wrecked Woking station with the adjacent houses, and massacred an
entire battalion of the Cardigan Regiment. No details are known. Maxims
have been absolutely useless against their armour; the field guns have
been disabled by them. Flying hussars have been galloping into
Chertsey. The Martians appear to be moving slowly towards Chertsey or
Windsor. Great anxiety prevails in West Surrey, and earthworks are
being thrown up to check the advance Londonward. That was how the
_Sunday Sun_ put it, and a clever and remarkably prompt handbook
article in the _Referee_ compared the affair to a menagerie suddenly
let loose in a village.
No one in London knew positively of the nature of the armoured
Martians, and there was still a fixed idea that these monsters must be
sluggish: crawling, creeping painfully such expressions occurred in
almost all the earlier reports. None of the telegrams could have been
written by an eyewitness of their advance. The Sunday papers printed
separate editions as further news came to hand, some even in default of
it. But there was practically nothing more to tell people until late in
the afternoon, when the authorities gave the press agencies the news in
their possession. It was stated that the people of Walton and
Weybridge, and all the district were pouring along the roads
Londonward, and that was all.
My brother went to church at the Foundling Hospital in the morning,
still in ignorance of what had happened on the previous night. There he
heard allusions made to the invasion, and a special prayer for peace.
Coming out, he bought a _Referee_. He became alarmed at the news in
this, and went again to Waterloo station to find out if communication
were restored. The omnibuses, carriages, cyclists, and innumerable
people walking in their best clothes seemed scarcely affected by the
strange intelligence that the newsvendors were disseminating. People
were interested, or, if alarmed, alarmed only on account of the local
residents. At the station he heard for the first time that the Windsor
and Chertsey lines were now interrupted. The porters told him that
several remarkable telegrams had been received in the morning from
Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had abruptly ceased. My
brother could get very little precise detail out of them.
There s fighting going on about Weybridge was the extent of their
information.
65