and marching with
them into Dublin. Troops fired on the mob, and the House of Commons gave
itself over to a most exciting debate on the business; the Irish Party
demanded a large number of brutal heads to be delivered on chargers; and
Unionist politicians, Press, and public declared that the heads were
not brutal heads but loyal and devoted heads and should not be
delivered; on the contrary they should be wreathed. It was delicious.

II

It was delicious and it was, moreover, reassuring. In these same days
between the summoning of the Buckingham Palace Conference and the
landing of the Nationalist guns, Continental events arising out of the
stale Sarajevo affair reared their heads and looked towards Great
Britain in a presumptuous and sinister way to which the British public
was not accustomed, and which it resented. The British public had never
taken any interest in international affairs and it did not wish to take
any interest in international affairs. It certainly did not wish to be
disturbed by them, and at this moment of the exciting Irish deadlock the
Wilhelmstrasse, the Ball Platz, the Quai d'Orsay and similar stupid,
meaningless and unpronounceable places intruded themselves disturbingly
in British homes, much as the writing on the wall vexatiously disturbed
Belshazzar's feast, and were similarly resented. Belshazzar probably
ordered in a fresh troupe of dancers to remove the chilly effect of the
stupid, meaningless and unpronounceable writing, and in the same way the
British public turned with relief and with thrills to the gun-running
and the shooting.

It was characteristically intriguing in the nature of its excitement. It
was characteristically intriguing because, like all the domestic
sensations to which the British Public had become accustomed, it in no
way interfered with the lives of those not directly implicated in it.
Like them all, it entertained without inconveniencing. They knew their
place, the deadlocks, the crises and the other sensations of those
glowing days. They caused no member of their audience to go without his
meals. They interfered neither with pleasure nor with business.

III

Sometimes this was a little surprising. Fresh from newspaper instruction
of the deadness of the deadlock, the poignancy of the crisis, or the
stupendity of the achievement, one rather expected one's own personal
world to stand still and watch it. But one's own personal world never
did stand still and w