distinction between German and English was not for him the distinction
between good and bad. It was the distinction between blue water-flowers
and red or white bush-blossoms: just difference. The difference between
the wild boar and the wild bear. And a man was good or bad according to
his nature, not according to his nationality.

Egbert was well-bred, and this was part of his natural understanding. It
was merely unnatural to him to hate a nation _en bloc_. Certain
individuals he disliked, and others he liked, and the mass he knew
nothing about. Certain deeds he disliked, certain deeds seemed natural to
him, and about most deeds he had no particular feeling.

He had, however, the one deepest pure-bred instinct. He recoiled
inevitably from having his feelings dictated to him by the mass feeling.
His feelings were his own, his understanding was his own, and he would
never go back on either, willingly. Shall a man become inferior to his
own true knowledge and self, just because the mob expects it of him?

What Egbert felt subtly and without question, his father-in-law felt also
in a rough, more combative way. Different as the two men were, they were
two real Englishmen, and their instincts were almost the same.

And Godfrey Marshall had the world to reckon with. There was German
military aggression, and the English non-military idea of liberty and the
'conquests of peace'--meaning industrialism. Even if the choice between
militarism and industrialism were a choice of evils, the elderly man
asserted his choice of the latter, perforce. He whose soul was quick with
the instinct of power.

Egbert just refused to reckon with the world. He just refused even to