ions of order, of the countryside standing up to its
task, of roads cleared and resources marshalled, of the petty interests
of the private life altogether set aside. And mingling with that it was
still possible for Mr. Britling, he was still young enough, to produce
such dreams of personal service, of sudden emergencies swiftly and
bravely met, of conspicuous daring and exceptional rewards, such dreams
as hover in the brains of every imaginative recruit....

The detailed story of Mr. Britling's two days' search for some easy and
convenient ladder into the service of his threatened country would be a
voluminous one. It would begin with the figure of a neatly brushed
patriot, with an intent expression upon his intelligent face, seated in
the Londonward train, reading the war news--the first comforting war
news for many days--and trying not to look as though his life was torn
up by the roots and all his being aflame with devotion; and it would
conclude after forty-eight hours of fuss, inquiry, talk, waiting,
telephoning, with the same gentleman, a little fagged and with a kind of
weary apathy in his eyes, returning by the short cut from the station
across Claverings park to resume his connection with his abandoned
roots. The essential process of the interval had been the correction of
Mr. Britling's temporary delusion that the government of the British
Empire is either intelligent, instructed, or wise.

The great "Business as Usual" phase was already passing away, and London
was in the full tide of recruiting enthusiasm. That tide was breaking
against the most miserable arrangements for enlistment it is possible to
imagine. Overtaxed and not very competent officers, whose one idea of
being very efficient was to refuse civilian help and be very, very slow
and circumspect and very dignified and overbearing, sat in dirty little
rooms and snarled at this unheard-of England that pressed at door and
window for enrolment. Outside every recruiting office crowds of men and
youths waited, leaning against walls, sitting upon the pavements, waited
for long hours, waiting to the end of the day and returning next
morning, without shelter, without food, many sick with hunger; men who
had hurried up from the country, men who had thrown up jobs of every
kind, clerks, shopmen, anxious only to serve England and "teach those
damned Germans a lesson." Between them and this object they had
discovered a perplexing barrier; an inattention. As Mr