was buttressed on either
side by the Lancers and Hussars. To the west were the red-coats of the
Royal Marines, and from the Union Club to the embouchure of Whitehall
swept the glittering, massive curve of the 1st Life Guards--gigantic men
mounted on gigantic chargers, steel-breastplated, steel-helmeted, steel-
caparisoned, a great war-sword of steel ready to the hand of the powers
that be. And further, throughout the crowd, were flung long lines of the
Metropolitan Constabulary, while in the rear were the reserves--tall,
well-fed men, with weapons to wield and muscles to wield them in ease of
need.
And as it was thus at Trafalgar Square, so was it along the whole line of
march--force, overpowering force; myriads of men, splendid men, the pick
of the people, whose sole function in life is blindly to obey, and
blindly to kill and destroy and stamp out life. And that they should be
well fed, well clothed, and well armed, and have ships to hurl them to
the ends of the earth, the East End of London, and the "East End" of all
England, toils and rots and dies.
There is a Chinese proverb that if one man lives in laziness another will
die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, "The fact that many men are
occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there being
many people without clothes.
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