The Spectator at war: A city at war

From The Spectator, 5 September 1914:

LONDON changes day by day, and the London of the first few days of the war lies far in the past, distant for all of us by differently measured aeons of time. The trainloads of troops, the horses, the hurry, the altered railway service, the packed streets, the questioning crowds, the visible stress and strain of meeting the new conditions and the new standards of the world—these are gone. London instead is very quiet, and exceedingly hard at work. The noise of preparation has ceased, and now the silence that has followed has a quality of its own. There is a new sound in it, which a Londoner returning from travel would detect at once. It is not to be located or recognized easily, and that is because none of us have heard it before; but after listening for it and hearing it for some time, we may perhaps decide that it is a sound of purpose.