“Well, I haven’t got any loose money,” said George curtly.  “And what I want to know is, if they insist on me going to India, what am I to do?”

“Tell them you can’t go.  Tell ’em your professional engagements won’t permit it.  They’ll lick your boots, and ask humbly if you can suggest any suitable person to represent you.  I shall want all your energies, and my factory will be worth more to this country in the war than all the barracks under heaven.  Now just bend your eye to these.”

He took some papers from his tail-pocket.  The discussion grew technical.

III

George sailed down Piccadilly westwards on the top of a motor-bus.  The August afternoon was superb.  Piccadilly showed more than its usual splendour of traffic, for the class to whom the sacred word ‘England’ signified personal dominion and a vast apparatus of personal luxury either had not gone away for its holiday or had returned therefrom in a hurry.  The newspaper placards spoke of great feats of arms by the Allies.  Through the leafage of Hyde Park could be seen uncountable smart troops manoeuvring in bodies.  On the top of the motor-bus a student of war was explaining to an ignorant friend that the active adhesion of Japan, just announced, meant the beginning of the end for Germany.  From Japan he went to Namur, seeing that Namur was the ‘chief bastion’ of the defensive line, and that hence the Germans would not be ‘allowed’ to take it.  Almost every motor-bus carried a fine specimen of this type of philosopher, to whom the whole travelling company listened while pretending not to listen.  George despised him for his manner, but agreed with some of his reasoning.

George was thinking chiefly about Sir Isaac.  Impressive person, Sir Isaac, even if hateful!  It was remarkable how the fellow seemed always to have leisure.  Organization, of course!  Indubitably the fellow’s arguments could not be gainsaid.  The firing-line was not the only or even the most important part of the national war machine.  To suppose otherwise was to share the crude errors of the childlike populace and its Press.  Men were useless without guns, guns without shot, shot without explosives; and explosives could not be produced without a factory.  The populace would never understand the close interdependence of various activities; it would never see beyond the recruiting station; it was meet only for pity.  Sir Isaac had uttered a very wise saying:  “Things are always arranged in the end ...  It’s up to the individual to look out for himself.”  Sir Isaac was freed from the thrall of mob-sentimentality.  He was a super-man.  And he was converting George into a super-man.  George might have gone back to the office, but he was going home instead, because he could think creatively just as well outside the office as inside—­so why should he accept the convention of the ordinary professional man. (Sir Isaac assuredly did not.) He had telephoned to the