orld. He's a surface of contact, a system of adaptations,
between his essential self and his surroundings. Well, our surroundings
have become--how shall I put it?--a landslide. The war which seemed
such a definable catastrophe in 1914 was, after all, only the first loud
crack and smash of the collapse. The war is over and--nothing is over.
This peace is a farce, reconstruction an exploded phrase. The slide goes
on,--it goes, if anything, faster, without a sign of stopping. And all
our poor little adaptations! Which we have been elaborating and trusting
all our lives!... One after another they fail us. We are stripped....
We have to begin all over again.... I'm fifty-seven and I feel at times
nowadays like a chicken new hatched in a thunderstorm."

The doctor walked towards the bookcase and turned.

"Everybody is like that...it isn't--what are you going to do? It
isn't--what am I going to do? It's--what are we all going to do!... Lord!
How safe and established everything was in 1910, say. We talked of this
great war that was coming, but nobody thought it would come. We had been
born in peace, comparatively speaking; we had been brought up in peace.
There was talk of wars. There were wars--little wars--that altered
nothing material.... Consols used to be at 112 and you fed your
household on ten shillings a head a week. You could run over all Europe,
barring Turkey and Russia, without even a passport. You could get to
Italy in a day. Never were life and comfort so safe--for respectable
people. And we WERE respectable people.... That was the world that made
us what we are. That was the sheltering and friendly greenhouse in
which we grew. We fitted our minds to that.... And here we are with the
greenhouse falling in upon us lump by lump, smash and clatter, the wild
winds of heaven tearing in through the gaps."

Upstairs on Dr. Martineau's desk lay the typescript of the opening
chapters of a book that was intended to make a great splash in the
world, his PSYCHOLOGY OF A NEW AGE. He had his metaphors ready.

"We said: 'This system will always go on. We needn't bother about it.'
We just planned our lives accordingly. It was like a bird building
its nest of frozen snakes. My father left me a decent independence. I
developed my position; I have lived between here and the hospital, doing
good work, enormously interested, prosperous, mildly distinguished. I
had been born and brought up on the good ship Civilization. I assumed
th