osition.

How we had wasted Ireland! The rich values that lay in Ireland, the
gallantry and gifts, the possible friendliness, all these things were
being left to the Ulster politicians and the Tory women to poison and
spoil, just as we left India to the traditions of the chattering army
women and the repressive instincts of our mandarins. We were too lazy,
we were too negligent. We passed our indolent days leaving everything to
somebody else. Was this the incurable British, just as it was the
incurable Britling, quality?

Was the whole prosperity of the British, the far-flung empire, the
securities, the busy order, just their good luck? It was a question he
had asked a hundred times of his national as of his personal self. No
doubt luck had favoured him. He was prosperous, and he was still only at
the livelier end of middle age. But was there not also a personal
factor, a meritorious factor? Luck had favoured the British with a
well-placed island, a hardening climate, accessible minerals, but then
too was there not also a national virtue? Once he had believed in that,
in a certain gallantry, a noble levity, an underlying sound sense. The
last ten years of politics had made him doubt that profoundly. He clung
to it still, but without confidence. In the night that dear persuasion
left him altogether.... As for himself he had a certain brightness and
liveliness of mind, but the year of his fellowship had been a soft year,
he had got on to _The Times_ through something very like a
misapprehension, and it was the chances of a dinner and a duchess that
had given him the opportunity of the Kahn show. He'd dropped into good
things that suited him. That at any rate was the essence of it. And
these lucky chances had been no incentive to further effort. Because
things had gone easily and rapidly with him he had developed indolence
into a philosophy. Here he was just over forty, and explaining to the
world, explaining all through the week-end to this American--until even
God could endure it no longer and the smash stopped him--how excellent
was the backwardness of Essex and English go-as-you-please, and how
through good temper it made in some mysterious way for all that was
desirable. A fat English doctrine. _Punch_ has preached it for forty
years.

But this wasn't what he had always been. He thought of the strenuous
intentions of his youth, before he had got into this turmoil of amorous
experiences, while he was still out there