ful
pamphlet in the night.

"I've been thinking about your luggage at that hotel," he went on,
turning to his guest again. "You'll have to write and get it packed up
and sent down here--

"No," he said, "we won't let you go until you can hit out with that arm
and fell a man. Listen!"

Mr. Direck could not distinguish any definite sound.

"The smell of frying rashers, I mean," said Mr. Britling. "It's the
clarion of the morn in every proper English home....

"You'd like a rasher, coffee?

"It's good to work in the night, and it's good to wake in the morning,"
said Mr. Britling, rubbing his hands together. "I suppose I wrote nearly
two thousand words. So quiet one is, so concentrated. And as soon as I
have had my breakfast I shall go on with it again."

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

THE COMING OF THE DAY

Section 1

It was quite characteristic of the state of mind of England in the
summer of 1914 that Mr. Britling should be mightily concerned about the
conflict in Ireland, and almost deliberately negligent of the
possibility of a war with Germany.

The armament of Germany, the hostility of Germany, the consistent
assertion of Germany, the world-wide clash of British and German
interests, had been facts in the consciousness of Englishmen for more
than a quarter of a century. A whole generation had been born and
brought up in the threat of this German war. A threat that goes on for
too long ceases to have the effect of a threat, and this overhanging
possibility had become a fixed and scarcely disturbing feature of the
British situation. It kept the navy sedulous and Colonel Rendezvous
uneasy; it stimulated a small and not very influential section of the
press to a series of reminders that bored Mr. Britling acutely, it was
the excuse for an agitation that made national service ridiculous, and
quite subconsciously it affected his attitude to a hundred things. For
example, it was a factor in his very keen indignation at the Tory levity
in Ireland, in his disgust with many things that irritated or estranged
Indian feeling. It bored him; there it was, a danger, and there was no
denying it, and yet he believed firmly that it was a mine that would
never be fired, an avalanche that would never fall. It was a nuisance, a
stupidity, that kept Europe drilling and wasted enormous sums on
unavoidable preparations; it hung up everything like a noisy argument in
a drawing-room, but that human weakness and folly would ever let