In some early chapter in this heap I compared all our present
colour and abundance to October foliage before the frosts nip down the
leaves. That I still feel was a good image. Perhaps I see wrongly. It
may be I see decay all about me because I am, in a sense, decay. To
others it may be a scene of achievement and construction radiant with
hope. I, too, have a sort of hope, but it is a remote hope, a hope that
finds no promise in this Empire or in any of the great things of our
time.
How they will look in history I do not know, how time and chance will
prove them I cannot guess; that is how they have mirrored themselves on
one contemporary mind.
II
Concurrently with writing the last chapter of this book I have been much
engaged by the affairs of a new destroyer we have completed. It has been
an oddly complementary alternation of occupations. Three weeks or so ago
this novel had to be put aside in order that I might give all my time
day and night to the fitting and finishing of the engines. Last Thursday
X 2, for so we call her, was done and I took her down the Thames and
went out nearly to Texel for a trial of speed.
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