as to do such things.... Why should they?...

"It makes me--expressionless with anger," said Mr. Britling after a
pause, reverting to his main annoyance. "They won't consider any
compromise. It's sheer love of quarrelling.... Those people there think
that nothing can possibly happen. They are like children in a nursery
playing at rebellion. Unscathed and heedless. Until there is death at
their feet they will never realise they are playing with loaded
guns...."

For a time he said no more; and listened perfunctorily while Mr. Direck
tried to indicate the feeling in New England towards the Irish Question
and the many difficult propositions an American politician has to face
in that respect. And when Mr. Britling took up the thread of speech
again it had little or no relation to Mr. Direck's observations.

"The psychology of all this recent insubordination and violence
is--curious. Exasperating too.... I don't quite grasp it.... It's the
same thing whether you look at the suffrage business or the labour
people or at this Irish muddle. People may be too safe. You see we live
at the end of a series of secure generations in which none of the great
things of life have changed materially. We've grown up with no sense of
danger--that is to say, with no sense of responsibility. None of us,
none of us--for though I talk my actions belie me--really believe that
life can change very fundamentally any more forever. All this",--Mr.
Britling waved his arm comprehensively--"looks as though it was bound to
go on steadily forever. It seems incredible that the system could be
smashed. It seems incredible that anything we can do will ever smash the
system. Lady Homartyn, for example, is incapable of believing that she
won't always be able to have week-end parties at Claverings, and that
the letters and the tea won't come to her bedside in the morning. Or if
her imagination goes to the point of supposing that some day _she_ won't
be there to receive the tea, it means merely that she supposes somebody
else will be. Her pleasant butler may fear to lose his 'situation,' but
nothing on earth could make him imagine a time when there will not be a
'situation' for him to lose. Old Asquith thinks that we always have got
along, and that we always shall get along by being quietly artful and
saying, 'Wait and see.' And it's just because we are all convinced that
we are so safe against a general breakdown that we are able to be so
recklessly violent i