necessity...."

From this Mr. Britling broke away into a fresh addition to his already
large collection of contrasts between England and Germany. Germany was a
nation which has been swallowed up and incorporated by an army and an
administration; the Prussian military system had assimilated to itself
the whole German life. It was a State in a state of repletion, a State
that had swallowed all its people. Britain was not a State. It was an
unincorporated people. The British army, the British War Office, and the
British administration had assimilated nothing; they were little old
partial things; the British nation lay outside them, beyond their
understanding and tradition; a formless new thing, but a great thing;
and now this British nation, this real nation, the "outsiders," had to
take up arms. Suddenly all the underlying ideas of that outer, greater
English life beyond politics, beyond the services, were challenged, its
tolerant good humour, its freedom, and its irresponsibility. It was not
simply English life that was threatened; it was all the latitudes of
democracy, it was every liberal idea and every liberty. It was
civilisation in danger. The uncharted liberal system had been taken by
the throat; it had to "make good" or perish....

"I went up to London expecting to be told what to do. There is no one to
tell any one what to do.... Much less is there any one to compel us what
to do....

"There's a War Office like a college during a riot, with its doors and
windows barred; there's a government like a cockle boat in an Atlantic
gale....

"One feels the thing ought to have come upon us like the sound of a