Thursday, May 6th., Cadogan Square, London.
Today is the third day of the general strike. At lunch yesterday (Gardiner, Tudor Waters, Hedges, Jim Currie, Sassoon, and Lord Devonport) most people were gloomy, but all uncompromising. General opinion that the fight would be short but violent. Bloodshed anticipated next week. Plenty of wireless messages, futile. Typescript printed Times and Financial Times.
Another N.N.E. wind today. Not a taxi on the streets that I saw. It is now over a week since I did anything on the novel - the last day being Thursday, 29th April.
I went for a walk to Brompton Road to spy out the land. Eleven buses passed the top of Sloane Street in five minutes at 4.30. Only two of them were Generals, and both of them had a window smashed. I saw more in the evening. A policeman and a special constable on every General.
I drove up to see Griffin about "Lord Raingo", which he had medically vetted for me. He was very pleased with the book.
Dined at the Yacht Club, after some trouble about me not being in evening dress (a new rule that I had never heard of). However, I insisted on dining there, and did. Imagine enforced evening dress in the middle of a General Strike!
Additionally see 'The General Strike'
Also for May 6th., see 'Survivor's story'
Returned here on Friday and met Bertie Sullivan in the train. Carrying F.O. mails over to Holland in the Copenhagen, he had been torpedoed by a submarine. He said 6 subms. waited for the boat, in 3 pairs. He was shaving. He seems to have kept pretty calm, but said he couldn't get his boots on. "I was flurried," he said. Of 17 bags he saved 16, and sank one. Result, after several days, a sort of lack of feeling in fingers. (It was March and he was not in row-boat for long.)
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