He was one of those who believed that the War would be over in four months.

Michael, pledged to secrecy, came and looked at the Moving Fortress.  He was interested and intelligent; he admired that efficiency of Nicky’s that was so unlike his own.

Yet, he wondered, after all, was it so unlike?  He, too, was aiming at an art as clean and hard and powerful as Nicky’s, as naked of all blazonry and decoration, an art which would attain its objective by the simplest, most perfect adjustment of means to ends.

And Anthony was proud of that hidden wonder locked behind the door of the workshop in the orchard.  He realized that his son Nicholas had taken part in a great and important thing.  He was prouder of Nicholas than he had been of Michael.

And Michael knew it.

Nicky’s brains could be used for the service of his country.

But Michael’s?  Anthony said to himself that there wasn’t any sense—­any sense that he could endure to contemplate—­in which Michael’s brains could be of any use to his country.  When Anthony thought of the mobilization of his family for national service, Michael and Michael’s brains were a problem that he put behind him for the present and refused to contemplate.  There would be time enough for Michael later.

Anthony was perfectly well aware of his own one talent, the talent which had made “Harrison and Harrison” the biggest timber-importing firm in England.  If there was one thing he understood it was organization.  If there was one thing he could not tolerate it was waste of good material, the folly of forcing men and women into places they were not fit for.  He had let his eldest son slip out of the business without a pang, or with hardly any pang.  He had only taken Nicholas into it as an experiment.  It was on John that he relied to inherit it and carry it farther.

As a man of business he approved of the advertised formula:  “Business as Usual.”  He understood it to mean that the duty which England expected every man to do was to stay in the place he was most fitted for and to go where he was most wanted.  Nothing but muddle and disaster could follow any departure from this rule.

It was fitting that Frances and Veronica should do Red Cross work.  It was fitting that Dorothy should help to organize the relief of the Belgium refugees.  It was fitting that John should stay at home and carry on the business, and that he, Anthony, should enlist when he had settled John into his place.  It was, above all, fitting that Nicky should devote himself to the invention and manufacture of armaments.  He could not conceive anything more wantonly and scandalously wasteful than a system that could make any other use of Nicky’s brains.  He thanked goodness that, with a European War upon us, such a system, if it existed, would not be allowed to live a day.

As for Michael, it might be fitting later—­very much later—­perhaps.  If Michael wanted to volunteer for the Army then, and if it were necessary, he would have no right to stop him.  But it would not be necessary.  England was going to win this War on the sea and not on land.  Michael was practically safe.