A QUIETER LONDON

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 8, 4 October 1918, Page 5

A QUIETER LONDON

LATE HOURS ABANDONED,

At 1.30' I am in Leicester Squara (writes Mr. George R. Sims in the "Daily Chronicle," describing London as it now is between midnight and dawn). Tho only wayfarere who pass mo by aro three young foreigners making their way home. In Piccadilly, Circus there is only a policeman.. Ho is standing back in a doorway.' Ho looks after mo as I pass him by. Tliere' is no ono else in the Circus for him to look after In tho years before war at this hour I have seen these pavements crowded with men and women, and I have heard a babel o£ alien tongues. And high over all, following the stream of women, that had at closing time poured out from certain cafes and night haunts, was tho gutteral tongue of the Fatherland. To-' night not a skirt flutters in the breeze. Neither the voice of man nor woman reaches my ears.

I walk up Regent Street in the middle of the road. Ono taxi passes mo each way, and that is all the traffic to be seen or heard. I turn asido for a moment, and' linger under tho blue lamp of Vino Streot.police station. In tho old days at this time it was a busy scene, and the police came along at intervals with tlicir midnight ' "bag" of erring Adams and fallen Eves. To-night Vino Streot ip a Paradise, with no Adam and no Eve passing through tho gates of which the guardian angel wears the uniform of tho law.

At 2 o'clock in the morning I am "Alone in Regent Street," and.l feel almost justified in thinking of myself as tho lioro of Poet Buchanan's drama, "Alone in London." In Oxford Street I meet two market carts lumbering along on their way to Covent Garden, and nothing else. I cross Tottenham Court Road, and moot only a belated wanderer ill khaki.