ounds and shattered bones, plunging about in the
darkness amidst a heap of wreckage. And already the German airmen were
buzzing away to sea again, proud of themselves, pleased no doubt--like
boys who have thrown a stone through a window, beating their way back to
thanks and rewards, to iron crosses and the proud embraces of delighted
Fraus and Fraeuleins....

For the first time it seemed to Mr. Britling he really saw the immediate
horror of war, the dense cruel stupidity of the business, plain and
close. It was as if he had never perceived anything of the sort before,
as if he had been dealing with stories, pictures, shows and
representations that he knew to be shams. But that this dear, absurd old
creature, this thing of home, this being of familiar humours and
familiar irritations, should be torn to pieces, left in torment like a
smashed mouse over which an automobile has passed, brought the whole
business to a raw and quivering focus. Not a soul among all those who
had been rent and torn and tortured in this agony of millions, but was
to any one who understood and had been near to it, in some way lovable,
in some way laughable, in some way worthy of respect and care. Poor Aunt
Wilshire was but the sample thrust in his face of all this mangled
multitude, whose green-white lips had sweated in anguish, whose broken
bones had thrust raggedly through red dripping flesh.... The detested
features of the German Crown Prince jerked into the centre of Mr.
Britling's picture. The young man stood in his dapper uniform and
grinned under his long nose, carrying himself jauntily, proud of his
extreme importance to so many lives....

And for a while Mr. Britling could do nothing but rage.

"Devils they are!" he cried to the stars.

"Devils! Devilish fools rather. Cruel blockheads. Apes with all science
in their hands! My God! but _we will teach them a lesson yet!_..."

That was the key of his mood for an hour of aimless wandering, wandering
that was only checked at last by a sentinel who turned him back towards
the town....

He wandered, muttering. He found great comfort in scheming vindictive
destruction for countless Germans. He dreamt of swift armoured
aeroplanes swooping down upon the flying airship, and sending it reeling
earthward, the men screaming. He imagined a shattered Zeppelin
staggering earthward in the fields behind the Dower House, and how he
would himself run out with a spade and smite the Germans down. "Quarte