gan they went
on with their trade unmolested. Now many of these shops were wrecked....
It was only in October that the British gave these first signs of a
sense that they were fighting not merely political Germany but the
Germans.

But the idea of a peculiar malignity in the German quality as a key to
the broad issue of the war was even less satisfactory and less permanent
in Mr. Britling's mind than his first crude opposition of militarism and
a peaceful humanity as embodied respectively in the Central Powers and
the Russo-Western alliance. It led logically to the conclusion that the
extermination of the German peoples was the only security for the
general amiability of the world, a conclusion that appealed but weakly
to his essential kindliness. After all, the Germans he had met and seen
were neither cruel nor hate-inspired. He came back to that obstinately.
From the harshness and vileness of the printed word and the unclean
picture, he fell back upon the flesh and blood, the humanity and
sterling worth, of--as a sample--young Heinrich.

Who was moreover a thoroughly German young German--a thoroughly Prussian
young Prussian.

At times young Heinrich alone stood between Mr. Britling and the belief
that Germany and the whole German race was essentially wicked,
essentially a canting robber nation. Young Heinrich became a sort of
advocate for his people before the tribunal of Mr. Britling's mind. (And
on his shoulder sat an absurdly pampered squirrel.) s fresh, pink,
sedulous face, very earnest, adjusting his glasses, saying "Please,"
intervened and insisted upon an arrest of judgment....

Since the young man's departure he had sent two postcards of greeting
directly to the "Familie Britling," and one letter through the friendly
intervention of Mr. Britling's American publisher. Once also he sent a
message through a friend in Norway. The postcards simply recorded
stages in the passage of a distraught pacifist across Holland to his
enrolment. The letter by way of America came two months later. He had
been converted into a combatant with extreme rapidity. He had been
trained for three weeks, had spent a fortnight in hospital with a severe
cold, and had then gone to Belgium as a transport driver--his father had
been a horse-dealer and he was familiar with horses. "If anything
happens to me," he wrote, "please send my violin at least very carefully
to my mother." It was characteristic that he reported himself as very
com