The nation falls silent to remember the war dead: from the archive, 12 November 1919

Nearly everyone wanted to be in the open air. Crowds streamed out of the offices a few minutes before eleven to stand on the pavement

London, Tuesday night

There must have been a resemblance between the scenes in all great cities during the silent minutes to-day, but because of its position as capital London probably expressed itself more impressively. It was like stopping a clock for two minutes, and because of the fineness of its social machinery the clock of London was stopped and began again with very little damage to the day’s work.

I have discussed the question with people who were in many different parts of the town, and all agreed about the completeness of the observance. The exceptions proved this. One man walked down Tottenham Court Road during the pause, with the crowd standing bareheaded and the vehicles motionless, and this one man, striding along in the middle of the road, impressed my friend as the strangest apparition he had ever seen. It seemed something against nature.

Nearly everyone wanted to be in the open air. Crowds streamed out of the offices a few minutes before eleven to stand on the pavement. Shopkeepers came out of their shops, workgirls out of their factories, sailors came on deck, tubemen came out of their lifts. It was as though a message was being sent and received, and that its transmission must be through the void.

Meetings

My thoughts turned back to a farewell scene, near the beginning of the war, when the 2nd Scots Guards went out to the front. There was, of course, silence about their going as about all the departures of that great army, and they passed through London by-streets, so the few who were at Waterloo to see them go were relatives and friends. It was an unusually moving scene, for it was in the black days, and people had begun to realise how small the chances were against their return.

The soldiers were marched on to the platform, and their wives and mothers and sweethearts remained outside behind the grating. Just before the train pulled out the men began to sing at one part of the train, and it was quickly taken up right along the train and by the men still on the platform. It was not “Tipperary” or a music-hall song, but the old Scots ballad that flowered out of partings and sudden death:

You’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road,

And I’II be in Scotland afore ye;

But me and my true love will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

It was written of a Jacobite lover whose sweetheart had come to say farewell to him before his execution. The High Road is the high road and the Low Road is through the grave. To-day as we stood among the multitude where many women were weeping one conceived the vast multitude of London’s dead soldiers who had come home by the Low Road to every suburb and district in this wilderness of bricks as …read more