tomobile, and on one or two journeys into
Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, and marked the steady conversion of the
old pacific countryside into an armed camp. He was disposed to minimise
Hugh's criticisms. He found in them something of the harshness of youth,
which is far too keen-edged to be tolerant with half performance and
our poor human evasion of perfection's overstrain. "Our poor human
evasion of perfection's overstrain"; this phrase was Mr. Britling's. To
Mr. Britling, looking less closely and more broadly, the new army was a
pride and a marvel.

He liked to come into some quiet village and note the clusters of sturdy
khaki-clad youngsters going about their business, the tethered horses,
the air of subdued bustle, the occasional glimpses of guns and
ammunition trains. Wherever one went now there were soldiers and still
more soldiers. There was a steady flow of men into Flanders, and
presently to Gallipoli, but it seemed to have no effect upon the
multitude in training at home. He was pleasantly excited by the evident
increase in the proportion of military material upon the railways; he
liked the promise and mystery of the long lines of trucks bearing
tarpaulin-covered wagons and carts and guns that he would pass on his
way to Liverpool Street station. He could apprehend defeat in the
silence of the night, but when he saw the men, when he went about the
land, then it was impossible to believe in any end but victory....

But through the spring and summer there was no victory. The "great
offensive" of May was checked and abandoned after a series of
ineffective and very costly attacks between Ypres and Soissons. The
Germans had developed a highly scientific defensive in which
machine-guns replaced rifles and a maximum of punishment was inflicted
upon an assaulting force with a minimum of human loss. The War Office
had never thought much of machine-guns before, but now it thought a good
deal. Moreover, the energies of Britain were being turned more and more
towards the Dardanelles.

The idea of an attack upon the Dardanelles had a traditional
attractiveness for the British mind. Old men had been brought up from
childhood with "forcing the Dardanelles" as a familiar phrase; it had
none of the flighty novelty and vulgarity about it that made an "aerial
offensive" seem so unwarrantable a proceeding. Forcing the Dardanelles
was historically British. It made no break with tradition. Soon after
Turkey entered the war Brit