But Carmine's face showed nothing of the excitement and patriotic
satisfaction that would have seemed natural to Mr. Britling. He was
white and jaded, as if he had not slept for many nights. "You see," he
explained almost apologetically of the three stars upon his sleeve, "I
used to be a captain of volunteers." He had been put in charge of a
volunteer force which had been re-embodied and entrusted with the care
of the bridges, gasworks, factories and railway tunnels, and with a
number of other minor but necessary duties round about Easinghampton.
"I've just got to shut up my house," said Captain Carmine, "and go into
lodgings. I confess I hate it.... But anyhow it can't last six
months.... But it's beastly.... Ugh!..."

He seemed disposed to expand that "Ugh," and then thought better of it.
And presently Mr. Britling took control of the conversation.

His two days in London had filled him with matter, and he was glad to
have something more than Hugh and Teddy and Mrs. Britling to talk it
upon. What was happening now in Great Britain, he declared, was
_adjustment_. It was an attempt on the part of a great unorganised
nation, an attempt, instinctive at present rather than intelligent, to
readjust its government and particularly its military organisation to
the new scale of warfare that Germany had imposed upon the world. For
two strenuous decades the British navy had been growing enormously under
the pressure of German naval preparations, but the British military
establishment had experienced no corresponding expansion. It was true
there had been a futile, rather foolishly conducted agitation for
universal military service, but there had been no accumulation of
material, no preparation of armament-making machinery, no planning and
no foundations for any sort of organisation that would have facilitated