But it was one figure who stood alone as the symbol of the nation in this tribute to the spirit of our dead. As Big Ben struck three-quarters after 10, the King advanced toward the cenotaph, followed by the Prince of Wales, the Prince's two brothers, and the Duke of Connaught, and while others stood in line looking toward the top of Whitehall, the King was a few paces ahead of them, alone, waiting, motionless, for the body of the Unknown Warrior who had died in his service. It was very silent in Whitehall, and before this ordered silence the dense lines of people kept their places without movement, only spoke little in their long time of waiting, and then, as they caught their first glimpse of the gun carriage, were utterly quiet. All heads were bared and bent. Their emotion was as though a little cold breeze were passing. One seemed to feel the spirit of the crowd. Above all this mass of plain people something touched one with a sharp yet softening touch. The massed bands passed with their noble music and their drums thumping at the hearts of men and women, the Guards with their reversed arms, and then the gun carriage, with its team of horses, halted in front of the cenotaph, where the King stood, and the Royal hand was raised to salute the soldier who had died that we might live, chosen by fate for this honor, which is in remembrance of that great army of comrades who went out with him to No Man's Land. The King laid a wreath on his coffin and then stepped back again. Crowded behind the gun carriage in one long vista was an immense column of men of all branches of the navy and army, moving up slowly before coming to a halt, and behind again other men in civil clothes, and everywhere among them and above them were flowers in the form of wreaths and crosses. Then all was still, and the picture was complete, framing in that coffin, where the steel hat and the King's sword lay upon the flag which draped it. The soul of the nation at its best, purified at this moment by this emotion, was there, in silence, about the dust of that Unknown. Guns were being fired somewhere in the distance. They were not loud, but like the distant thumping of the guns on a misty day in Flanders when there was "nothing to report," though on such a day, perhaps, this man had died. Presently there was a far-off wailing, like the cry of a banshee. It was a siren giving the warning of silence in some place by the river. The deep notes of Big Ben struck 11, and then the King turned quickly to the lever behind him, touched it, and let fall the great flags which had draped it. A grim, hard thing, like a pagan altar, as it seems to me, the cenotaph stood revealed, utterly austere, except for three standards, with their gilt wreaths.