essional architect and George an amateur, and it involved him
in a seemly but intense altercation between itself and the subordinate
bureaucracy of a Presidency. It kept George employed. In due course
people discovered that business must proceed as usual, and even the
architectural profession, despite its traditional pessimism, had hopes
of municipalities and other bodies which were to inaugurate public works
in order to diminish unemployment.

Nevertheless George had extreme difficulty in applying himself
efficiently to urgent tasks. He kept thinking: "It's come! It's come!"
He could not get over the fact that it had come--the European War which
had obsessed men's minds for so many years past. He saved the face of
his own theory as to the immediate impossibility of a great war, by
positively asserting that Germany would never have fought had she
foreseen that Britain would fight. He prophesied (to himself) Germany's
victory, German domination of Europe, and, as the grand central
phenomenon, mysterious ruin for George Edwin Cannon. But the next
instant he would be convinced that Germany would be smashed, and
quickly. Germany, he reckoned superiorly, in 'taking on England' had
'bitten off more than she could chew.'

He knew almost naught of the progress of the fighting. He had obtained
an expensive map of Western Europe and some flagged pins, and had hung
the map up in his hall and had stuck the pins into it with exactitude.
He had moved the pins daily, until little Laurencine one morning, aloft
on a chair, decided to change all the positions of the opposing armies.
Laurencine established German army corps in Marseilles, the
Knockmillydown Mountains, and Torquay, while sending the French to
Elsinore and Aberdeen. There was trouble in the house. Laurencine
suffered, and was given to understand that war was a serious matter.
Still, George soon afterwards had ceased to manipulate the pins; they
seemed to be incapable of arousing his imagination; he could not be
bothered with them; he could not make the effort necessary to acquire a
scientific conception of the western campaign--not to mention the
eastern, as to which his ignorance was nearly perfect.

Yet he read much about the war. Some of the recounted episodes deeply
and ineffaceably impressed him. For example, an American newspaper
correspondent had written a dramatic description of the German army
marching, marching steadily along a great Belgian high road--a
proces