By Wednesday a large proportion of the rich residents of Western London had left the capital to take its chances, while they sought the security of country homes, more particularly in the southwestern counties. Such thoroughfares as Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Bond Street were no longer occupied by well-dressed people with plenty of money to spend. Their usual patrons were for the most part absent; but, particularly at night, they were none the less very freely used--more crowded, indeed, than ever before. The really poor, the desperately hungry people, had no concern whatever with the wrecking of the famous German restaurants and beer-halls. They were not among the Regent Street and Piccadilly promenaders. The Londoners who filled these streets at night--the people who sacked the Leicester Square hotel and took part in the famous orgy which Blackburn describes as "unequalled in England since the days of the Plague, or in Europe since the French Revolution"; these people were not at all in quest of food. They were engaged upon a mad pursuit of pleasure and debauchery and drink. "Eat, drink, and be vicious; but above all, drink and be vicious; for this is the end of England!" That was their watchword. I have no wish to repeat Blackburn's terrible stories of rapine and bestiality, of the frenzy of intoxication, and the blind savagery of these Saturnalias. In their dreadful nakedness they stand for ever in the pages of his great book, a sinister blur, a fiery warning, writ large across the scroll of English history. I only wish to say that scenes I actually saw with my own eyes (one episode in trying to check the horror of which I lost two fingers and much blood), prove beyond all question to me that, even in its most lurid and revolting passages, Blackburn's account is a mere record of fact, and not at all, as some apologists have sought to show, an exaggerated or overheated version of these lamentable events. Regarded as an indication of the pass we had reached at this period of our decadence, this stage of our trial by fire, the conduct of the crowds in Western London during those dreadful nights, impressed me more forcibly than the disaster which Martin considers the climax and pivot of the week's tragedy. One does not cheerfully refer to these things, but, to be truthful, I must mention the other matter which produced upon me, personally, the greatest sense of horror and disgrace.