London: "No one shall go in. No one shall go out."

I was in the great proud city at last, the capital of the world, her
big, new, self-assured inventions all about her, all around her, and
soldiers camping out with her locomotives!

With her long trains for endless belts of people going in and coming
out, with her air-brakes, electric lights, and motor-cars and aerial
mails, it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations were
all choked up with a queer, funny, old, gone-by, clanky piece of
machinery, an invention for making people good, like soldiers!

And I stood in the middle of the roar of Trafalgar Square and asked, as
all England was asking that night: "Where are we going?"

And I looked in the faces of the people hurrying past.

And nobody knew.

And the next day I went through the silenter streets of the city, the
great crowded dailies where all the world troops through, and then the
more quiet weeklies, then the monthlies, more dignified and like private
parks; and the quarterlies, too, thoughtful, high-minded, a little
absent, now and then a footfall passing through.

And I found them all full of the same strange questioning: "Where are we
going?"

And nobody knew.