It must also be admitted that General, or, as he now was, General Baron von Füchter, accomplished some fine work during this same period. It has been said that he was but consulting the safety of his Imperial master's armed forces; but credit may safely be given the General for the discretion and despatch he used in distributing the huge body of troops at his command, without hitch or friction, to the various centres which it was his plan to occupy. His was a hand of iron, but he used it to good purpose; and the few errors of his own men were punished with an even more crushing severity than he showed where British offences were concerned.

The task of garrisoning those English ports with German soldiers was no light or easy one; no task for a light or gentle hand. In carrying out this undertaking a very little weakness, a very small display of indecision, might easily have meant an appalling amount of bloodshed. As it was, the whole business was completed in a wonderfully short while, and with remarkable smoothness. The judicial and municipal administration of these centres was to remain English; but supreme authority was vested in the officer commanding the German forces in each place, and the heads of such departments as the postal and the police, were German. No kind of public gathering or demonstration was permissible in these towns, unless under the auspices of the German officer in command, who in each case was given the rank of Governor of the town.

We had learned by this time that the Channel Fleet had not been entirely swept away. But a portion of it was destroyed, and the remaining ships had been entrapped. It was strategy which had kept British ships from our coasts during the fatal week of the invasion. "The Destroyers" were responsible for our weak-kneed concessions to Berlin some years earlier, in the matter of wireless telegraphy. In the face of urgent recommendations to the contrary from experts, the Government had yielded to German pressure in the matter of making our own system interchangeable, and had even boasted of their diplomacy in thus ingratiating themselves with Germany. As a consequence, the enemy had been able to convey messages purporting to come from the British Admiralty and ordering British commanders to keep out of home waters.

That these messages should have been conveyed in secret code form was a mystery which subsequent investigations failed to solve. Some one had played traitor. But the history of the invasion has shown us that we had very many traitors among us in those days; and there came a time when the British public showed clearly that it was weary of Commissions of Inquiry. Where so many, if not indeed all of us, were at fault, where the penalty was so crushing, it was felt that there were other and more appropriate openings for official energy and public interest than the mere apportioning of blame and punishment, however well deserved.

The issue of what was called the "Invasion Budget" was Parliament's first important act, after the dispersal of the German forces in England, and the termination of the Government distribution of food supplies. The alterations of customs tariff were not particularly notable. The House had agreed that revenue was the objective to be considered, and fiscal adjustments with reference to commerce were postponed for the time. The great change was in the income-tax. The minimum income to be taxed was £100 instead of, as formerly, £160. The scale ran like this: sixpence in the pound upon incomes of between £100 and £150, ninepence from that to £200, one shilling from that to £250, one and threepence from that to £500, one and sixpence from that to £1,000, two shillings upon all incomes of between £1,000 and £5,000, and four shillings in the pound upon all incomes of over £5,000.

It was on the day following that of the Invasion Budget issue that I received a letter from my sister Lucy, in Davenham Minster, telling me of my mother's serious illness, and asking me to come to her at once. And so, after a hurried visit to the South Kensington flat to explain my absence to Constance, I turned my back upon London, for the first time in a year, and journeyed down into Dorset.

II
ANCIENT LIGHTS

Then the progeny that springs
From the forests of our land,
Armed with thunder, clad with wings,
Shall a wider world command.