n
the changed state of things; the young generations will grow up never
having known anything different. It's a far cry to Delhi, as the old
Indian proverb says, and the strange half-European, half-Asiatic Court
out there will seem more and more a thing exotic and unreal. 'The King
across the water' was a rallying-cry once upon a time in our history, but
a king on the further side of the Indian Ocean is a shadowy competitor
for one who alternates between Potsdam and Windsor."

"I want you to tell me everything," said Yeovil, after another pause;
"tell me, Holham, how far has this obliterating process of 'time and
tact' gone? It seems to be pretty fairly started already. I bought a
newspaper as soon as I landed, and I read it in the train coming up. I
read things that puzzled and disgusted me. There were announcements of
concerts and plays and first-nights and private views; there were even
small dances. There were advertisements of house-boats and week-end
cottages and string bands for garden parties. It struck me that it was
rather like merrymaking with a dead body lying in the house."

"Yeovil," said the doctor, "you must bear in mind two things. First, the
necessity for the life of the country going on as if nothing had
happened. It is true that many thousands of our working men and women
have emigrated and thousands of our upper and middle class too; they were
the people who were not tied down by business, or who could afford to cut
those ties. But those represent comparatively a few out of the many. The
great businesses and the small businesses must go on, people must be fed
and clothed and housed and medically treated, and their thousand-and-one
wants and necessities supplied. Look at me, for instance; however much I
loathe coming under a foreign domination and paying taxes to an alien
government, I can't abandon my practice and my patients, and set up anew
in Toronto or Allahabad, and if I could, some other doctor would have to
take my place here. I or that other doctor must have our servants and
motors and food and furniture and newspapers, even our sport. The golf
links and the hunting field have been well-nigh deserted since the war,
but they are beginning to get back their votaries because out-door sport
has become a necessity, and a very rational necessity, with numbers of
men who have to work otherwise under unnatural and exacting conditions.
That is one factor of the situation. The other af