The middle classes of England tried to comfort themselves even at the eleventh hour by incredulity.

“Impossible!” they cried.  “The thing is unbelievable.  It is only a newspaper scare!”

But as the hours passed the shadow of war crept closer, and touched the soul of Europe.

5

In Fleet Street, which is connected with the wires of the world, there was a feverish activity.  Walls and tables were placarded with maps.  Photographs, gazetteers, time tables, cablegrams littered the rooms of editors and news editors.  There was a procession of literary adventurers up the steps of those buildings in the Street of Adventure—­all those men who get lost somewhere between one war and another and come out with claims of ancient service on the battlefields of Europe when the smell of blood is scented from afar; and scores of new men of sporting instincts and jaunty confidence, eager to be “in the middle of things,” willing to go out on any terms so long as they could see “a bit of fun,” ready to take all risks.  Special correspondents, press photographers, the youngest reporters on the staff, sub-editors emerging from little dark rooms with a new excitement in eyes that had grown tired with proof correcting, 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.