f a trawler to
announce, and the public mind speedily adapted itself to the new pitch.

There was no invitation from the government and no organisation for any
general participation in war. People talked unrestrictedly; every one
seemed to be talking; they waved flags and displayed much vague
willingness to do something. Any opportunity of service was taken very
eagerly. Lord Kitchener was understood to have demanded five hundred
thousand men; the War Office arrangements for recruiting, arrangements
conceived on a scale altogether too small, were speedily overwhelmed by
a rush of willing young men. The flow had to be checked by raising the
physical standard far above the national average, and recruiting died
down to manageable proportions. There was a quite genuine belief that
the war might easily be too exclusively considered; that for the great
mass of people it was a disturbing and distracting rather than a vital
interest. The phase "Business as Usual" ran about the world, and the
papers abounded in articles in which going on as though there was no war
at all was demonstrated to be the truest form of patriotism. "Leave
things to Kitchener" was another watchword with a strong appeal to the
national quality. "Business as usual during Alterations to the Map of
Europe" was the advertisement of one cheerful barber, widely quoted....

Hugh was at home all through August. He had thrown up his rooms in
London with his artistic ambitions, and his father was making all the
necessary arrangements for him to follow Cardinal to Cambridge.
Meanwhile Hugh was taking up his scientific work where he had laid it
down. He gave a reluctant couple of hours in the afternoon to the
mysteries of Little-go Greek, and for the rest of his time he was either
working at mathematics and mathematical physics or experimenting in a
little upstairs room that had been carved out of the general space of
the barn. It was only at the very end of August that it dawned upon him
or Mr. Britling that the war might have more than a spectacular and
sympathetic appeal for him. Hitherto contemporary history had happened
without his personal intervention. He did not see why it should not
continue to happen with the same detachment. The last elections--and a
general election is really the only point at which the life of the
reasonable Englishman becomes in any way public--had happened four years
ago, when he was thirteen.

Section 14

For a time it was belie