r an hour or so into
the seething pot of Mr. Britling's brain and marked its multiple
strands, its inconsistencies, its irrational transitions. It was but a
specimen. Nearly every brain of the select few that counted in this
cardinal determination of the world's destinies, had its streak of
personal motive, its absurd and petty impulses and deflections. One man
decided to say _this_ because if he said _that_ he would contradict
something he had said and printed four or five days ago; another took a
certain line because so he saw his best opportunity of putting a rival
into a perplexity. It would be strange if one could reach out now and
recover the states of mind of two such beings as the German Kaiser and
his eldest son as Europe stumbled towards her fate through the long days
and warm, close nights of that July. Here was the occasion for which so
much of their lives had been but the large pretentious preparation,
coming right into their hands to use or forgo, here was the opportunity
that would put them into the very forefront of history forever; this
journalist emperor with the paralysed arm, this common-fibred, sly,
lascivious son. It is impossible that they did not dream of glory over
all the world, of triumphant processions, of a world-throne that would
outshine Caesar's, of a godlike elevation, of acting Divus Caesar while
yet alive. And being what they were they must have imagined spectators,
and the young man, who was after all a young man of particularly poor
quality, imagined no doubt certain women onlookers, certain humiliated
and astonished friends, and thought of the clothes he would wear and
the gestures he would make. The nickname his English cousins had given
this heir to all the glories was the "White Rabbit." He was the backbone
of the war party at court. And presently he stole bric-a-brac. That will
help posterity to the proper values of things in 1914. And the Teutonic
generals and admirals and strategists with their patient and perfect
plans, who were so confident of victory, each within a busy skull must
have enacted anticipatory dreams of his personal success and marshalled
his willing and unwilling admirers. Readers of histories and memoirs as
most of this class of men are, they must have composed little eulogistic
descriptions of the part themselves were to play in the opening drama,
imagined pleasing vindications and interesting documents. Some of them
perhaps saw difficulties, but few foresaw f