Everlasting, Amen.'...

"Sometimes I think he's righter than I am. Sometimes I think he is only
madder."

Section 15

These letters weighed heavily upon Mr. Britling's mind. He perceived
that this precociously wise, subtle youngster of his was now close up to
the line of injury and death, going to and fro from it, in a perpetual,
fluctuating danger. At any time now in the day or night the evil thing
might wing its way to him. If Mr. Britling could have prayed, he would
have prayed for Hugh. He began and never finished some ineffectual
prayers.

He tried to persuade himself of a Roman stoicism; that he would be
sternly proud, sternly satisfied, if this last sacrifice for his country
was demanded from him. He perceived he was merely humbugging himself....

This war had no longer the simple greatness that would make any such
stern happiness possible....

The disaster to Teddy and Mrs. Teddy hit him hard. He winced at the
thought of Mrs. Teddy's white face; the unspoken accusation in her eyes.
He felt he could never bring himself to say his one excuse to her: "I
did not keep Hugh back. If I had done that, then you might have the
right to blame."

If he had overcome every other difficulty in the way to an heroic pose
there was still Hugh's unconquerable lucidity of outlook. War _was_ a
madness....

But what else was to be done? What else could be done? We could not give
in to Germany. If a lunatic struggles, sane men must struggle too....

Mr. Britling had ceased to write about the war at all. All his later
writings about it had been abandoned unfinished. He could not imagine
them counting, affecting any one, producing any effect. Indeed he was
writing now very intermittently. His contributions to _The Times_ had
fallen away. He was perpetually thinking now about the war, about life
and death, about the religious problems that had seemed so remote in the
days of the peace; but none of his thinking would become clear and
definite enough for writing. All the clear stars of his mind were hidden
by the stormy clouds of excitement that the daily newspaper perpetually
renewed and by the daily developments of life. And just as his
professional income shrank before his mental confusion and impotence,
the private income that came from his and his wife's investments became
uncertain. She had had two thousand pounds in the Constantinople loan,
seven hundred in debentures of the Ottoman railway; he had held similar
sums i