In dealing with the subsequent stage of affairs in this country, I feel myself at a loss. Matters of fact, sequences of events, definite incidents in a chain of affairs: all these can be described without much difficulty and with a certain detachment on the part of the narrator. But when it comes to indicating the transition from one psychological state to another, the task is one which would require for its proper fulfilment a more practised pen than mine; and it is precisely this transitional period which I must now attempt to make clear in retrospect; for without an understanding of it my narrative would lack one of its corner-stones. Apart from the mere question of narration, however, there is a further difficulty which cannot be evaded. I myself passed through this crisis and underwent day by day these changes in outlook which I shall have to portray; so that the personal factor cannot be eliminated from my account. Yet my own feelings and views must not be allowed to monopolise the field; since they had not the slightest influence upon the main current of popular feeling. I have used the word “current,” and perhaps it is the best one which I could have chosen to express the thing which baffles me. As a man walks by the side of a mountain stream, he sees the volume of the water change as it grows from rill to rivulet and from rivulet to river; yet no single tributary is of any notable size. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the banks diverge, the sound of the running water grows louder and yet louder: until at last comes a sweep over the rapids and the thunder of the fall below. It was in this way that events merged into each other between the outbreak and the complete realisation of our fears. The transition from security to panic was not made in one swift step. Rather it came little by little, and at no point could one indicate precisely how the public feeling had changed from that of the previous day. A whole series of tiny impulses, each in itself almost negligible, served to drive us from one mental position to the next; and a complete analysis of the psychology of the time would be an impossible task. I propose, therefore, merely to indicate some of these innumerable factors which played upon our spirits; so that this blank in my narrative may be filled in some way, even if only roughly.