s at the back of his mind. He went on writing.

_If you think that these two boys have both perished, not in some
noble common cause but one against the other in a struggle of
dynasties and boundaries and trade routes and tyrannous
ascendancies, then it seems to me that you must feel as I feel that
this war is the most tragic and dreadful thing that has ever
happened to mankind._

He sat thinking for some minutes after he had written that, and when
presently he resumed his writing, a fresh strain of thought was
traceable even in his opening sentence.

_If you count dead and wounds this is the most dreadful war in
history; for you as for me, it has been almost the extremity of
personal tragedy.... Black sorrow.... But is it the most dreadful
war?_

_I do not think it is. I can write to you and tell you that I do
indeed believe that our two sons have died not altogether in vain.
Our pain and anguish may not be wasted--may be necessary. Indeed
they may be necessary. Here am I bereaved and wretched--and I hope.
Never was the fabric of war so black; that I admit. But never was
the black fabric of war so threadbare. At a thousand points the
light is shining through._

Mr. Britling's pen stopped.

There was perfect stillness in the study bedroom.

"The tinpot style," said Mr. Britling at last in a voice of extreme
bitterness.

He fell into an extraordinary quarrel with his style. He forgot about
those Pomeranian parents altogether in his exasperation at his own
inexpressiveness, at his incomplete control of these rebel words and
phrases that came trailing each its own associations and suggestions to
hamper his purpose with it. He read over the offending sentence.

"The point is that it is true," he whispered. "It is exactly what I want
to say."...

Exactly?...

His mind stuck on that "exactly."... When one has much to say style is
troublesome. It is as if one fussed with one's uniform before a
battle.... But that is just what one ought to do before a battle.... One
ought to have everything in order....

He took a fresh sheet and made three trial beginnings.

_"War is like a black fabric."_...

_"War is a curtain of black fabric across the pathway."_

_"War is a curtain of dense black fabric across all the hopes and
kindliness of mankind. Yet always it has let through some gleams of
light, and now--I am not dreaming--it g