As it was, the Americans instinctively flocked to the smoking-room
and drank to the British navy. While this ceremony was going
forward, from the promenade-deck we heard tumultuous shouts and
cheers. We believed that, relieved of our presence, our English
friends had given way to rejoicings. But when we went on deck we
found them deeply engaged in cricket. The cheers we had heard
were over the retirement of a batsman who had just been given out,
leg before wicket.

When we reached London we found no idle boasting, no vainglorious
jingoism. The war that Germany had forced upon them the English
accepted with a grim determination to see it through and, while they
were about it, to make it final. They were going ahead with no false
illusions. Fully did every one appreciate the enormous task, the
personal loss that lay before him. But each, in his or her way, went
into the fight determined to do his duty. There was no dismay, no
hysteria, no "mafficking."

The secrecy maintained by the press and the people regarding
anything concerning the war, the knowledge of which might
embarrass the War Office, was one of the most admirable and
remarkable conspiracies of silence that modern times have known.
Officers of the same regiment even with each other would not discuss
the orders they had received. In no single newspaper, with no matter
how lurid a past record for sensationalism, was there a line to suggest
that a British army had landed in France and that Great Britain was at
war. Sooner than embarrass those who were conducting the fight, the
individual English man and woman in silence suffered the most cruel
anxiety of mind. Of that, on my return to London from Brussels, I was
given an illustration. I had written to The Daily Chronicle telling where