I thought, "If I write——"
Then my thoughts were broken into by something very different.
I'd already noticed, while only half-seeing it, that a little crowd had collected down in Trafalgar Square about the spot where the Tank Bank stood in the spring, a crowd composed of Colonial soldiers, of bare-headed factory girls from Charing Cross Road, of girl clerks from the countless Government offices round about.
Without much interest I glanced over the stone coping. Above the heads of the thickening crowd I saw a banner. It was white, with the scarlet-lettered motto:
"England Must Be Fed."
There was a group on the small raised platform beneath it, an elderly man in a frock-coat, some ladies, and the gleam of a light smock. Some one was speaking underneath that flag. In the sultry midday air I suddenly heard, fresh and clear, a girlish voice. These were the scraps that came to me:
"I appeal to you girls in this crowd. Some of you are country-born girls, like me. I'm from Wales. My county was a green county. It is now a red county—ploughed up to help carry on the war. But must we look at these fields full of crops and think, 'These will rot in the ground because there will never be hands enough to carry them in'?"
Ah! Land Army!
I'd heard of this before, and now Trafalgar Square saw girls being recruited as, three years ago, it saw young men being asked why they were not in khaki.
Then the speaker's young voice rose earnestly to my listless ears: