t give himself. That he had to give
himself. He must let nothing stand between him and that clear
understanding. It was utterly shameful now to hold back and not to do
one's utmost for civilisation, for England, for all the ease and safety
one had been given--against these drilled, commanded, obsessed millions.

Mr. Britling was a flame of exalted voluntaryism, of patriotic devotion,
that day.

But behind all this bravery was the other thing, the second thing in the
mind of Mr. Britling, a fear. He was prepared now to spread himself like
some valiant turkey-gobbler, every feather at its utmost, against the
aggressor. He was prepared to go out and flourish bayonets, march and
dig to the limit of his power, shoot, die in a ditch if needful, rather
than permit German militarism to dominate the world. He had no fear for
himself. He was prepared to perish upon the battlefield or cut a valiant
figure in the military hospital. But what he perceived very clearly and
did his utmost not to perceive was this qualifying and discouraging
fact, that the war monster was not nearly so disposed to meet him as he
was to meet the war, and that its eyes were fixed on something beside
and behind him, that it was already only too evidently stretching out a
long and shadowy arm past him towards Teddy--and towards Hugh....

The young are the food of war....

Teddy wasn't Mr. Britling's business anyhow. Teddy must do as he thought
proper. Mr. Britling would not even advise upon that. And as for Hugh--

Mr. Britling did his best to brazen it out.

"My eldest boy is barely seventeen," he said. "He's keen to go, and I'd
be sorry if he wasn't. He'll get into some cadet corps of course--he's
already done something of that kind at school. Or they'll take him into
the Territorials. But before he's nineteen everything will be over, one
way or another. I'm afraid, poor chap, he'll feel sold...."

And having thrust Hugh safely into the background of his mind
as--juvenile, doing a juvenile share, no sort of man yet--Mr. Britling
could give a free rein to his generous imaginations of a national
uprising. From the idea of a universal participation in the struggle he
passed by an easy transition to an anticipation of all Britain armed and
gravely embattled. Across gulfs of obstinate reality. He himself was
prepared to say, and accordingly he felt that the great mass of the
British must be prepared to say to the government: "Here we are at your
disposa