Morally and economically Europe has lost the war. The great marquee of European civilization in whose yellow light we all grew up, and read or wrote or loved or travelled has fallen down; the side ropes are frayed, the centrepole is broken, the chairs and tables are all in pieces, the tea-urns empty, the roses are withered on their stands, and the prize marrows; the grass is dead.

London looked horrible […] Half the women looked like cheap tarts and the men like Black Market touts. There was neither dignity nor genuine high spirits. The atmosphere wasn't English, wasn't Continental, wasn't honestly American: it was a dreadful rancid stew […] it was a hellish huddle of nasty trading, of tired pleasure-seeking, of entertainment without art, of sex without passion and joy, of life buzzing and swarming without hope and vision. London could take it. But how much more of this could it take?