Energy books

It
was to be London's day out. They were to fight for the glory of the
old town . . . the old town where they had lived in little suburban
houses with flower-gardens, where they had gone up by the early
morning trains to city offices and government offices and warehouses
and shops, in days before they ever guessed they would go a-
soldiering, and crouch in shell-holes under high explosives, and
thrust sharp steel into German bowels. But they would do their best.
They would go through with it. They would keep their sense of humor
and make cockney jokes at death. They would show the stuff of London
pride.
"Domine, dirige nos!"
I knew many of those young Londoners. I had sat in tea-shops with them
when they were playing dominoes, before the war, as though that were
the most important game in life. I had met one of them at a fancy-
dress ball in the Albert Hall, when he was Sir Walter Raleigh and I
was Richard Sheridan. Then we were both onlookers of life--chroniclers
of passing history.


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