In London, the gravest aspect of that tragic week was the condition of the populace. It is supposed that over two million people flocked into the capital during the first three days. And the prices of the necessities of life were higher in London than anywhere else in the country. The Government measures for relief were ill-considered and hopelessly inadequate. But, in justice to "The Destroyers," it must be remembered that leading authorities have said that adequate measures were impossible, from sheer lack of material. During one day--I think it was Wednesday--huge armies of the hungry unemployed--nine-tenths of our wage-earners were unemployed--were set to work upon entrenchments in the north of London. But there was no sort of organization, and most of the men streamed back into the town that night, unpaid, unfed, and sullenly resentful. Then, like cannon shots, came the reports of the fall of York, Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Hull, and Huddersfield, and the apparently wanton demolition of Norwich Cathedral. The sinking of the _Dreadnought_ near the Nore was known in London within the hour. Among the half-equipped regulars who were hurried up from the southwest, I saw dozens of men intercepted in the streets by the hungry crowds, and hustled into leaving their fellows. Then came Friday's awful "surrender riot" at Westminster, a magnificent account of which gives Martin's big work its distinctive value. I had left Constance Grey's flat only half an hour before the riot began, and when I reached Trafalgar Square there was no space between that and the Abbey in which a stone could have been dropped without falling upon a man or a woman. There were women in that maddened throng, and some of them, crying hoarsely in one breath for surrender and for bread, were suckling babies. No Englishman who witnessed it could ever forget that sight. The Prime Minister's announcement that the surrender should be made came too late. The panic and hunger-maddened incendiaries had been at work. Smoke was rising already from Downing Street and the back of the Treasury. Then came the carnage. One can well believe that not a single unnecessary bullet was fired. Not to believe that would be to saddle those in authority with a less than human baseness. But the question history puts is: Who was primarily to blame for the circumstances which led up to the tragic necessity of the firing order?