The soldiers outside Buckingham Palace

I was standing in the midst of a great crowd in the open space of the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace. Like the rest of the world, I had come out to see the remnant of the army of Belgium who had survived the Great War, and who, peace having been declared, had been brought to London to receive the welcome of our King and people. The crowd about me was so dense that for a time I could only see the shoulders of the people near me, but presently it parted a little, and I could see an army of short dark men, dressed in splendid uniforms with touches of scarlet about them, whilst others were in uniforms almost covered with gold. Some one standing just behind me (as the "guide" so often stands) said, "Why, they are all chamarré d'or, like the Guards' band at a State dinner or ball in the Palace," but I was so sorely disappointed that I turned away almost in tears. "Oh, but I did not come to see this," I said; "these men look merely like dressed-up dolls!" and indeed they were not in the least like the war-worn soldiers whom I had pictured, and who had fought and suffered so long. In the sharpness of my disappointment I awoke. I began as usual writing down the dreams of the night. Something about this particular dream haunted me, something that was certainly missing from it that would explain it, and I lay awake wondering — whilst some other part of my mind was meanwhile at work, actively searching for the missing connection or idea — for a refrain which I felt somehow echoed through the dream itself, but which I could not recall. And then suddenly it flashed back to me in the words: "But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they that are clothed in soft raiment dwell in kings' houses. But what went ye out for to see?" Kings' houses — those were the familiar words round which the dream had crystallised, and the origin of it at once became clear. The crowd outside the King's palace! What had we come out to see? The dream imagination did the rest, and made up the brief dream story.

November, 1916