In three minutes he was in the smoking-room of his club, warming himself at a fine, old, huge, wasteful grate, in which burned such a coal fire as could not have been seen in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, nor anywhere on the continent of Europe.  The war had as yet changed nothing in the impregnable club, unless it was that ordinary matches had recently been substituted for the giant matches on which the club had hitherto prided itself.  The hour lay neglected midway between tea and dinner, and there were only two other members in the vast room—­solitaries, each before his own grand fire.

G.J. took up The Times, which his duties had prevented him from reading at large in the morning.  He wandered with a sense of ease among its multifarious pages, and, in full leisure, brought his information up to date concerning the state of the war and of the country.  Air-raids by Zeppelins were frequent, and some authorities talked magniloquently about the “defence of London.”  Hundreds of people had paid immense sums for pictures and objects of art at the Red Cross Sale at Christie’s, one of the most successful social events of the year.  The House of Commons was inquisitive about Mesopotamia as a whole, and one British Army was still trying to relieve another British Army besieged in Kut.  German submarine successes were obviously disquieting.  The supply of beer was reduced.  There were to be forty principal aristocratic dancers in the Pageant of Terpsichore.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer had budgeted for five hundred millions, and was very proud.  The best people were at once proud and scared of the new income tax at 5s. in the L. They expressed the fear that such a tax would kill income or send it to America.  The theatrical profession was quite sure that the amusements tax would involve utter ruin for the theatrical profession, and the match trade was quite sure that the match tax would put an end to matches, and some unnamed modest individuals had apparently decided that the travel tax must and forthwith would be dropped.  The story of the evacuation of Gallipoli had grown old and tedious.  Cranks were still vainly trying to prove to the blunt John Bullishness of the Prime Minister that the Daylight Saving Bill was not a piece of mere freak legislation.  The whole of the West End and all the inhabitants of country houses in Britain had discovered a new deity in Australia and spent all their spare time and lungs in asserting that all other deities were false and futile; his earthly name was Hughes.  Jan Smuts was fighting in the primeval forests of East Africa.  The Germans were discussing their war aims; and on the Verdun front they had reached Mort Homme in the usual way, that was, according to the London Press, by sacrificing more men than any place could possibly be worth; still, they had reached Mort Homme.  And though our losses and the French losses were everywhere—­one might assert, so to speak—­negligible, nevertheless the steadfast band of thinkers and fact-facers who held a monopoly of true patriotism were extremely anxious to extend the Military Service Act, so as to rope into the Army every fit male in the island except themselves.