"Then for God's sake let's do something!" I cried impatiently. "Have a car out.... Go somewhere.... You know, our nerves are going to pieces."
We drove out through Tintern to Monmouth and returned by way of Raglan, Usk and Newport. It was a run of sixty or seventy miles through varying scenery, yet every town and village presented the same appearance of suspended animation. The holiday-makers stood about in irresolute knots or walked up and down the desolate streets; carriages half filled with women in white dresses halted at the corners of the roads, while the men grouped themselves round the driver and argued fretfully where to go and whether it was worth going anywhere at all. I thought suddenly of the first time I saw Pompeii: I had always wondered how the inhabitants looked when the first hot rain of ashes began to fall.
As we entered Chepstow on our way home, Loring halted the car and went in search of news. Exploiting the freemasonry of the Press, I scribbled my Bouverie Street address on a card and won admittance to the offices of the "Chepstow Argus." The Foreign Secretary was delivering his pronouncement, and the speech was being circulated in sections over the wires. We walked through a warehouse filled with clamorous, quarrelling newsboys, up a rickety staircase and into the composing-room, where we read the introductory passages in manuscript over the compositors' shoulders. Then we returned to the Editor's room and were handed sheet after sheet as it was taken off the private wire. There was one with a blue-pencilled line in the margin, and I read the passage aloud:
"'For many years we have had a long-standing friendship with France ... how far that friendship entails ... an obligation, let every man look into his own heart, and his own feelings, and construe the extent of the obligation for himself.'"
"Have we or have we not pledged ourselves to help France if she's attacked?" Loring demanded in perplexity.
"We have," I said.
"Then why doesn't he say so?"
"It's left as a point of honour," I suggested. "That rules out discussion how the Government made virtual promises and never took the country into its confidence. We needn't keep the others waiting any longer. Our position's defined, and Germany goes forward at her own risk."
We hurried out of the office and carried our news to the car at the street corner.
"And what now?" asked Arden.