"I think it is just thoroughness," said his friend. "They are at war. To
be at war is to hate."

"That isn't at all my idea."

"We're not a thorough people. When we think of anything, we also think
of its opposite. When we adopt an opinion we also take in a provisional
idea that it is probably nearly as wrong as it is right. We
are--atmospheric. They are concrete.... All this filthy, vile, unjust
and cruel stuff is honest genuine war. We pretend war does not hurt.
They know better.... The Germans are a simple honest people. It is
their virtue. Possibly it is their only virtue...."

Section 4

Mr. Britling was only one of a multitude who wanted to feel the bumps of
Germany at that time. The effort to understand a people who had suddenly
become incredible was indeed one of the most remarkable facts in English
intellectual life during the opening phases of the war. The English
state of mind was unlimited astonishment. There was an enormous sale of
any German books that seemed likely to illuminate the mystery of this
amazing concentration of hostility; the works of Bernhardi, Treitschke,
Nietzsche, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, became the material of countless
articles and interminable discussions. One saw little clerks on the way
to the office and workmen going home after their work earnestly reading
these remarkable writers. They were asking, just as Mr. Britling was
asking, what it was the British Empire had struck against. They were
trying to account for this wild storm of hostility that was coming at
them out of Central Europe.

It was a natural next stage to this, when after all it became manifest
that instead of there being a liberal and reluctant Germany at the back
of imperialism and Junkerdom, there was apparently one solid and
enthusiastic people, to suppose that the Germans were in some
distinctive way evil, that they were racially more envious, arrogant,
and aggressive than the rest of mankind. Upon that supposition a great
number of English people settled. They concluded that the Germans had a
peculiar devil of their own--and had to be treated accordingly. That was
the second stage in the process of national apprehension, and it was
marked by the first beginnings of a spy hunt, by the first denunciation
of naturalised aliens, and by some anti-German rioting among the mixed
alien population in the East End. Most of the bakers in the East End of
London were Germans, and for some months after the war be