I read next day that the leaders of the unemployed insisted upon sending a deputation to the minister of labour. A public demonstration was announced later; and from an evening paper I learned that, while the police would not interfere with an orderly march through the streets, it must not be conducted in the neighbourhood of Westminster. As I walked home that night, I was given a handbill in which I read, over the signature of Griffiths, that the hunger-march would be resumed next morning and would be directed first to Buckingham Palace, then—as a concession to constitutionalism—to the Home Office and finally—for a reason I could not guess, since parliament was no longer sitting—to the House of Commons. It was not for Scotland Yard to say who might or might not have access to the king or his responsible ministers; and the problem that chiefly vexed the spirit of Griffiths was to discover who in fact was responsible. “Now,” I told my colleagues when I reached Fetter Lane through a double line of police, “there’s going to be trouble. The only thing that can stop it will be a downpour of rain.” “And there is in fact a hard frost,” yawned Triskett. “This fog may do as well,” said Jefferson Wright. “It’s pretty serious,” we all agreed. Did any of us believe in the warnings and predictions which we uttered? I cannot say. Everything that happened in these days is coloured by the memory of what happened afterwards. I may conceivably take credit for explaining before other people that these demonstrations were on a different plane from the coal strikes and railway strikes that aroused our uneasiness after the war; on the other hand, I may only have been suffering from disordered nerves. It was the end of the year; I wanted a holiday; and the self-control which I had to exercise at home sometimes deserted me when I was at my office. Accordingly I claim no praise and feel no shame in saying that I was nervous. The long lines of police-pickets had not been stationed about the streets without some purpose; and the news that trickled in throughout the morning was not of a kind to allay anxiety. Philip Hornbeck did indeed repeat by telephone his customary assurance that Griffiths could be discounted. When the marchers entered Regent’s Park, they were warned that they would not be allowed to approach Downing Street; and, as Hornbeck walked to the Admiralty, he passed half-a-dozen columns of dejected, leaderless men who were standing easy or trudging slowly under banners of ineffectual protest. Even the bands, he said, were dispirited. After one glance, the passers-by paid no heed to a sight that was now wearisomely familiar; and, in Hornbeck’s eyes, the gaunt, ragged army found its best friends among the constables who tramped in a protective and restraining cordon. “Did these fellows seem disappointed?,” I asked.