We shall go on with the programme." At first the people were in no mood for mere amusement.

They had been made to face for a brief moment the great and stern reality of war.

The words and more the manner of Jack Romayne had produced a deep sense in their minds of the danger of a European conflagration, and the ominous words of the young German spoken as from intimate knowledge only served to deepen the impression made by Romayne.

But the feeling was transitory, and speedily the possibility of war was dismissed as unthinkable.

The bogey of a German war was familiar and therefore losing its power to disturb them.