And as it was thus at Trafalgar Square, so was it along the whole line of march—­force, overpowering force; myriads of men, splendid men, the pick of the people, whose sole function in life is blindly to obey, and blindly to kill and destroy and stamp out life.  And that they should be well fed, well clothed, and well armed, and have ships to hurl them to the ends of the earth, the East End of London, and the “East End” of all England, toils and rots and dies.

There is a Chinese proverb that if one man lives in laziness another will die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, “The fact that many men are occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there being many people without clothes.”  So one explains the other.  We cannot understand the starved and runty {2} toiler of the East End (living with his family in a one-room den, and letting out the floor space for lodgings to other starved and runty toilers) till we look at the strapping Life Guardsmen of the West End, and come to know that the one must feed and clothe and groom the other.

And while in Westminster Abbey the people were taking unto themselves a king, I, jammed between the Life Guards and Constabulary of Trafalgar Square, was dwelling upon the time when the people of Israel first took unto themselves a king.  You all know how it runs.  The elders came to the prophet Samuel, and said:  “Make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”

   And the Lord said unto Samuel:  Now therefore hearken unto their voice;
   howbeit thou shalt show them the manner of the king that shall reign
   over them.

   And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked
   of him a king, and he said: 

   This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you; he will
   take your sons, and appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be
   his horsemen, and they shall run before his chariots.

And he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and he will set some to plough his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots.

   And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be
   cooks, and to be bakers.

   And he will take your fields and your vineyards, and your oliveyards,
   even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

   And he will take a tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give
   to his officers, and to his servants.

   And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your
   goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

   He will take a tenth of your flocks; and ye shall be his servants.

   And ye shall call out in that day because of your king which ye shall
   have chosen you; and the Lord will not answer you in that day.