servants do--and
things are still far too much in their hands. Things are getting muffed,
there can be no doubt about that--not fatally, but still rather
seriously. And the government--it was human before the war, and we've
added no archangels. There's muddle. There's mutual suspicion. You never
know what newspaper office Lloyd George won't be in touch with next.
He's honest and patriotic and energetic, but he's mortally afraid of old
women and class intrigues. He doesn't know where to get his backing.
He's got all a labour member's terror of the dagger at his back. There's
a lack of nerve, too, in getting rid of prominent officers--who have
friends."

The staff officer nodded.

"Northcliffe seems to me to have a case," said Mr. Britling. "Every one
abuses him."

"I'd stop his _Daily Mail_," said Raeburn. "I'd leave _The Times_, but
I'd stop the _Daily Mail_ on the score of its placards alone. It
overdoes Northcliffe. It translates him into the shrieks and yells of
underlings. The plain fact is that Northcliffe is scared out of his wits
by German efficiency--and in war time when a man is scared out of his
wits, whether he is honest or not, you put his head in a bag or hold a
pistol to it to calm him.... What is the good of all this clamouring for
a change of government? We haven't a change of government. It's like
telling a tramp to get a change of linen. Our men, all our public men,
are second-rate men, with the habits of advocates. There is nothing
masterful in their minds. How can you expect the system to produce
anything else? But they are doing as well as they can, and there is no
way of putting in any one else now, and there you are."

"Meanwhile," said Mr. Britling, "our boys--get killed."

"They'd get killed all the more if you had--let us say--Carson and
Lloyd George and Northcliffe and Lady Frensham, with, I suppose, Austin
Harrison and Horatio Bottomley thrown in--as a Strong Silent
Government.... I'd rather have Northcliffe as dictator than that.... We
can't suddenly go back on the past and alter our type. We didn't listen
to Matthew Arnold. We've never thoroughly turned out and cleaned up our
higher schools. We've resisted instruction. We've preferred to maintain
our national luxuries of a bench of bishops and party politics. And
compulsory Greek and the university sneer. And Lady Frensham. And all
that sort of thing. And here we are!... Well, damn it, we're in for it
now; we've got to plough through