Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/183

. There is, alas! no communication with the place, therefore the report may possibly be true.

"Dewsbury, Huddersfield, Wakefield, and Selby are all intensely excited over the sudden appearance of German soldiers, and were at first inclined to unite to stem their progress. But the German proclamation showing the individual peril of any citizen taking arms against the invaders having been posted everywhere, has held everyone scared and in silent inactivity.

"'Where is our Army?' everyone is asking. The whole country has run riot in a single hour, now that the Germans are upon us. On every hand it is asked: 'What will London do?'"

The following account, written by a reporter of the Hull Daily Mail, appeared in the London Evening News on Wednesday evening, and was the first authentic news of what had happened on the Humber on Sunday:—

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"A great disaster has occurred here, and the town is in the hands of the Germans. The totally unexpected appearance in the river at dawn on Sunday of an extraordinary flotilla of all kinds of craft, filled with troops and being towed towards Goole, created the greatest alarm. Loud shouting in the street just before five o'clock awakened me, and I opened my window. Shouting to a seaman running past, I asked what was the matter, when the man's astounding reply was: 'The whole river is swarming with Germans!' Dressing hastily, I mounted my bicycle and ran along the Beverley road through Prospect Street to the dock office, where around the Wilberforce monument the excited crowd now already collected was impassable, and I was compelled to dismount.

"On eager inquiry I learnt that half an hour before men at work in the Alexandra Dock were amazed to discern through the grey mists still hanging across the Humber an extraordinary sight. Scores of ocean-going