wasted its energies in a deepening and spreading net of internal
squabbles and accusations. Now it was the wily indolence of the Prime
Minister, now it was the German culture of the Lord Chancellor, now the
imaginative enterprise of the First Lord of the Admiralty that focussed
a vindictive campaign. There began a hunt for spies and of suspects of
German origin in every quarter except the highest; a denunciation now of
"traitors," now of people with imaginations, now of scientific men, now
of the personal friend of the Commander-in-Chief, now of this group and
then of that group.... Every day Mr. Britling read his three or four
newspapers with a deepening disappointment.

When he turned from the newspaper to his post, he would find the
anonymous letter-writer had been busy....

Perhaps Mr. Britling had remarked that Germans were after all human
beings, or that if England had listened to Matthew Arnold in the
'eighties our officers by this time might have added efficiency to their
courage and good temper. Perhaps he had himself put a touch of irritant
acid into his comment. Back flared the hate. "Who are _you_, Sir? What
are _you_, Sir? What right have _you_, Sir? What claim have _you_,
Sir?"...


Section 8

"Life had a wrangling birth. On the head of every one of us rests the
ancestral curse of fifty million murders."

So Mr. Britling's thoughts shaped themselves in words as he prowled one
night in March, chill and melancholy, across a rushy meadow under an