The two pictures would not stay steadily in his mind together. When he
thought of the broken faith that had poured those slaughtering hosts
into the decent peace of Belgium, that had smashed her cities, burnt her
villages and filled the pretty gorges of the Ardennes with blood and
smoke and terror, he was flooded with self-righteous indignation, a
self-righteous indignation that was indeed entirely Teutonic in its
quality, that for a time drowned out his former friendship and every
kindly disposition towards Germany, that inspired him with destructive
impulses, and obsessed him with a desire to hear of death and more death
and yet death in every German town and home....


Section 6

It will be an incredible thing to the happier reader of a coming age--if
ever this poor record of experience reaches a reader in the days to
come--to learn how much of the mental life of Mr. Britling was occupied
at this time with the mere horror and atrocity of warfare. It is idle
and hopeless to speculate now how that future reader will envisage this
war; it may take on broad dramatic outlines, it may seem a thing, just,
logical, necessary, the burning of many barriers, the destruction of
many obstacles. Mr. Britling was too near to the dirt and pain and heat
for any such broad landscape consolations. Every day some new detail of
evil beat into his mind. Now it would be the artless story of some
Belgian refugee. There was a girl from Alost in the village for example,
who had heard the fusillade that meant the shooting of citizens, the
shooting of people she had known, she had seen the still blood-stained
wall against which two murdered cousins had died, the streaked sand
along which their bodies had been dragged; three German soldiers had
been quartered in her house with her and her invalid mother, and had