,
riotous crowds attacking shops, moratorium, shut banks and waiting
queues. Was it possible for the whole system to break down through a
shock to its confidence? Without any sense of incongruity the dignified
pacification of the planet had given place in his mind to these more
intimate possibilities. He heard a rustle behind him, and turned to face
his wife.

"Do you think," she asked, "that there is any chance of a shortage of
food?"

"If all the Mrs. Fabers in the world run and grab--"

"Then every one must grab. I haven't much in the way of stores in the
house."

"H'm," said Mr. Britling, and reflected.... "I don't think we must buy
stores now."

"But if we are short."

"It's the chances of war," said Mr. Britling.

He reflected. "Those who join a panic make a panic. After all, there is
just as much food in the world as there was last month. And short of
burning it the only way of getting rid of it is to eat it. And the
harvests are good. Why begin a scramble at a groaning board?"

"But people _are_ scrambling! It would be awkward--with the children and
everything--if we ran short."

"We shan't. And anyhow, you mustn't begin hoarding, even if it means
hardship."

"Yes. But you won't like it if suddenly there's no sugar for your tea."

Mr. Britling ignored this personal application.

"What is far more serious than a food shortage is the possibility of a
money panic."

He paced the lawn with her and talked. He said that even now very few
people realised the flimsiness of the credit system by which the modern
world was sustained. It was a huge growth of confidence, due very
largely to the uninquiring indolence of--everybody. It was sound so long
as mankind did, on the whole, believe in it; give only a sufficient loss
of faith and it might suffer any sort of collapse. It might vanish
altogether--as the credit system vanished at the breaking up of Italy by
the Goths--and leave us nothing but tangible things, real property,
possession nine points of the law, and that sort of thing. Did she
remember that last novel of Gissing's?--"Veranilda," it was called. It
was a picture of the world when there was no wealth at all except what
one could carry hidden or guarded about with one. That sort of thing
came to the Roman Empire slowly, in the course of lifetimes, but
nowadays we lived in a rapider world--with flimsier institutions. Nobody
knew the strength or the weakness of credit; nobody knew whether even
th