As I watched him disappear among the French soldiers bound for the front, who crowded the station on the night when I took my departure, the words of another soldier came to me: "He that endureth to the end shall be saved."
I stepped out of the taxi, and found myself in front of three old-fashioned houses. The vicinity was one of distinction; but the houses before me, dwarfed by the Privy Council Building and the Foreign Office, and hard by the Parliament Buildings, were the strays of another century. Westminster Abbey, not far away, gives them an excuse for staying. Looking up, I read, "The First Lord of the Treasury, No. 10," and knew that I was before the portals of historic "10 Downing Street," for a century and a half now, with only a few intervals, the official home of Britain's Prime Ministers, and in reality the "White House" of the United Kingdom.
I lifted the ancient knocker that for perhaps three centuries has announced guests and that for at least a century and a half has called attendants to usher in the statesmen and the politicians of the earth. The door swung open, and a quiet man dressed in a business suit took my card.
About me on the high walls of a small square hall hung the antlered heads of deer. I followed down a long and simple but impressive passage to another hall, where I ran, head on, into a well-set-up gentleman of thirty-nine,--Major Waldorf Astor,--who was coming to meet me. He was delightfully informal. Through another waiting-room one passes into the Council-Chamber of the War Cabinet. Here all the British Cabinets have met since the Prime Minister established himself at "10 Downing Street."
The room is worthy of the greatness it has treasured. There are bookshelves about its long walls, and the lighting is good. The books are scarcely visible now, for they are curtained closely with maps and charts; here the far-flung battle lines of the Empire, which have become the front of civilization, are daily traced by the fingers of the men whose hands hold Democracy's destiny. The eastern end of the chamber is flanked on each side by two chaste Corinthian columns. A great table commands the centre of the room. It is covered with green baize and well set off by heavy, formal chairs. The room was furnished with a larger cabinet in mind; but every session of the War Council is attended by those responsible for the numberless leadership tasks of the struggle, and there are seldom vacant places.