on their way
to school. This shocked Mr. Britling absurdly, much more than the
Belgian crimes had done. They were _English_ children. At home!... The
drowning of a great number of people on a torpedoed ship full of
refugees from Flanders filled his mind with pitiful imaginings for days.
The Zeppelin raids, with their slow crescendo of blood-stained futility,
began before the end of 1914.... It was small consolation for Mr.
Britling to reflect that English homes and women and children were,
after all, undergoing only the same kind of experience that our ships
have inflicted scores of times in the past upon innocent people in the
villages of Africa and Polynesia....

Each month the war grew bitterer and more cruel. Early in 1915 the
Germans began their submarine war, and for a time Mr. Britling's concern
was chiefly for the sailors and passengers of the ships destroyed. He
noted with horror the increasing indisposition of the German submarines
to give any notice to their victims; he did not understand the grim
reasons that were turning every submarine attack into a desperate
challenge of death. For the Germans under the seas had pitted themselves
against a sea power far more resourceful, more steadfast and skilful,
sterner and more silent, than their own. It was not for many months that
Mr. Britling learnt the realities of the submarine blockade. Submarine
after submarine went out of the German harbours into the North Sea,
never to return. No prisoners were reported, no boasting was published
by the British fishers of men; U boat after U boat vanished into a
chilling mystery.... Only later did Mr. Britling begin to hear whispers
and form ideas of the noiseless, suffocating grip that sought through
the waters for its prey.

The _Falaba_ crime, in which the German sailors were reported to have
jeered at the drowning victims in the water, was followed by the sinking
of the _Lusitania_. At that a wave of real anger swept through the
Empire. Hate was begetting hate at last. There were violent riots in
Great Britain and in South Africa. Wretched little German hairdressers
and bakers and so forth fled for their lives, to pay for the momentary
satisfaction of the Kaiser and Herr Ballin. Scores of German homes in
England were wrecked and looted; hundreds of Germans maltreated. War is
war. Hard upon the _Lusitania_ storm came the publication of the Bryce
Report, with its relentless array of witnesses, its particulars of
countles