The reception of the C.LV., postponed from Saturday till Monday
owing to the delay in the arrival of the 'Aurania,' left nothing to be desired in regard to the numbers and enthusiasm of the crowd, or the appearance of the troops themselves. Detraining at Paddington at midday, the men, some thirteen hundred strong, headed by their field battery and mounted infantry, and. escorted by a number of Volunteer bands; marched to St. Paul's, where a thanks- giving service was held, and thence to the Honourable Artillery Company's quarters at Finsbury, where they were entertained at a banquet. The aspect of the men, bronzed, lean, alert, yet serious-looking—modern warfare has a strangely sobering effect—was in striking contrast to their appearance when they left London less than a year ago. The procession, though in the main impressive and in. spiring, was marred as a pageant by the failure of the authorities to control the crowd. The line of route being much shorter than that traversed at the Jubilee, and stand being few and far between, the crowd was probably the largest and—owing to the failure to guard the aide avenues— the most unmanageable ever collected in the streets of London. Again and again the line was broken through by ugly rushes ; Ludgate Circus was the scene of a dangerous panic ; and in all upwards of eleven hundred cases were treated, including many serious injuries and a few deaths. The scenes in the streets at night, again, were marked by an amount of violent horseplay difficult to reconcile with our traditional character for self-repression. On the whole, London showed to greater advantage in the dark days of last December than in the rejoicings of Monday.
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