NO MOURNING

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Most of the theater programs are revivals of old favorites, and a few of the theaters are still closed. All that are open begin promptly at 8 P.M. Five hundred English actors have gone to the front.

You have to make the circuit to find the heart of England at war, but you find it — horse, foot, and dragoons; men, women, and children. "Are we downhearted?" answered by a thunderous "No!" Then again silence, and turning down of the lights, and the steady work! work! work!

"Have you a bed here?" said Kitchener when he entered the War Office. "Never heard of such a thing here," was the response.

"Get one," said Kitchener; "I have no time for clubs and hotels."

Not only Kitchener but the whole staff camped down in the office, working days, nights, and Sundays, until Lady turned over her house nearby to Kitchener and his staff.

"Where is?" I asked of his next-door neighbor. The response was, "Oh, he is at the War Office, and gets a Sunday home with his family about once in six weeks." That family was not fifteen miles from London.

When a citizen has been suddenly notified that where he could formerly get a train for home every fifteen minutes, the railroad has been

taken for military service, and he must get his supper in town, there is not the slightest word of complaint. He only wishes he could contribute more to the Empire.

I spoke with Lord K., of B & Co., concerning the loss of his eldest son, as I had known Lord K. for many years. The manner, the gesture, the speech, in response, were all one, and brief; just an indication of sacrifice that had to be made for the Empire; and that sacrifice had only just begun; deaths in the family just honorable incidents in the life of the Empire.

You see crutches and broken heads in London, but you will see no mourning.

"Yes," said Lord C. to me," the average income tax in England is now doubled until it is one eighth, or about 12 per cent, but my friends in the banking world have to pay an increasing supertax. I know many who must now give one quarter of their income to the government. They not only do it gladly, but expect it will be a half next year, and they will contribute that just as gladly."

From the top to the bottom in the Empire, all that is asked at the present time is a protected food and clothing supply, and everything else can go into "the cauldron of war."

THE ZEPPELIN SCARE

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"Did you ever see anything like it?” said an American banker in London to me. "Are n't these people wonderful? Did you ever see such resolution, such steady work, such sacrifices, such unity of empire?"

It was indeed worth a winter's trip across the ocean to see it.

Although the newspapers complained of the censorship, there was only one general complaint from the people in the British press. They wanted to know what the regulations were, or were to be, concerning self-defense when the Germans arrive in the country. Should a citizen without uniform take up arms against the invaders? Had he a right individually to shoot a German invader? Was the old rule that an Englishman's home is his castle, and that he has the right to defend it, now superseded by any rules of international warfare?

Some independent people of note were declaiming in the public prints that any German invader of England was a thief and a robber and that any weapons might be used to attack the invaders; and that there was no rule of warfare that could prevent an Englishman defending his home by any weapons against any foreign invaders.

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Nevertheless the spirit of the people was, even under invasion, to respect law and order and rules of warfare, and be guided by the government as to all forms of individual or collective defenses. They simply wanted the rules promulgated.

The English are reconciled to Zeppelin raids from Germany, and rather expect them. But there is yet no unanimity in preparation or action. The Rothschilds have put four feet of sand on the roof of their building, but the amount of their gold in store must be incomparably less than that in the Bank of England, where no precautions are visible.

Trenches by the beaches and barricades by the highways are noticeable along the entire south and east coasts of England, but they are without stores or equipment. You run across these trenches in the moonlight as you journey about the country and for the moment you wonder for what purpose somebody dug those long ditches by the shore, and what the trench or irrigation scheme is. Your answer comes when you run straight into a timber barricade across the highway nearby. Then you look down the coast and see flashing searchlights, note the lights of steamers passing up and down the coast, and

GERMAN SPIES

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reflect that there is no universal law in war. The Channel steamers are carrying lights in the war area, but the North Atlantic steamers still cross the ocean without showing even port or starboard lights. The street cars moving in the English coast cities must, of course, be lighted and the streets must have some illuminant; but the railroad carriages, hotels, and private houses must draw their curtains. Yet railroad terminals and piers must have their lights, and harbors must have their searchlights. General service lights must be ablaze, but individual glimmers must be curtained. It reminds one of Cowper, the English poet, who, in the same kennel, cut a big hole for his big dog and a little hole for the pup.

The most talked-of war subject in England is the German spy system. It is estimated there were between 30,000 and 40,000 German spies, and many times this number of German reservists, in England at the outbreak of the war. For years England has laughed over German theoretical discussions of how best to invade England, and German studies of English coast lines and country resources.

I heard years ago of a young Englishman who disputed in Berlin the war-office plans of his father's estate. He declared that he thought