the war. He thought no longer of the rights and wrongs of this
particular conflict but of the underlying forces in mankind that made
war possible; he planned no more ingenious treaties and conventions
between the nations, and instead he faced the deeper riddles of
essential evil and of conceivable changes in the heart of man. And the
rain assailed him and thorns tore him, and the soaked soft meadows
bogged and betrayed his wandering feet, and the little underworld of the
hedges and ditches hissed and squealed in the darkness and pursued and
fled, and devoured or were slain.

And one night in April he was perplexed by a commotion among the
pheasants and a barking of distant dogs, and then to his great
astonishment he heard noises like a distant firework display and saw
something like a phantom yellowish fountain-pen in the sky far away to
the east lit intermittently by a quivering search-light and going very
swiftly. And after he had rubbed his eyes and looked again, he realised
that he was looking at a Zeppelin--a Zeppelin flying Londonward over
Essex.

And all that night was wonder....


Section 8

While Mr. Britling was trying to find his duty in the routine of a
special constable, Mrs. Britling set to work with great energy to attend
various classes and qualify herself for Red Cross work. And early in
October came the great drive of the Germans towards Antwerp and the sea,
the great drive that was apparently designed to reach Calais, and which
swept before it multitudes of Flemish refugees. There was an exodus of