he said, "the quicker."

"It would be strange if the last power left out to mediate were to be
China," said Mr. Carmine. "The one people in the world who really
believe in peace.... I wish I had your confidence, Britling."

For a time they contemplated a sort of Grand Inquest on Germany and
militarism, presided over by the Wisdom of the East. Militarism was, as
it were, to be buried as a suicide at four cross-roads, with a stake
through its body to prevent any untimely resuscitation.

Section 7

Mr. Britling was in a phase of imaginative release. Such a release was
one of the first effects of the war upon many educated minds. Things
that had seemed solid forever were visibly in flux; things that had
seemed stone were alive. Every boundary, every government, was seen for
the provisional thing it was. He talked of his World Congress meeting
year by year, until it ceased to be a speculation and became a mere
intelligent anticipation; he talked of the "manifest necessity" of a
Supreme Court for the world. He beheld that vision at the Hague, but Mr.
Carmine preferred Delhi or Samarkand or Alexandria or Nankin. "Let us
get away from the delusion of Europe anyhow," said Mr. Carmine....

As Mr. Britling had sat at his desk that morning and surveyed the
stupendous vistas of possibility that war was opening, the catastrophe
had taken on a more and more beneficial quality. "I suppose that it is
only through such crises as these that the world can reconstruct
itself," I said. And, on the whole that afternoon he was disposed to
hope that the great military machine would not smash itself too easily.
"We want the nations to feel the need of one another," he said. "Too
brief a campaign might lead to a squabble for plunder. The Englishman
has to learn his dependence on the Irishman, the Russian has to be
taught the value of education and the friendship of the Pole.... Europe
will now have to look to Asia, and recognise that Indians and Chinamem
are also 'white.'... But these lessons require time and stresses if
they are to be learnt properly...."

They discussed the possible duration of the war.

Mr. Carmine thought it would be a long struggle; Mr. Britling thought
that the Russians would be in Berlin by the next May. He was afraid they
might get there before the end of the year. He thought that the Germans
would beat out their strength upon the French and Belgian lines, and
never be free to turn upon the Russian at all. He was