it up, I begin to see just how poor Germany
must be keeping it up. I begin to realise how sick Germany must be
getting of the high road and the dust and heat and the everlasting drill
and restraint.... My heart goes out to the South Germans. Old Manning
here always reminds me of Austria. Think of Germany coming like
Rendezvous on a Sunday morning, and looking stiffly over Austria's
fence. 'Come for a good hard walk, man. Keep Fit....'"

"But suppose this Balkan trouble becomes acute," said Manning.

"It hasn't; it won't. Even if it did we should keep out of it."

"But suppose Russia grappled Austria and Germany flung herself suddenly
upon France--perhaps taking Belgium on the way."

"Oh!--we should fight. Of course we should fight. Could any one but a
congenital idiot suppose we shouldn't fight? They know we should fight.
They aren't altogether idiots in Germany. But the thing's absurd. Why
_should_ Germany attack France? It's as if Manning here took a hatchet
suddenly and assailed Edith.... It's just the dream of their military
journalists. It's such schoolboy nonsense. Isn't that a beautiful pillar
rose? Edith only put it in last year.... I hate all this talk of wars
and rumours of wars.... It's worried all my life. And it gets worse and
it gets emptier every year...."

Section 2

Now just at that moment there was a loud report....

But neither Mr. Britling nor Mr. Manning nor Mr. Direck was interrupted
or incommoded in the slightest degree by that report. Because it was too
far off over the curve of this round world to be either heard or seen at
Matching's Easy. Nevertheless it was a very loud report. It occurred at
an open space by a river that ran through a cramped Oriental city, a
city spiked with white minarets and girt about by bare hills under a
blazing afternoon sky. It came from a black parcel that the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand of Austria, with great presence of mind, had just
flung out from the open hood of his automobile, where, tossed from the
side of the quay, it had descended a few seconds before. It exploded as
it touched the cobbled road just under the front of the second vehicle
in the procession, and it blew to pieces the front of the automobile and
injured the aide-de-camp who was in it and several of the spectators.
Its thrower was immediately gripped by the bystanders. The procession
stopped. There was a tremendous commotion amongst that brightly-costumed
crowd, a hot excitement in vivi