XX
BLACK SATURDAY
Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men.
Wordsworth.
In the afternoon of Black Saturday, General von Füchter, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army in England, took up his quarters, with his staff, in the residence of the German Ambassador to the Court of St. James in Carlton House Terrace, and, so men said, enjoyed the first sleep he had had for a week. (The German Ambassador had handed in his credentials, and been escorted out of England on the previous Monday.)
Throughout the small hours of Saturday morning I was at work near Romford as one of the volunteer bearers attached to Constance Grey's nursing corps. That is one reason why the memory of the north of London massacre will never leave me. One may assume that the German Army had no wish to kill nurses, but, as evidence of the terrible character of the onslaught on the poor defences of London, I may recall the fact that three of our portable nursing shelters were blown to pieces; while of Constance Grey's nurses alone five were killed and fourteen were badly wounded.
Myself, I had much to be thankful for, my only wound being the ploughing of a little furrow over the biceps of my right arm by a bullet that passed out through the back of my coat. But a circumstance for which my gratitude was more deeply moved was the fact that Constance Grey, despite a number of wonderfully narrow escapes, was entirely uninjured.
The actual entry of General von Füchter and his troops into London has been so often described that nothing remains for me to say about that. Also, I am unable to speak as an eye witness, since Constance Grey and myself were among those who returned to London, in the rear of the German troops, with the ambulances. The enemy's line of communications stretched now from the Wash to London, and between Brentwood and London there were more Germans than English. I believe the actual number of troops which entered London behind General von Füchter was under forty-eight thousand; but to the northward, northeast, and northwest the huge force which really invested the capital was spread in careful formation, and amply provided with heavy artillery, then trained upon central London from all such points as the Hampstead heights.
Although a formal note of surrender had been conveyed to General von Füchter at Romford, after the annihilation of our entrenched troops, occasional shots were fired upon the enemy as they entered London. Indeed, in the Whitechapel Road, one of the General's aides-de-camp, riding within a few yards of his chief, was killed by a shot from the upper windows of a provision shop. But the German reprisals were sharp. It is said that fifty-seven lives paid the penalty for the shooting of that aide-de-camp. Several streets of houses in northeast London were burned.
By this time the Lord Mayor of London had been notified that serious results would accrue if any further opposition were offered to the German acceptance of London's surrender; and proclamations to that effect were posted everywhere. But the great bulk of London's inhabitants were completely cowed by hunger and terror. Practically, it may be said that, throughout, the only resistance offered to the Army of the invaders was that which ended so tragically in the trenches beyond Epping and Romford, with the equally tragical defence of Colchester, and some of the northern towns captured by the eighth German Army Corps.
In London the people's demand from the first had been for unconditional surrender. It was this demand which had culminated in the Westminster Riot. The populace was so entirely undisciplined, so completely lacking in the sort of training which makes for self-restraint, that even if the Government had been possessed of an efficient striking force for defensive purposes, the public would not have permitted its proper utilization. The roar of German artillery during Friday night and Saturday morning, with the news of the awful massacre in the northern entrenchments, had combined to extinguish the last vestige of desire for resistance which remained in London.