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 CHAPTER X

HOW THE ENEMY DEALT THE BLOW

morning of Wednesday, September 5, dawned brightly, with warm sun and cloudless sky, a perfect day of English early autumn, yet over the land was a gloom and depression—the silence of a great terror. The fate of the greatest nation the world had ever known was now trembling in the balance.

When the first flush of dawn showed, the public clamoured for information as to what the War Office were doing to repel the audacious Teutons. Was London to be left at their mercy without a shot being fired? Was the whole of our military machinery a mere gold-braided farce?

Londoners expected that, ere this, British troops would have faced the foe, and displayed that dogged courage and grand heroism that had kept their reputation through centuries as the best soldiers in the world.

The Press, too, were loud in their demands that something should at once be done, but the authorities still remained silent, although they were in ceaseless activity. They were making the best they could out of the mobilisation muddle.

So suddenly had the blow been struck that no preparation had been made for it. Although the printed forms and broadsides were, of course, in their dusty pigeon-holes ready to be filled up, yet where were the men? Many had read the proclamation which called them up for duty with their own corps, and in numberless cases, with commendable alacrity, they set out on a 131