There was a great sea to still his soul and lay down upon his spirit that big, quiet roundness of the earth.
Nothing is quite the same after that wide strip of sea—sleeping out there alone night by night—the gentle round earth sloping away down from under one on both sides, in the midst of space.... Then, suddenly, almost before one knows, that quiet Space still lingering round one, perhaps one finds oneself thrust up out of the ground in the night into that big yellow roar of Trafalgar Square.
And here are the swift sudden crowds of people, one's own fellow-men hurrying past. One looks into the faces of the people hurrying past: "Where are we going?" One looks at the stars: "WHERE ARE WE GOING?"
That night, when I was thrust up out of the ground and stood dazed in the Square, I was told in a minute that this London where I was was a besieged and conquered city. Some men had risen up in a day and said to 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.