But here they come, in all the pomp and certitude of power, and still they come, these men of steel, these war lords and world harnessers.  Pell-mell, peers and commoners, princes and maharajahs, Equerries to the King and Yeomen of the Guard.  And here the colonials, lithe and hardy men; and here all the breeds of all the world-soldiers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand; from Bermuda, Borneo, Fiji, and the Gold Coast; from Rhodesia, Cape Colony, Natal, Sierra Leone and Gambia, Nigeria, and Uganda; from Ceylon, Cyprus, Hong-Kong, Jamaica, and Wei-Hai-Wei; from Lagos, Malta, St. Lucia, Singapore, Trinidad.  And here the conquered men of Ind, swarthy horsemen and sword wielders, fiercely barbaric, blazing in crimson and scarlet, Sikhs, Rajputs, Burmese, province by province, and caste by caste.

And now the Horse Guards, a glimpse of beautiful cream ponies, and a golden panoply, a hurricane of cheers, the crashing of bands—­“The King! the King!  God save the King!” Everybody has gone mad.  The contagion is sweeping me off my feet—­I, too, want to shout, “The King!  God save the King!” Ragged men about me, tears in their eyes, are tossing up their hats and crying ecstatically, “Bless ’em!  Bless ’em!  Bless ’em!” See, there he is, in that wondrous golden coach, the great crown flashing on his head, the woman in white beside him likewise crowned.

And I check myself with a rush, striving to convince myself that it is all real and rational, and not some glimpse of fairyland.  This I cannot succeed in doing, and it is better so.  I much prefer to believe that all this pomp, and vanity, and show, and mumbo-jumbo foolery has come from fairyland, than to believe it the performance of sane and sensible people who have mastered matter and solved the secrets of the stars.

Princes and princelings, dukes, duchesses, and all manner of coroneted folk of the royal train are flashing past; more warriors, and lackeys, and conquered peoples, and the pagent is over.  I drift with the crowd out of the square into a tangle of narrow streets, where the public-houses are a-roar with drunkenness, men, women, and children mixed together in colossal debauch.  And on every side is rising the favourite song of the Coronation:-

   “Oh! on Coronation Day, on Coronation Day,
   We’ll have a spree, a jubilee, and shout, Hip, hip, hooray,
   For we’ll all be marry, drinking whisky, wine, and sherry,
   We’ll all be merry on Coronation Day.”

The rain is pouring down.  Up the street come troops of the auxiliaries, black Africans and yellow Asiatics, beturbaned and befezed, and coolies swinging along with machine guns and mountain batteries on their heads, and the bare feet of all, in quick rhythm, going slish, slish, slish through the pavement mud.  The public-houses empty by magic, and the swarthy allegiants are cheered by their British brothers, who return at once to the carouse.