endorsed, but still with that touch of reservation in his manner....

The pause had the effect of closing the theoretical side of the
question. "Where do you propose to enlist?" said Mr. Britling, coming
down to practical details.


Section 7

The battle of the Marne passed into the battle of the Aisne, and then
the long lines of the struggle streamed north-westward until the British
were back in Belgium failing to clutch Menin and then defending Ypres.
The elation of September followed the bedazzlement and dismay of August
into the chapter of forgotten moods; and Mr. Britling's sense of the
magnitude, the weight and duration of this war beyond all wars,
increased steadily. The feel of it was less and less a feeling of crisis
and more and more a feeling of new conditions. It wasn't as it had
seemed at first, the end of one human phase and the beginning of
another; it was in itself a phase. It was a new way of living. And still
he could find no real point of contact for himself with it all except
the point of his pen. Only at his writing-desk, and more particularly at
night, were the great presences of the conflict his. Yet he was always
desiring some more personal and physical participation.

Hugh came along one day in October in an ill-fitting uniform, looking
already coarser in fibre and with a nose scorched red by the autumnal
sun. He said the life was rough, but it made him feel extraordinarily
well; perhaps man was made to toil until he dropped asleep from
exhaustion, to fast for ten or twelve hours and then eat like a wolf. He
was acquiring a taste for Woodbine cigarettes, and a heady variety of