tling.

"He certainly does that," said Mr. Direck.

"He has the fair type of complexion, the rather full habit of body, the
temperamental disposition, but in addition that close-cropped head, it
is almost as if it were shaved, the plumpness, the glasses--those are
things that are made. And the way he carries himself. And the way he
thinks. His meticulousness. When he arrived he was delightful, he was
wearing a student's corps cap and a rucksack, he carried a violin; he
seemed to have come out of a book. No one would ever dare to invent so
German a German for a book. Now, a young Frenchman or a young Italian or
a young Russian coming here might look like a foreigner, but he wouldn't
have the distinctive national stamp a German has. He wouldn't be plainly
French or Italian or Russian. Other peoples are not made; they are
neither made nor created but proceeding--out of a thousand indefinable
causes. The Germans are a triumph of directive will. I had to remark the
other day that when my boys talked German they shouted. 'But when one
talks German one _must_ shout,' said Herr Heinrich. 'It is taught so in
the schools.' And it is. They teach them to shout and to throw out their
chests. Just as they teach them to read notice-boards and not think
about politics. Their very ribs are not their own. My Herr Heinrich is
comparatively a liberal thinker. He asked me the other day, 'But why
should I give myself up to philology? But then,' he reflected, 'it is
what I have to do.'"

Mr. Britling seemed to have finished, and then just as Mr. Direck was
planning a way of getting the talk back by way of Teddy to Miss Corner,
he snuggled more deeply into his chair, reflected and broke out again.

"This contrast between Heinrich's carefulness and Teddy's
easy-goingness, come to look at it, is I suppose one of the most
fundamental in the world. It reaches to everything. It mixes up with
education, statecraft, morals. Will you make or will you take? Those are
the two extreme courses in all such things. I suppose the answer of
wisdom to that is, like all wise answers, a compromise. I suppose one
must accept and then make all one can of it.... Have you talked at all
to my eldest son?"

"He's a very interesting young man indeed," said Mr. Direck. "I should
venture to say there's a very great deal in him. I was most impressed by
the few words I had with him."

"There, for example, is one of my perplexities," said Mr. Britling.

Mr. Direck w