ded with dislike and a sort of distrust, as one might regard a
sneaking neighbour who left his footsteps in one's garden at night. But
the Zeppelins of Billericay and Potter's Bar are--heroic things. (The
Cuffley one came down too quickly, and the fourth one which came down
for its crew to surrender is despised.) I have heard people describe the
two former with eyes shining with enthusiasm.

"First," they say, "you saw a little round red glow that spread. Then
you saw the whole Zeppelin glowing. Oh, it was _beautiful!_ Then it
began to turn over and come down, and it flames and pieces began to
break away. And then down it came, leaving flaming pieces all up the
sky. At last it was a pillar of fire eight thousand feet high....
Everyone said, 'Ooooo!' And then someone pointed out the little
aeroplane lit up by the flare--such a leetle thing up there in
the night! It is the greatest thing I have ever seen. Oh! the most
wonderful--most wonderful!"

There is a feeling that the Germans really must after all be a splendid
people to provide such magnificent pyrotechnics.

Some people in London the other day were pretending to be shocked by an
American who boasted that he had been in "two _bully_ bombardments,"
but he was only saying what everyone feels more or less. We are at
a spectacle that--as a spectacle--our grandchildren will envy. I
understand now better the story of the man who stared at the sparks
raining up from his own house as it burnt in the night and whispered
"_Lovely! Lovely!_"

The spectacular side of the war is really an enormous distraction from
thought. And against thought there also fights the native indolence of
the human mind. The human mind, it seems, was originally developed to
think about the individual; it thinks reluctantly about the species.
It takes refuge from that sort of thing if it possibly can. And so
the second great preventive of clear thinking is the tranquillising
platitude.

The human mind is an instrument very easily fatigued. Only a few
exceptions go on thinking restlessly--to the extreme exasperation of
their neighbours. The normal mind craves for decisions, even wrong or
false decisions rather than none. It clutches at comforting falsehoods.
It loves to be told, "_There_, don't you worry. That'll be all right.
That's _settled._" This war has come as an almost overwhelming challenge
to mankind. To some of us it seems as it if were the Sphynx proffering
the alternative of its ridd