ailure. For all this set of
brains the thing came as a choice to take or reject; they could make war
or prevent it. And they chose war.

It is doubtful if any one outside the directing intelligence of Germany
and Austria saw anything so plain. The initiative was with Germany. The
Russian brains and the French brains and the British brains, the few
that were really coming round to look at this problem squarely, had a
far less simple set of problems and profounder uncertainties. To Mr.
Britling's mind the Round Table Conference at Buckingham Palace was
typical of the disunion and indecision that lasted up to the very
outbreak of hostilities. The solemn violence of Sir Edward Carson was
intensely antipathetic to Mr. Britling, and in his retrospective
inquiries he pictured to himself that dark figure with its dropping
under-lip, seated, heavy and obstinate, at that discussion, still
implacable though the King had but just departed after a little speech
that was packed with veiled intimations of imminent danger...

Mr. Britling had no mercy in his mind for the treason of obstinate
egotism and for persistence in a mistaken course. His own temperamental
weaknesses lay in such different directions. He was always ready to
leave one trail for another; he was always open to conviction, trusting
to the essentials of his character for an ultimate consistency. He hated
Carson in those days as a Scotch terrier might hate a bloodhound, as
something at once more effective and impressive, and exasperatingly,
infinitely less intelligent.

Section 4

Thus--a vivid fact as yet only in a few hundred skulls or so--the vast
catastrophe of the Great War gathered behind the idle, dispersed and
confused spectacle of an indifferent world, very much as the storms and
rains of late September gathered behind the glow and lassitudes of
August, and with scarcely more of set human intention. For the greater
part of mankind the European international situation was at most
something in the papers, no more important than the political
disturbances in South Africa, where the Herzogites were curiously
uneasy, or the possible trouble between Turkey and Greece. The things
that really interested people in England during the last months of peace
were boxing and the summer sales. A brilliant young Frenchman,
Carpentier, who had knocked out Bombardier Wells, came over again to
defeat Gunboat Smith, and did so to the infinite delight of France and
the whole