A Time of terror

An Englishman returning to his native land after an absence of twenty-five years, might not at first discover much difference in the look of London. There stood the old familiar landmarks—Buckingham Palace, St James's, the Marble Arch, Apsley House, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, the British Museum, St Paul's, the Tower, the Monument, and many another well-remembered building. There were new hotels, new theatres, new buildings of all sorts, and at least one notable new thoroughfare. In the great arteries of business the old familiar thunder of the traffic rose louder than ever, with the modern addition of a new smell and a new noise—the smell and the whir of the motor-car. The mean streets were as mean as ever; the contrast between this and that locality more than ever noticeable.

And the people, save for the scarcely perceptible change in fashion of dress, at first looked pretty much the same. There were more loafers, more wastrels, more sprawling scarecrows of humanity in the parks, and along the Embankment. The richest city in the world still had thousands and more thousands of homeless, miserable creatures in its midst, thousands whom the State knew not how to save for their own sake, or for the service of England.