not have to
worry."

"Because we're in for a stiff war!" cried Cissie, and Direck perceived
he had blundered.

"Because we may be invaded!" she said, and Mr. Direck's sense of error
deepened.

"I vow--" she began.

"No!" cried Mr. Direck, and held out a hand.

There was a moment of crisis.

"Never will I desert my country--while she is at war," said Cissie,
reducing her first fierce intention, and adding as though she regretted
her concession, "Anyhow."

"Then it's up to me to end the war, Cissie," said Mr. Direck, trying to
get her back to a less spirited attitude.

But Cissie wasn't to be got back so easily. The war was already
beckoning to them in the cottage, and drawing them down from the
auditorium into the arena.

"This is the rightest war in history," she said. "If I was an American I
should be sorry to be one now and to have to stand out of it. I wish I
was a man now so that I could do something for all the decency and
civilisation the Germans have outraged. I can't understand how any man
can be content to keep out of this, and watch Belgium being destroyed.
It is like looking on at a murder. It is like watching a dog killing a
kitten...."

Mr. Direck's expression was that of a man who is suddenly shown strange
lights upon the world.

Section 16

Mr. Britling found Mr. Direck's talk very indigestible.

He was parting very reluctantly from his dream of a disastrous collapse
of German imperialism, of a tremendous, decisive demonstration of the
inherent unsoundness of militarist monarchy, to be followed by a world
conference of chastened but hopeful nations, and--the Millennium. He
tried now to think that Mr. Direck had observed badly and misconceived
what he saw. An American, unused to any sort of military occurrences,
might easily mistake tens of thousands for millions, and the excitement
of a few commercial travellers for the enthusiasm of a united people.
But the newspapers now, with a kindred reluctance, were beginning to
qualify, bit by bit, their first representation of the German attack
through Belgium as a vast and already partly thwarted parade of
incompetence. The Germans, he gathered, were being continually beaten in
Belgium; but just as continually they advanced. Each fresh newspaper
name he looked up on the map marked an oncoming tide. Alost--Charleroi.
Farther east the French were retreating from the Saales Pass. Surely the
British, who had now been in France for a fortnight, w