tried to strike fire again with words like "democracy" and
"civilization," the Doctor had cooled down, and nothing could stir him
again that night.

Still the discord had been sown. I suppose the dinner-table talk was
only a sample of what was going on, in that month, all over the world.
It did not help matters that as the days went on we all realized that
the Doctor had been right--that France was to be invaded, not across
her own proper frontier, but across unprotected Belgium. This seemed
so atrocious to most of us that indignation could only express itself
in abuse. There was not a night that the dinner-table talk was not
bitter. You see the Doctor did not expect the world ever to be
perfect--did not know that he wanted it to be--believed in the
struggle. On the other hand the Critic, and in a certain sense the
Journalist, in spite of their experiences, were more or less Utopian,
and the Sculptor and the Violinist purely spectators.

No need to go into the details of the heated arguments. They were only
the echo of what all the world,--that had cradled itself into the
belief that a great war among the great nations had become, for
economic as well as humanitarian reasons, impossible,--were, I
imagine, at this time saying.

As nearly as I can remember it was on August 20th that the climax
came. Liège had fallen. The English Expedition had landed, and was
marching on Belgium. A victorious German army had goose-stepped into
defenseless Brussels, and was sweeping out toward the French frontier.
The French advance into Alsace had been a blunder.

The Doctor remarked that "the English had landed twelve days too