to have any suspicion what is going on
in Belgium. You hear stories--People tell them in Holland. It takes your
breath away. They have set out just to cow those Belgians. They have
started in to be deliberately frightful. You do not begin to
understand.... Well.... Outrages. The sort of outrages Americans have
never heard of. That one doesn't speak of.... Well.... Rape.... They
have been raping women for disciplinary purposes on tables in the
market-place of Liege. Yes, sir. It's a fact. I was told it by a man who
had just come out of Belgium. Knew the people, knew the place, knew
everything. People over here do not seem to realise that those women are
the same sort of women that you might find in Chester or Yarmouth, or in
Matching's Easy for the matter of that. They still seem to think that
Continental women are a different sort of women--more amenable to that
sort of treatment. They seem to think there is some special Providential
law against such things happening to English people. And it's within
two hundred miles of you--even now. And as far as I can see there's
precious little to prevent it coming nearer...."

Mr. Britling thought there were a few little obstacles.

"I've seen the new British army drilling in London, Mr. Britling. I
don't know if you have. I saw a whole battalion. And they hadn't got
half-a-dozen uniforms, and not a single rifle to the whole battalion.

"You don't begin to realise in England what you are up against. You have
no idea what it means to be in a country where everybody, the women, the
elderly people, the steady middle-aged men, are taking war as seriously
as business. They haven't the slightest compunction. I don't know what
Germany was like before the war, I had hardly gotten out of my train
before the war began; but Germany to-day is one big armed camp. It's all
crawling with soldiers. And every soldier has his uniform and his boots
and his arms and his kit.

"And they're as sure of winning as if they had got London now. They mean
to get London. They're cocksure they are going to walk through Belgium,
cocksure they will get to Paris by Sedan day, and then they are going to
destroy your fleet with Zeppelins and submarines and make a dash across
the Channel. They say it's England they are after, in this invasion of
Belgium. They'll just down France by the way. They say they've got guns
to bombard Dover from Calais. They make a boast of it. They know for
certain you can't arm your