ore Prussia got the upper hand. All the morning I practised the
Beethoven violin concerto, and the naked, slender radiance of it
without the orchestra to muffle it up in a background, enchanted me
into forgetting.

The crowds down there are soberer since Friday, and I didn't have to go
into the bathroom to play. Now that war is upon them the women seem to
have started thinking a little what it may really mean, and the men
aren't quite so ready incoherently to roar. They keep on going to
church,--the churches have been having services at unaccustomed moments
throughout yesterday, of course by order, and are going on like that
today too, for the churches are very valuable to Authority in
nourishing the necessary emotions in the people at a time like this.
The people were told by the Kaiser to pray, and so they do pray. It is
useful to have them praying, it quiets them and gets them out of the
streets and helps the authorities. Berlin is really the most godless
place. Religion is the last thing anybody thinks of. Nobody dreams of
going to church unless there is going to be special music there or a
prince, and as for the country, my two Sundays there might have been
week-days except for the extra food. It is true on each of them I saw
a pastor, but each time he came to the family I was with, they didn't
go to him, to his church. Now there's suddenly this immense
recollection of God, turned on by Authority just as one turns on an
electric light switch and says "Let there be light," and there is
light. So I picture the Kaiser, running his finger down his list of
available assets and coming to God. Then he rings for an official, and
says, "Let there be God"; and there is God.

I'm not really being profane. It isn't really God at all I'm talking
about. It's what German Authority finds convenient to turn on and off,
according as it suits what it wishes to obtain. It isn't God. It's
just a tap.

_Later_.

Bernd came to lunch, but also unfortunately so did his chief. They
both arrived together after we had begun,--there's a tremendous _aller
et venir_ all day in the house, and sometimes the traffic on the stairs
to the drawingroom gets so congested that nothing but a London
policeman could deal with it. I could only say ordinary things to
Bernd, and he went away, swept off by his Colonel, directly afterwards.
He did manage to whisper he would try to come in to dinner tonight and
get here early, but he h