The battle had begun!

* * * * *

One does not wish to grumble or make a fuss, but still it does seem a
little hard that a battle of such importance, a battle so outstanding
in the history of the world, should have been fought under such
conditions. London at that moment was richer than ever before in
descriptive reporters. It was the age of descriptive reporters, of
vivid pen-pictures. In every newspaper office there were men who could
have hauled up their slacks about that battle in a way that would have
made a Y.M.C.A. lecturer want to get at somebody with a bayonet; men
who could have handed out the adjectives and exclamation-marks till you
almost heard the roar of the guns. And there they were--idle,
supine--like careened battleships. They were helpless. Bart Kennedy did
start an article which began, "Fog. Black fog. And the roar of guns.
Two nations fighting in the fog," but it never came to anything. It was
promising for a while, but it died of inanition in the middle of the
second stick.

It was hard.

The lot of the actual war-correspondents was still worse. It was
useless for them to explain that the fog was too thick to give them a
chance. "If it's light enough for them to fight," said their editors
remorselessly, "it's light enough for you to watch them." And out they
had to go.

They had a perfectly miserable time. Edgar Wallace seems to have lost
his way almost at once. He was found two days later in an almost