A shilling a copy was no unusual price to be paid in Cornhill, Moorgate Street, Lombard Street, or Ludgate Hill for a halfpenny paper, and the newsboys reaped rich harvests, except when, as so often happened, they were set upon by the excited crowd, and their papers torn from them.
Fleet Street was entirely blocked, and the traffic stopped by crowds standing before the newspaper offices waiting for the summary of each telegram to be posted up upon the windows. And as each despatch was read, sighs, groans, and curses were heard on every hand.
The Government—the sleek-mannered, soft-spoken, self-confident Blue Water School—were responsible for it all, was declared on every hand. They should have placed the Army upon a firm and proper footing; they should have encouraged the establishment of rifle clubs to teach every young man how to defend his home; they should have pondered over the thousand and one warnings uttered during the past ten years by eminent men, statesmen, soldiers, and writers: they should have listened to those forcible and eloquent appeals of Earl Roberts, England’s military hero, who, having left the service, had no axe to grind. He spoke the truth in the House of Lords in 1906 fearlessly, from patriotic motives, because he loved his country and foresaw its doom. And yet the Government and the public had disregarded his ominous words.
And now the blow he prophesied had fallen. It was too late—too late! The Germans were upon English soil.
What would the Government now do? What, indeed, could it do?
There were some who shouted in bravado that when mobilised the British troops would drive the invader into the sea; but such men were unaware of the length of time necessary to mobilise our Army for home defence—or of the many ridiculous regulations which appear to be laid down for the purpose of hindering rather than accelerating the concentration of forces.
All through the morning, amid the chaos of business in the City, the excitement had been steadily growing, until shortly after three o’clock the Daily Mail issued a special edition containing a copy of a German proclamation which, it was said, was now posted everywhere in East Norfolk, East Suffolk, and in Maldon in Essex, already occupied by the enemy.
The original proclamation had been found pasted by some unknown hand upon a barn door near the town of Billericay, and had been detached and brought to London in a motor-car by the Mail’s correspondent.
It showed plainly the German intention was to deal a hard and crushing blow, and it struck terror into the heart of London, for it read as will be seen on next page.
Upon the walls of the Mansion House, the Guildhall, outside the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, and upon the various public buildings within the City wards a proclamation by the Lord Mayor quickly appeared. Even upon the smoke-blackened walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, where, at that moment, a special service was being held, big posters were being posted and read by the assembled thousands.