. Britling made
his way by St. Martin's Church and across Trafalgar Square and marked
the weary accumulation of this magnificently patriotic stuff, he had his
first inkling of the imaginative insufficiency of the War Office that
had been so suddenly called upon to organise victory. He was to be more
fully informed when he reached his club.

His impression of the streets through which he passed was an impression
of great unrest. There were noticeably fewer omnibuses and less road
traffic generally, but there was a quite unusual number of drifting
pedestrians. The current on the pavements was irritatingly sluggish.
There were more people standing about, and fewer going upon their
business. This was particularly the case with the women he saw. Many of
them seemed to have drifted in from the suburbs and outskirts of London
in a state of vague expectation, unable to stay in their homes.

Everywhere there were the flags of the Allies; in shop windows, over
doors, on the bonnets of automobiles, on people's breasts, and there was
a great quantity of recruiting posters on the hoardings and in windows:
"Your King and Country Need You" was the chief text, and they still
called for "A Hundred Thousand Men" although the demand of Lord
Kitchener had risen to half a million. There were also placards calling
for men on nearly all the taxicabs. The big windows of the offices of
the Norddeutscher Lloyd in Cockspur Street were boarded up, and
plastered thickly with recruiting appeals.

At his club Mr. Britling found much talk and belligerent stir. In the
hall Wilkins the author was displaying a dummy rifle of bent iron rod to
several interested members. It was to be used for drilling until rifles
could be got, and it could be made for eighteen pence. This was the
first intimation Mr. Britling got that the want of foresight of the War
Office only began with its unpreparedness for recruits. Men were talking
very freely in the club; one of the temporary effects of the war in its
earlier stages was to produce a partial thaw in the constitutional
British shyness; and men who had glowered at Mr. Britling over their
lunches and had been glowered at by Mr. Britling in silence for years
now started conversations with him.

"What is a man of my sort to do?" asked a clean-shaven barrister.

"Exactly what I have been asking," said Mr. Britling. "They are fixing
the upward age for recruits at thirty; it's absurdly low. A man well
over forty like