midnight
An unknown priest had scarcely been able to consume the Blessed Sacrament before he was seized and throttled ; the Archbishop with eleven priests and two bishops had been hanged at the north end of the church , thirty-five convents had been destroyed , St. George 's Cathedral burned to the ground ; and it was reported even , by the evening papers , that it was believed that , for the first time since the introduction of Christianity into England , there was not one Tabernacle left within twenty miles of the Abbey . `` London , '' explained the _ New People _ , in huge headlines , `` was cleansed at last of dingy and fantastic nonsense . '' It was known at about fifteen-and-a-half o'clock that at least seventy volors had left for Rome , and half-an-hour later that Berlin had reinforced them by sixty more . At midnight , fortunately at a time when the police had succeeded in shepherding the crowds into some kind of order , the news was flashed on to cloud and placard alike that the grim work was done , and that Rome had ceased to exist . The early morning papers added a few details , pointing out , of course , the coincidence of the fall with the close of the year , relating how , by an astonishing chance , practically all the heads of the hierarchy throughout the world had been assembled in the Vatican which had been the first object of attack , and how these , in desperation , it was supposed , had refused to leave the City when the news came by wireless telegraphy that the punitive force was on its way . There was not a building left in Rome ; the entire place , Leonine City , Trastevere , suburbs -- everything was gone ; for the volors , poised at an immense height , had parcelled out the City beneath them with extreme care , before beginning to drop the explosives ; and five minutes after the first roar from beneath and the first burst of smoke and flying fragments , the thing was finished . The volors had then dispersed in every direction , pursuing the motor and rail-tracks along which the population had attempted to escape so soon as the news was known ; and it was supposed that not less than thirty thousand belated fugitives had been annihilated by this foresight .