Womens Wild Oats | Page 2

was almost the exception. There was no attempt at concealment. But what impressed me was the way of holding and smoking the cigarette with an awkwardness that proclaimed the novice. Quite plainly the majority of these girls were smoking not at all because they desired to smoke, but for a lark. A little thing, you will say, very harmless, and possibly you are right, and yet it is the straw which reveals the direction of the wind.
In all the riotous merriment there seemed to lurk the urgency of unsatisfied wants. These instabilities and shadows did not darken the whole prospect, it may be that they intensified the pageant; London was, indeed, very wonderful that evening. Yet all the foolish and ugly incidents, petty and grave alike, of which I could not fail to be aware, came to me with an effort of challenge as something not to be ignored, but steadily to be inquired into, as an imperative call for effort and courage, a spur once again to take up my pen and write to warn women.
My thoughts turned back over the last long four-and-a-half years--years of struggle, of violent disorders, anxiety and pain. That time was finished. Thanks to our dead! Honor to our great dead! The spectacle before me became wider and richer and deeper, more charged with hope and promise....
Bang! Laughter and harsh screaming as a rocket shot up starring the dark evening heavens with its clustering balls of colors. In many parts of the city, long obscured, lamps were lighted; row upon row of little electric globes of white and red and blue appeared, and the unaccustomed blaze infected the revelers. It gave a fresh impetus to shouting; it was like removing the curtain from some great, long-darkened mirror. The fun grew boisterous. At this corner there were cheers for the Prime Minister, at the next for Foch and Haig, and Beatty and the Grand Fleet, and for France and America. Numbers did not know what exactly they cheered; it did not matter, it gave an excuse for noise. Much noise was needed to keep up the revel and convince everyone that everybody was happy.
Unceasingly the violent merry-making went on. Hoot! and an immense motor-wagon, crowded with singing girls, blowing hooters, wildly waving flags, and followed by a trail of taxi-cabs like a gigantic wobbling tail, each one laden with ten, twenty, and even more soldiers, charged down a side street and urged its right of way brutally through the crowd.
It seemed to me that the whole spirit and quality of the reveling was summarized. A rabble of distractions sought to sway me hither and thither. Now, I watched a company of girls dancing with young officers to the accompaniment of a barrel organ, then a group singing, and another group playing some round game that I did not know; now it was some Tommies surrounded by a group of screaming girls. In one group a woman was carrying a baby, and a tiny child dragged at the hand of another girl, crying drearily, and no one noticed. Boys were kicking about boardings that had been torn from the statues in Trafalgar Square. The noise became more and more deafening.
Did anyone realize at all the colossal importance of that day? This hour of supreme thanksgiving, the most glorious of all days in the history of the world, was passing in a delirium of waste. For there was no joy, only a great pretense and noise.
In this medley the sense of the present tended to disappear. Victory Night, by some fantastic transformation, to me became terrible with menace. All the jostling, excited people, and especially the disheveled women and the crowds of rioting girls, appeared as tormented puppets, moving and capering, not at all from will and desire of their own, but agitated violently and incessantly by some hidden hand, forced into playing parts they did not want to play, saying words they had no wish to speak, cutting antics for which they had no aptitude or liking. Cruelties lurked everywhere, waiting in the confused mummery. Reality was being left and with it the practical grasp of those powerful simplicities that alone can guide life through confusion. I felt this with stinging certainty. Everyone seemed playing a part, goaded with the urgency of seeking an escape from themselves.
But must life always go on in the same way? Surely our great dead point us through all these pretenses into the future? Dead compelling hands, insisting with irritable gestures that this failure of life should cease, and cease forever.
A thousand serried problems seemed to be pressing on me at once. My young son was angry at my sadness, but it was the biting consciousness of his presence that ruled my mood. This world was his world; this England his