The next day our American friends invited us to go to a picture show with them.  We went, but at the door a gorgeously uniformed gentleman, who looked like a cross between a butler and an admiral, turned us back—­that is, Ted and me.  We had no collars on!  The public had to be protected—­he was sorry, but these were his orders.

Then we sought the Vice-Consul and told him if he did not get us decent clothes, we should go to the Consul.  The next morning we got the clothes!

* * *

On the sixth night we sailed from Rotterdam, and the next morning, in a hazy dawn, we sighted, with glad hearts, the misty shores of England.

As we sailed up the Tyne, we saw war shops being built, and women among the workmen, looking very neat and smart in their working uniforms.  They seemed to know their business, too, and moved about with a speed and energy which indicated an earnest purpose.  Here was another factor which Germany had not counted on—­the women of the Empire!  Germany knew exactly how many troops, how many guns, how many ships, how much ammunition England had; but they did not know—­never could know—­the spirit of the English people!

They saw a country which seethed with discontent—­Hyde Park agitators who railed at everything British, women who set fire to empty buildings, and destroyed mail-boxes as a protest against unfair social conditions—­and they made the mistake of thinking that these discontented citizens were traitors who would be glad of the chance to stab their country to the heart.  They knew that the average English found golf and cricket much more interesting than foreign affairs, so they were not quite prepared for that rush of men to the recruiting offices at the first call for volunteers!  Englishmen may abuse their own country, but it is a different matter when the enemy is at the door.  So they came,—­the farmer, the clerk, the bank boy, the teacher, the student, the professional man, the writer, the crossing-sweeper, the cab-man,—­high and low, rich and poor, old and young, they flocked to the offices, like the land-seekers in the West who form queues in front of the Homestead offices, to enter their land.

I thought of these first recruits—­the “contemptible little army”—­who went over in those first terrible days, and, insufficiently equipped as they were, went up against the overwhelming hosts of Germany with their superior numbers and equipment that had been in preparation for forty years.... and how they held back the invaders—­though they had but one shell to the Germans’ hundred—­by sheer force of courage and individual bravery... and with such losses.  I thought of these men as I stepped on the wharf at Newcastle, and it seemed to me that every country lane in England and every city street was hallowed by the unseen presence of the glorious and unforgotten dead!

CONCLUSION