thing like that. The headlines proclaimed, "The Great Powers at
War; France Invaded by Germany; Germany invaded by Russia; 100,000
Germans march into Luxemburg; Can England Abstain? Fifty Million Loan to
be Issued." And Germany had not only violated the Treaty of London but
she had seized a British ship in the Kiel Canal.... The roundabouts were
very busy and windily melodious, and the shooting gallery kept popping
and jingling as people shot and broke bottles, and the voices of the
young men and women inviting the crowd to try their luck at this and
that rang loud and clear. Teddy and Letty and Cissie and Hugh were
developing a quite disconcerting skill at the dart-throwing, and were
bent upon compiling a complete tea-set for the Teddy cottage out of
their winnings. There was a score of automobiles and a number of traps
and gigs about the entrance to the portion of the park that had been
railed off for the festival, the small Britling boys had met some
nursery visitors from Claverings House and were busy displaying skill
and calm upon the roundabout ostriches, and less than four hundred miles
away with a front that reached from Nancy to Liege more than a million
and a quarter of grey-clad men, the greatest and best-equipped host the
world had ever seen, were pouring westward to take Paris, grip and
paralyse France, seize the Channel ports, invade England, and make the
German Empire the master-state of the earth. Their equipment was a
marvel of foresight and scientific organisation, from the motor kitchens
that rumbled in their wake to the telescopic sights of the
sharp-shooters, the innumerable machine-guns of the infantry, the supply
of entrenching material, the preparations already made in the invaded
country....

"Let's try at the other place for the sugar-basin!" said Teddy, hurrying
past. "Don't get _two_ sugar-basins," said Cissie breathless in
pursuit. "Hugh is trying for a sugar-basin at the other place."

Then Mr. Britling heard a bellicose note.

"Let's have a go at the bottles," said a cheerful young farmer. "Ought
to keep up our shooting, these warlike times...."

Mr. Britling ran against Hickson from the village inn and learnt that he
was disturbed about his son being called up as a reservist. "Just when
he was settling down here. It seems a pity they couldn't leave him for a
bit."

"'Tis a noosence," said Hickson, "but anyhow, they give first prize to
his radishes. He'll be glad to hear they give fi