French capital with my cousins, Hylda des Voeux and Kathleen Brooke.(1) Kathleen lived at St. Jean de Luz, where she devoted her life to looking after her mother(2), who was an invalid. The two sisters had not met for over a year as Kathleen could not leave my aunt for long. They decided to meet in Paris ; and I was to take care of them. Each one of us had been living through difficult times and needed a complete mental change.

No one ever spent a happier ten days in Paris than I did. My cousins stayed at an old-fashioned hotel near the Étoile, patronised by the French aristocracy---the antithesis of the modern hostelry near the Bourse in which I was lodging. There were narrow, dark stairs and passages; Empire furniture; old-fashioned stoves; a domestic staff worthy of a private house; and a welcome absence of British visitors. The concierge slept in a little lodge. Sometimes I escorted my cousins back after the play, and as he had retired for the night they had to ring a bell which presumably tinkled over his bed. From the couch in his den he doubtless pulled the string without emerging from his slumbers. I suppose his subconscious self became used to interruptions.

The Paris of my youthful days---with visits to the Abbaye de Thélême in Montmartre, to tinselled and mirrored houses of pleasure, to cabarets and night cafés---belonged to another world to which I had no desire to return. The Paris I was now in was the real Paris, not the Paris primarily provided for the foreigner. As my guide I had a student of French history, who had been born in France and spoke French before English. Sightseeing with her meant being carried back through intervening centuries and meeting some of the great figures in French history---François I, Henri IV, Richelieu, Fénélon, Bossuet, Louis XIV, Madame de Maintenon, Madame de Sévigné, J. J. Rousseau, Marie Antoinette, Madame Roland. For guide-books we took Baedeker and E. V. Lucas's delightful A Wanderer in Paris, without which no foreigner should emerge from his hotel.

In the summer of 1914 the tourist traffic was at its height. Every vessel coming from either North or South America deposited its human cargo at a French port. I envied France her tourist trade. Most trans-Atlantic visitors passed Britain by. In the restaurants and hotel vestibules the accents of every town from Boston to Buenos Aires assailed the ear. There were but few empty tables at the leading restaurants. The first morning of our visit we breakfasted in the Bois. The sun was shining. Paris out of doors on a July morning before the heat of the day, as one partook of coffee like nectar, crackly rolls and a lavish supply of iced butter in coils, served under a catalpa tree by a waiter in spotless apron, was intoxicating. By nine o'clock everybody seemed to be astir. Why is it that in London we miss two of the chief pleasures of existence: eating out of doors and early rising ? But in London there is no Bois to breakfast in.

In those ten days I saw more of Paris than ever before or since. Instead of going to a succession of galleries, churches and palaces we concentrated on things with a human interest. Karl Baedeker would have shuddered had he known how often we ignored his row of stars. We started off---as every visitor to Paris should---by paying homage to the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre. Then there were visits to the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette spent her last days ; to Versailles, with its Galerie des Glaces, where Germany dictated her terms to humiliated France after the Franco-Prussian war; to the Petit Trianon; to the Invalides, where lie the remains of Napoleon---the man who set Europe in flames from Moscow to Madrid. It was fortunate, I thought, that there were no Napoleons alive to set the nations of Europe at one another's throats.

I had never before been to Madame de Sévigné's hotel, the Carnavalet, now the museum of the City of Paris, and one of the most attractive museums in the world. To Mr. Lucas I owe a visit to the Compas d'Or in the rue Montorgeuil, one of the old coaching inns, the startingplace of the coach to Dreux. Alas, the Compas d'Or with its old-world court, with its smell of straw and farmyard, no longer exists.

My cousins had many French friends. On one occasion we lunched with a family, belonging to the old noblesse, that had weathered the Revolution of 1792 and regarded Napoleon's aristocrats as parvenus. They lived in a moated château, and had a high-ceilinged, parquet-floored appartement in Paris. In the salon after lunch we sat round uneasily on Empire furniture and watched the tricks of Poo Yong, my cousin's Pekingese. The conversation ranged from the Caillaux trial to the Irish question ---then our main preoccupation in England. There were columns in the French Press about Madame Caillaux, who was charged with the wilful murder of M. Calmette, the editor of the Figaro. The case had become a cause célèbre, and to English ears the comments sounded very French!

Another topic attracting attention was the statement of M. Charles Humbert in the French Senate that the French forts facing Germany were "defective in structure, that the French soldiers had no spare pairs of boots, and that the French guns were without ammunition."(3) He had said that if war were ever to break out, the poilu, apart from the boots he was wearing, would only have one reserve boot in his knapsack, and that one thirty years old! The following day M. Messimy, the Minister of War, virtually had to admit the truth of M. Humbert's charges. I did not take much interest in the discussion. France and Germany had lived peacefully side by side since the seventies, and there was no reason why they should not continue to do so.

The first time 1 recollect seeing any reference to the possibility of a war in Europe was on 6 July, when the Daily Mail Special Correspondent in Vienna stated that "the ever-trembling balance of peace among the nations is poised here in Vienna." But we were accustomed to Balkan scares and paid no heed to his message. In the third week of July Paris was entirely normal. The Paris Stock Exchange was showing a downward tendency, but Parisians and their guests had other things to think about. During the mornings of my stay I read in the Paris Daily Mail and in the French Press of the growing tension in Ireland. We seemed to be drifting to disaster. As Sir Edward Carson said, "I see nothing but darkness and shadows." But there were lighter topics to distract us. The Paris Press was concerned with the dernier mot in hairdressing for ladies. Two curls, resembling whiskers, were now to be worn pointing towards the ears instead of towards the cheeks. "This is to give a more charming effect."

A few days before my visit the first perforated nickel coin had been introduced, and the old copper sous were to be replaced at an early date by these shiny 5-centime coins with a hole in the middle. Traffic in Paris was growing to such an extent that the formation of a Ligue des Piétons had been undertaken, with the object of establishing "an association against the dangers of street traffic." The visit of the aged Empress Eugénie, veiled, and draped in black, to the scene of her former triumphs was attracting attention. Paris was just preparing for the assembling in a fortnight's time---on 2 August---of the Esperanto Congress. We read with amusement in the continental news in the Paris Daily Mail that a fashion of décolleté necks for young men had been started in Germany. The new Schiller collar, thus called because it was familiar to Germans in the popular picture of the poet, was to be seen at German seaside resorts and even in Unter den Linden in the capital. On one of the last mornings of my visit the writers of the gossip columns in the Paris Press drew attention to the present fashion among "young bloods" of wearing their hair very long. The Paris Daily Mail stated that some of these "long-haired young gentlemen have already been seen with their locks tied round with a ribbon and bound across the forehead like the ancients." To meet the need a new kind of hairnet had been invented "to keep the hair tidy during violent exercise." Curious behaviour for citizens of one of the chief nations in Europe. I began to wonder whether some of the statements as to French decadence that I had heard in Germany might not have some truth in them. I little thought then that within three or four weeks these young men and their generation would be dying like heroes in defence of their soil.

On our last evening we made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Abelard and Héloise at Père Lachaise cemetery. As we stood near the monument we tried to make a mental picture of their first meeting in the precincts of Notre Dame. The clever girl of 15 or 16, erudite beyond her years, the famed rhetorician, who had the intellectual youth of the day at his feet, twenty-two years senior to his pupil ; the plucking of the forbidden fruit, and then a story worthy of a Greek tragedy. I toyed with the idea that one day I would like to establish in London a museum of the great love stories in history, from Héloise to Mrs. Browning.

THE war divided the lives of my generation into two halves." Before the war" was one era, "after the war" another. I had seen the last two decades of the nineteenth century. I had witnessed the passing of Victorianism. I had taken part in the hectic Edwardian years ; "pre-war" for me signifies youthful struggles, enthusiasms, ambitions, follies, failures, and successes. It was an age of growth in Empire-consciousness. It was an age of self-confidence in which we repeated "God's in His Heaven; all's right with the world," and believed it. When King George came to the throne, an era of undreamt prosperity and glory seemed, despite the pessimists, to lie ahead of the British race---the people of destiny.

"After the war" to me sums up great fervour, disillusionment and a new hope. Different values, a renewed consecration of purpose in a world in a state of flux. Gone is the easy assurance of pre-war days. There is a greater realisation of the complexity of life. But as the years pass a growing Faith.

The last week-end party I attended in the "old" world, that other existence upon which we now look back as history, was after returning from Paris in the last days of July, 1914. Lady Wantage, one of the few remaining great hostesses of the Victorian era, asked me down to Lockinge, her lovely place in Berkshire, remote from the outside world. We might have been at the other end of England, instead of only fifty miles from London. The ordered dignity of one of England's stately homes was impressive. Lady Wantage was a gracious hostess. When she came into the drawing-room with a lace cap over her snow-white hair, with four-fold coils of huge pearls worth a king's ransom round her neck, with wonderful lace over her shoulders, in her rustling black silk dress, walking with the help of an ebony cane, and----I think---wearing black silk mittens, the buzz of conversation ceased. Among the members of our party were an Oxford professor and his wife, Miss Cholmondeley, the authoress, with whom I made friends; a politician or two, and some relatives. On Sunday morning we went to worship in the wonderful little creeper-covered church, dating from Norman times, which stood in the garden immediately under my bedroom. Bushes of flaming red roses grew by the porch. In the afternoon some of us went for an eight-mile walk. We discussed the coming tragedy in Ireland. Whether we talked of the Balkan situation I have no recollection---my diary makes no mention of the fact. Our minds were focussed on Ireland ; and the latest rumour from the Curragh---that many officers would throw up their commissions rather than fight Ulster---was repeated.

As late as 23 July the Austro-Servian crisis was dismissed in the morning paper with a sixteen-line paragraph, while on the following day the Caillaux trial had a three times greater "news " value---to adopt the vernacular of Fleet Street---than the Austro-Servian crisis.

The last week of July opened ominously. The Ulster Conference at Buckingham Palace had broken down and Russia had decided to support Servia. But as late as Thursday, 30 July, I had no fears that Great Britain would become involved, and I still hoped to join my parents two days later at Bad Nauheim in Germany, whither my father had gone for heart treatment. Northcliffe sent for me unexpectedly on Thursday evening. I found him sitting in his armchair in his room at Printing House Square, surrounded by telephones and galley proofs. He told me that France was involved and that our War Office was taking precautionary measures.(1) Northcliffe advised me to cancel my German visit. But on Saturday, August, I was still so confident that Great Britain would not be involved that I started off on my usual Saturday's trip of discovery in my Ford.

There are some days in life that are chiselled in the memory. Saturday, 1 August, 1914, is such a one for me. To forget the uncomfortable outside world, with its mobilisations and declarations of war, we made a Dickens pilgrimage. By way of Gads Hill and the Leather Bottle at Cobham, Kent, we went through the country of Dingley Dell to Rochester. The Garden of England never looked more lovely. There were wheat fields, green and yellow. Suddenly there would be a splash of scarlet---a great strip of poppies dividing the wheat from the silver-green barley, swaying in the breeze. We left the car by the roadside and wandered along a path worn by cart wheels. At the edge of the ruts camomile grew, and alongside was a hedge of blue chicory. White and tortoise-shell butterflies flitted from thistle to thistle, for there were tares among the wheat. Overhead there were larks. Every now and then birds would flash across the ears of ripening corn. There was a soul-satisfying harmony---the measured swish of the tails of the farm horses to keep off flies, the rustle of the wind in the corn, round which the convolvulus had entwined itself in a too-loving embrace, and the drone of bees.

We were glad to have arrived at our journey's end when we got out of the car in the garage of the Bull Inn, Rochester. We were in the very yard from which Mr. Winkle set forth on the "very good saddle horse," guaranteed by the Bull's ostler not to shy "if he was to meet a vaggin load of monkeys with their tails burnt off," on his memorable fifteen miles' ride to Dingley Dell. We went into the original coffee-room---at that time still used as the dining-room---in which the four Pickwickians dined. After ordering lunch we went to look at Rochester Castle: "magnificent ruin---fine place---glorious pilefrowning walls----tottering arches---dark nooks rumbling staircases." But Mr. Jingle did not do full justice to the charm of the old building, with its view across the Medway, a winding ribbon of silver in the distance and the rolling countryside beyond. I have never seen so many varieties of pigeons---unless perhaps in Venice. They were grey, pure white, coffee-coloured and fawn. They regarded the castle as their property, and were preening themselves on the battlements. Their nests were in the holes of the stonework. Out of every hole peeped a pigeon's head---a street of pigeons looking out of their front doors. From all sides came a chorus of cooing.

We rambled about the battlements of the castle. We agreed that Mr. Pepys was overstating matters, or must have had an uncommonly bad head when he wrote, "a noble place, but, Lord, to see what a dreadful thing it is to look upon the precipices, for it did fright me mightily."(2) With healthy appetites we returned to the Bull Inn. In our guide-book we had read that Hogarth and his friends enjoyed a two hours' dinner in 1732, consisting of "a dish of soles and flounders with crab sauce, a calf's heart, stuffed and roasted, the liver fried and the other appurtenances minced, a leg of mutton roasted and some green peas, all very good and well-dressed, with good small beer and excellent port." Our tastes were more modest : chops and fried potatoes and apple tart, ordered an hour previously. We only glanced at the old dining-room and at the stairs leading up to the ball-room where Mr. Tupman and the "strange," in borrowed dress clothes, disported themselves. As sensible sight-seers, we would eat first and pay homage to the shades of the Pickwickians afterwards. But fate decreed otherwise, and it was some years before we returned to the Bull Inn to finish our Dickens pilgrimage.

As we passed the office window, the manageress said, "Are you Mr. Wrench?" I nodded, and she said, "There's a telegram for you." It was from Northcliffe. My clever secretary in London had heard me say that I might motor to Rochester on Saturday. When Northcliffe rang up saying he must speak to me, she had assumed that hungry sight-seers and devotees of Dickens would obviously lunch at the Bull. The telegram said, "Return at once and come round to Printing House Square. France mobilising." Sorrowfully we turned our heads Londonwards. After all, the scaremongers were right: a war between the great Powers had come at last. If Germany had declared war against Russia, France would inevitably be dragged in. But surely there was no reason for Great Britain to be involved. In the Franco-Prussian war we had kept out, despite Queen Victoria's German connections. If we had managed to remain neutral in 1870, why not now? I opened the throttle wide and the Ford bounded and bumped along. I felt as in a novel. The Old Kent Road was drab and workaday. It looked uninviting in the rain. There were no more newspaper bills than usual, no excited groups at street corners, and everyone looked much the same. I parked the Ford opposite Blackfriars Bridge Station, and went across the courtyard or Printing House Square, where there was an electric atmosphere and Exchange Telegraph and Reuter messenger boys were coming in and out of the swing doors. Northcliffe had two or three of the Times staff with him. He told me that war between France and Germany was inevitable, and that Great Britain would probably be drawn in. Would I go to Paris for the duration of the war and take charge of the Paris Daily Mail? My heart sank. J did not want to leave London. I did not want to leave my rapidly-growing Empire movement, just established in its new offices. But this was no time for personal considerations. Yes, I would, if he thought that was the most useful service I could render.

"When do you want me to go?"

"To-morrow morning."

From Printing House Square I went round to see Norman Angell, my predecessor on the Paris Daily Mail, at his flat in the Temple. There was something reassuring in the creaky stairs of 4, King's Bench Walk. The door knockers and bannisters had lived through centuries of crises. After all, Northcliffe was inclined to see current events in headlines. Probably there would be a last-moment climb-down. J recalled the fact that at the time of the Dogger Bank incident in 1904 war between Russia and ourselves was said to be inevitable. I had actually been sent down to see Lord Wolseley, then living in retirement at Glynde, Sussex, to invite him to write special articles for the Daily Mail, and yet the crisis passed.

We discussed an article Angell had written that morning in the Daily Mail. I think it must have been many years before Carmelite House again opened its columns to him. With that lucidity of exposition for which he is famous, Angell had written:

Whatever may be the future place of the Slays, Teutons, French or English in the world, this war is not going to settle it or seriously to affect it, except to render the condition of all more barbaric. We may inflict or bear atrocious suffering, but, when it is all over, we shall see that it is as futile to settle problems of nationality and racial culture by war as an earlier generation found it futile to settle religious rivalries by that means.

Norman Angell was somewhat reassuring. He still thought we might keep out. The one essential was to narrow down the war area. We discussed the cleavage in the Cabinet ; it was known that there was a strong anti-war party. We agreed that no one could get any material advantage from the war, and I was certain that the war, whoever was involved, would show that Angell's theories, as expounded in The Great Illusion, were sound. I recalled a letter Angell had written me four years before, in 1910, in which he said:

Northcliffe has struck the right point of view: I do not mean that necessarily he agrees with the thing,(3) but he has come to realise that if we can get the Germans asking what they are really going to get out of aggression against us, the battle will be won, or that in any case it will tend to kill the fire-eaters and that that will be all to the good. I gather that he thinks the book may shift the whole discussion on to a more useful plane---"What do you, Germans, hope to get from attacking us ?" I think he fully realises that a very useful work will have been done, whether the thesis as a whole be true or false, if we can get Germany, and Europe generally, asking that question.

He gave me some useful advice as to how best to tackle the situation in Paris.

I returned to my cousins' house(4) wondering whether Germany could be foolish enough to think of attacking us. After dinner I read aloud a chapter of The Roadmender---Michael Fairless was a tried companion for great moments in life. On my return from Paris, presumably in the autumn, I was going once again to set up house for myself in a flat in Victoria Street. Most of the night I spent packing. While I was in the midst of putting in my things the Daily Mail rang up to tell me that France's mobilisation order took effect from 1 am., and that war between France and Germany was inevitable. I was also told that I would require a special permit to stay in Paris. So I went round to see Sir Arthur Nicolson(5)---an old friend of my family's---at his house in Knightsbridge, in the dead of night, and got a special letter from him to Paris. I motored in the early hours of Sunday, 2 August, to the French Embassy and Consulate to get a passport and special permit.

It is so extraordinary suddenly changing all one's plans and spending most of the night rushing round to Passport offices. The only time I ever had a passport before was in Russia and Turkey. This morning, when dawn was breaking I motored along the empty streets and saw the Cross of St. Paul's standing out wonderfully against a pink sky. (Diary.)

AFTER a sleepless night I drove, provided with passport and permits, to Charing Cross. There an ordered chaos reigned. Hundreds of foreigners were hurrying home. Young French, German and Belgian recruits were leaving England in consequence of mobilisation orders. Half the population of Soho must have been at the station---hairdressers, waiters, chefs and musicians. Great Britain seemed to consist chiefly of foreigners! I have often wondered how many of those struggling fellow-passengers leaving England so hurriedly that morning ever returned. How many of them died in the war? There must have been many encounters on the battlefield of former employees from the same hotel, now seeking to kill each other.

I was lucky to get a place in the Pullman. Breakfast of buttered eggs and bacon, coffee and crisp toast was consoling in this topsy-turvy world. Great Britain would assuredly be able to keep out of the struggle; Germany could not be mad enough to challenge the might of the British Empire. We were packed like sardines on the cross-Channel boat. On the way to Paris I read the papers. Naturally, the crisis overshadowed all else. The headlines read "Germany declares war on Russia," "Mobilisation in France," "Martial Law in Russia," "Italy Neutral." Great scenes of enthusiasm were recorded in Russia, and I was interested to read that in the Red Square in Moscow, near St. Basil's and the Kremlin, with which I was familiar, the crowds were shouting "Long live the Emperor," "Long live Russia and the Russian Army." I thought of the patient Russian mujik, accustomed to obey orders, and I wondered what would happen when once the whole might of "all the Russias " was mobilised. I knew what a splendid physique the Russian peasant had; I knew his loyalty to the Tsar. The only question in my mind was the problem of Russian organising capacity. But no doubt Russia had learnt her lessons in the war with Japan and would not be caught napping a second time. Anyhow, she would be fighting nearer home and not six thousand miles away from her base.

There were still one or two incongruities to be noticed in the papers---"copy" evidently prepared several days previously. I read of the proposal to place on the market coloured wigs for the fair sex. It was stated that before the summer had elapsed green, blue and mauve chignons would be a familiar sight which would no longer shock the æsthetic taste of Parisians. More serious were the accounts of the murder of M. Jaurès, the French pacifist, at the Café du Croissant thirty-six hours previously, which had created a sensation. The French Government had apparently plastered the walls of Paris with placards deploring the "abominable attack" and asking the public to remain calm and give an example of national unity "in these days of peril." Many of the Stock Exchanges of the world had closed. The Bank of England rate had gone up to 8 per cent.

The following letter describes Paris on Sunday evening, 2 August. The mention of a visit to Geneva referred to Northcliffe's original intention of moving the Paris Daily Mail to Geneva---neutral territory---for the duration of the war

Paris, Hotel Louvois,                       
Monday morning, August, 1914.

Pfister(1) and I are going to try and get through to Geneva to-day, though whether we shall manage it I do not know as all the trains are stopped, other than those for the troops. We shall probably stay two nights and make preliminary arrangements for moving the paper, and then try to get back to Paris.

Later

I have just had a wire saying, "Stay in Paris, Chief(2)," so apparently the Geneva idea is off. Yesterday afternoon before 5.0 I suddenly saw Notre Dame de Montmartre and the sun was shining on it and it looked very white. Paris is a very extraordinary place to be in just now. I feel as if I were in a book. It is not our Paris at all, it is a changed place, and in England you have no idea what is going on here. At the Gare du Nord the platforms were piled with baggage mountains high. There were no ordinary porters, but I managed to get a man with a special military band on his arm.

There were no taxis, or only a few; the rest have all been commandeered by the Government. I got a very rackety old horsecab in the face of about twenty people. There are no omnibuses. Government has taken them all for the transport of meat to the Troops.

The streets are one black mass of people carrying flags and singing the Marseillaise. The Café Viennois is boarded up with the windows whitewashed, as the owner, who was an Austrian, has fled.

Later

The mob broke into the Café Viennois last night and broke all the windows and looted the place. I should like to go to a high mountain and get away from it all. It is terrible to see a mob that has gone mad. I hear that the mobilisation order which was posted up in the morning everywhere on the walls was greeted by rounds of cheering and young men threw their hats into the air. Several German shops have been looted. Troops are everywhere, and I was harrowed as I saw woman after woman crying and walking about with her man probably for the last time for months, as the soldiers are just off. War is so terrible, and it is only beginning, and I understand as I never have before what these partings are. Paris is mad with war fever. I never saw anything like it. All through the evening at our emergency meetings at the Daily Mail office in the rue du Sentier, and during the discussions, the Marseillaise kept floating up through the air into my room.

On arrival I went straight to the office and was there from 5.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. and then on and off from 9 to midnight, just slipping out to a Duval restaurant, at the corner, for a hasty meal. Everything and everybody was in a feverish state and I was busy holding conferences all the time, and must have interviewed about fifty or sixty of the office staff. There were all sorts of things to be arranged, and wires kept corning and going. After leaving the office I walked along the Grands Boulevards and was carried along by the tide. (Letter.)

The sombre Paris mob of tens of thousands of human beings, shouting themselves hoarse and filling the Grands Boulevards from end to end, was like a river in flood. But it was a river of excited and "intoxicated" human beings, all ordinary restraints were brushed aside---on it rushed, breaking windows, shouting "à Berlin! à Berlin! !", gesticulating and singing the Marseillaise. Its impulse was a mixture of hope and hatred, of indignation at Germany's challenge and a burning desire for revenge, to wipe out the bitter memories of forty years ago. I had seen great masses of human beings at the Diamond jubilee and funeral of Queen Victoria, at King Edward's and King George's coronations, at an American Presidential procession of 4 November in New York. But this was the first occasion on which I had seen a great mass of human beings uncontrolled, and for the time being with authority in abeyance---except perhaps on Mafeking night in London.

Shops with German names had a bad time of it. Appenrodt's delicatessen were scattered in the Boulevards. August 2nd, 1914.

August, 1914. Reservists at the Gare de l'Est, Paris.

Photos by Meurisse, 9, Faub. Montmartre, Paris.

Anti-German manifestations were taking place. The contents of Appenrodt's delikatessen store were seized by the mob and a bonfire made in the street. The little round tables and chairs of German-owned cafés were flung up on the canvas awnings above the pavements. The shutters were torn down and the large glass windows of the Maggi dairy firm and café were smashed, and another bonfire of the contents was made. Subsequently it was ascertained that the firm was Swiss! All German-owned shops came in for rough treatment, and probably the mob would have got quite out of hand had not detachments of cavalry arrived to aid the police. A minor problem was the difficulty of getting money changed, as the shopkeepers refused to accept large billets de Banque. There was a sudden dearth of gold and silver coins, and the banks were invaded by clamouring customers demanding change. I heard of one intelligent individual who, after walking about all the morning with a banknote and three sous in his pocket, finally thus solved the problem. He took his fifty franc note to a post office, where he bought ten five-franc postal orders. He then cashed them at another post office.

Monday, August, was an unpleasant day for the Englishman. Wherever he went he was treated with marked coolness. Even friends in private conversation asked anxiously, "Les Anglais! Ils vont marcher! hein?" What could I say ?---I did not know. All I could reply was that on Saturday a majority of the Cabinet, I understood, was determined to keep Great Britain out of the conflict at all costs.

I had excellent opportunities to hear the views of the average Frenchman. We had a large French staff, and I was on friendly terms with the heads of departments. Many of our English employees lived in small French hotels and mixed with the French bourgeoisie. From 1914 dates my close and happy association with Eric Chaplin,(3) who had been on the staff of the Paris Daily Mail for three years. Chaplin was a first-rate organiser, had tact to a remarkable degree and was an excellent linguist. Twenty-one years have only strengthened my regard for him. He has been my colleague for twelve years on the Board of the Spectator, and was a tower of strength to me in launching the All Peoples' Association in 1929. But to return to Paris. Chaplin and other British employees told me how unpleasant it was returning to their quarters each evening. Their former French friends treated them with open hostility. After consultation they decided to sleep at the Daily Mail office till the popular feeling became more normal. Accordingly, collecting their effects, they made impromptu beds on the floor of the rooms of the commercial staff, and there they slept, more or less in comfort, until Great Britain declared war.

During the mobilisation there were extraordinary scenes at the Gare de l'Est, where the troops entrained for such military centres as Châlons. I had never before realised what an upheaval the call to the colours implied in a conscript country. Thousands of men in response to the mobilisation order were suddenly withdrawn from their ordinary jobs. Untidily dressed, many unshaven, off they rushed to the station with every kind of package and bundle, and accompanied by sweethearts, wives, mothers, and by crowds of fervent patriots with gifts of flowers, tobacco, long loaves and other edibles. There was a mixture of singing and weeping. To British eyes the large number of bearded men was marked---even young men wore beards. This had the effect of giving the recruits an elderly appearance. The troops were frequently dispatched in closed-in goods waggons. War in actuality was a very different matter from "war" on the parade ground. It was a motley and untidy crowd of seemingly middle-aged men that was leaving for France's eastern front. Could a disciplined army emerge from this unpromising material?

Now that Germany had declared war on France, Parisians hoped, and appeared to believe, that the conflict would be of short duration. Whether those in high places were equally optimistic I doubt. I had no means of judging. The French General Staff must have known the strength of the German military machine which was now bearing down on them through the Ardennes. The French journalists I met said that owing to the gigantic nature of modern war the finances of no nation could beat the strain for long. There were animated discussions as to its possible duration. Most people thought the struggle would be over in six months. When Kitchener made his famous forecast of a three years' war, one Frenchwoman exclaimed with ridicule in her voice, "Il est fou." I was sure that Kitchener was right. I thought of the South African war, and recalled the fact that many of my friends, when they started out for Cape Town, had said they were afraid "the show would be over by Christmas." If a war with 300.000 Afrikanders had lasted nearly three years, a war with Germany would certainly last as long.

The German military machine was very much of a reality to me. I knew Germany intimately. I had lived in German military households. I had played tennis with German officers ; I had eaten in mess. I had studied the German war game. I had a profound respect for the German genius for organisation. For four years I had conducted a business that took me on frequent visits to Germany. I had also lived in France and I knew that the Germans were more methodical than the French. I was afraid that France was in for a bad time. I was reassured, however, when I thought of the Tsar's legions, those fine bearded Russian officers in white tunics and top boots, whom I had met from Finland to the Caucasus. They would surely keep Germany busy on the eastern front. I also knew that my German friends were afraid of the Slav menace. They regarded all Slays, whether Russians, Poles or Czechs, as belonging to a lower order of civilisation. They were inclined to underestimate French military prowess, as was perhaps natural after their experience in the Franco-Prussian war. But Russia, no. There was the danger. The spectre of the hungry Russian bear prowling across the plains of Eastern Prussia---making for the German capital, the home of Prussian "Kultur," disturbed them! German mothers lay in their beds and thought of stories of Cossack brutality and shuddered. As islanders we have never understood what the people of Eastern Germany went through in the early days of the war. Perhaps the German General Staff had no qualms; they knew with complete accuracy Russia's lack of equipment in heavy artillery. But the German public had no such knowledge. Hence the intoxication that followed Marshal von Hmdenburg's defeat of the "Slav barbarians" at Tannenberg three weeks after the outbreak of the war.

The eyes of France were focussed on Berlin. What was happening at Vienna seemed remote and of no immediate concern. In Great Britain, also, we regarded Germany and not Austria as the foe. Austria-Hungary was merely the catspaw. There was traditional friendship between Great Britain and Austria-Hungary : the tie of sport united us.

I was glad to read in the papers that there seemed little likelihood of Great Britain being involved with Austria-Hungary. Mr. Lindsay Bashford, the Daily Mail Correspondent in Vienna, cabled on Monday, 3 August:

Everywhere I have been in Vienna to-day I have heard expressions of goodwill towards England. The feeling in Austria towards England is essentially friendly. Austria believes that the English people will eventually understand the motives which prompt her to-day. She recalls that friendship with England is hereditary. She believes and hopes that the efforts of Sir Edward Grey may yet preserve the peace of Europe.

Letters from London kept me in touch with what was happening over there:---

London, 5 August. Monday.

When people talk about England fighting, that it will be iniquitous if she doesn't, etc., it rouses a sense of opposition in me, but as a matter of fact when I read the papers I don't see how we can stand aside. It made me so happy to see the messages sent by Australia, New Zealand and Canada as I knew how glad you would be, and I thought of the many thousands influenced by you all over the Empire.

It is quite possible that we may not be able to go to the country, as it seems so difficult to get hold of money. The tradespeople refuse to change five-pound notes, and I heard yesterday that the stations refuse them too, and as the Banks are shut till Friday, I don't see how one can get cheques cashed till then. Clubs refuse cheques for more than £1. I have just been reading Sir E. Grey's great speech. It is a clear statement as far as it goes, but personally I think that is all that could be said for it. If he laid more stress on the honour point of view it would be more stirring. He seems to take his stand on an economic basis and talks only of financial losses and takes as his main argument the point whether we fight or we don't we shall suffer heavily. He leaves entirely out of account the appalling misery, sorrow, pain and death that war will entail. But I don't see how England can stand aside.

Monday night in Paris presented a complete contrast to Sunday. The authorities were in control and there was no serious rioting. One might have been in another city. Some attempts were made by the crowd to repeat the hooliganism of the previous day, but policemen with drawn sabres soon restored order. Infantry with fixed bayonets were placed in front of an hotel of German ownership. All cafés and restaurants were closed by 8 p.m. and the streets were practically deserted. War had begun. The liberty of the individual citizen counted no longer.

On Tuesday, 4 August, as soon as I was dressed, I rushed downstairs to the nearest kiosk to get the Paris Daily Mail. A huge heading spread right across the page, "Germany declares war on France," and then followed "Great Britain's assurance." " We will defend the coast of France and guarantee the neutrality of Belgium." Things were certainly moving. I did not see how Great Britain could keep out now---neither did my French friends. They became more friendly. They said that Germany had already violated Belgian neutrality.

Hotel Louvois, Paris.                 
Tuesday, 4 August.

Breakfasted at 9.30. There are no waiters. I thought Sir Edward Grey's speech quite splendid, the way he summarised our position masterly. I see nothing for it now but war in view of Germany's disregarding Belgium's neutrality. I was at the office all the morning and lunched with Hamilton Fyfe and his wife, He is doing special Daily Mail work. They are absolutely devoted to each other.

I wish I knew how long Northcliffe expects me to remain in Paris as now that we are going to fight, as I suppose we shall, I want to be in my own country and do my overseas work. It's so curious for me to be here in a position of trust, but from every standpoint longing to be away, and yet feeling bound to do as Northcliffe wishes.

Anyhow, I think he will be pleased as we produced a very good paper this morning, much the best in Paris. From the Empire standpoint I am rather inclined to think that the war will be a good thing now that Germany has so definitely been the aggressor. It will have the effect of drawing us all closer together, including the French-Canadians. I only hope the French will be able to keep back the Germans' main attack, as I believe they are concentrating on the French north-east frontier." (Letter.)

From London I heard:---

Tuesday, 4 August.

I don't comment on war news, it is past commenting on. Everybody seems relieved now that war really seems inevitable. It is all very appalling. The money difficulty is all right now as they are issuing £1 and 10s. notes.

Poor Emma(4) is very unhappy, her four brothers have gone to the war.