And then, on Armistice Day, something seemed to snap inside my head. I was out with the children at eleven o’clock, when the guns were fired and the bells began to ring. And it was then, at that moment, that it snapped, and it seemed as though I was mad for a time, and I did not understand what I was doing.
I thought:
‘It is too late . . . it is a month too late! . . . I do not want it now. . . .’
I thought:
‘If Hugo is killed, why should not all be killed? . . . it is silly to stop the fighting now . . .’
I took the children home and put them to rest. Then I took John, who was tiny, with me, and went out into the street. I walked to the Tube station, and got into a train. I got out at Charing Cross and walked across St. James’s Park, towards Victoria. It seemed to me that the world had gone mad. People were shouting, and yelling, and waving their hats; the bells were ringing still, there was a hubbub of noise; lorries crowded with munition workers whirled past me, one after the other, with shouting and singing and the raucous whirr of rattles. The king had been addressing the crowd at Buckingham Palace, and I found myself caught in the rush of people coming away. Taxi-cabs dashed past me, crammed to overflowing; officers hung out of the windows or sprawled across the roofs, blowing whistles and cheering. The crowd seethed and pressed along Victoria Street; people on the tops of omnibuses stood up and waved their arms.
And I thought:
‘Why do they do it? What do they understand?’
I thought:
‘They did not mind the war . . . they could have stopped it, these hundreds and hundreds of people, waving their arms. . . .’