s _is_ the biggest thing in
history, that we _are_ all called upon to do our utmost to resist this
tremendous attack upon the peace and freedom of the world. Well, doing
our utmost does not mean standing about in pleasant gardens waiting for
the newspaper.... It means the abandonment of ease and security....

"How lazy we English are nowadays! How readily we grasp the comforting
delusion that excuses us from exertion. For the last three weeks I have
been deliberately believing that a little British army--they say it is
scarcely a hundred thousand men--would somehow break this rush of
millions. But it has been driven back, as any one not in love with easy
dreams might have known it would be driven back--here and then here and
then here. It has been fighting night and day. It has made the most
splendid fight--and the most ineffectual fight.... You see the vast
swing of the German flail through Belgium. And meanwhile we have been
standing about talking of the use we would make of our victory....

"We have been asleep," he said. "This country has been asleep....

"At the back of our minds," he went on bitterly, "I suppose we thought
the French would do the heavy work on land--while we stood by at sea. So
far as we thought at all. We're so temperate-minded; we're so full of
qualifications and discretions.... And so leisurely.... Well, France is
down. We've got to fight for France now over the ruins of Paris. Because
you and I, Manning, didn't grasp the scale of it, because we indulged in
generalisations when we ought to have been drilling and working.
Because we've been doing 'business as usual' and all the rest of that
sort of thing, while Western civilisation has been in its death agony.
If this is to be another '71, on a larger scale and against not merely
France but all Europe, if Prussianism is to walk rough-shod over
civilisation, if France is to be crushed and Belgium murdered, then life
is not worth having. Compared with such an issue as that no other issue,
no other interest matters. Yet what are we doing to decide it--you and
I? How can it end in anything but a German triumph if you and I, by the
million, stand by...."

He paused despairfully and stared at the map.

"What ought we to be doing?" asked Mr. Manning.

"Every man ought to be in training," said Mr. Britling. "Every one ought
to be participating.... In some way.... At any rate we ought not to be
taking our ease at Matching's Easy any more...."

S