For the first time since August, nineteen-fourteen, he found himself thinking, in perfect freedom and with perfect lucidity, about the War.  He had really known, half the time, that it was the greatest War of Independence that had ever been.  As for his old hatred of the British Empire, he had seen long ago that there was no such thing, in the continental sense of Empire; there was a unique thing, the rule, more good than bad, of an imperial people.  He had seen that the strength of the Allies was in exact proportion to the strength and the enlightenment of their democracies.  Reckoning by decades, there could be no deadlock in the struggle; the deadlock meant a ten years’ armistice and another war.  He could not help seeing these things.  His objection to occupying his mind with them had been that they were too easy.

Now that he could look at it by himself he saw how the War might take hold of you like a religion.  It was the Great War of Redemption.  And redemption meant simply thousands and millions of men in troop-ships and troop-trains coming from the ends of the world to buy the freedom of the world with their bodies.  It meant that the very fields he was looking over, and this beauty of the hills, those unused ramparts where no batteries were hid, and the small, silent villages, Morfe and Renton, were bought now with their bodies.

He wondered how at this moment any sane man could be a Pacifist.  And, wondering, he felt a reminiscent sting of grief and yearning.  But he refused, resolutely, to feel any shame.

His religion also was good; and, anyhow, you didn’t choose your religion; it chose you.

And on Saturday the letters came:  John’s letter enclosing the wire from the War Office, and the letter that Nicky’s Colonel had written to Anthony.

Nicky was killed.

Michael took in the fact, and the date (it was last Sunday).  There were some official regrets, but they made no impression on him.  John’s letter made no impression on him.  Last Sunday Nicky was killed.

He had not even unfolded the Colonel’s letter yet.  The close black lines showed through the thin paper.  Their closeness repelled him.  He did not want to know how his brother had died; at least not yet.  He was afraid of the Colonel’s letter.  He felt that by simply not reading it he could put off the unbearable turn of the screw.

He was shivering with cold.  He drew up his chair to the wide, open hearth-place where there was no fire; he held out his hands over it.  The wind swept down the chimney and made him colder; and he felt sick.

He had been sitting there about an hour when Suzanne came in and asked him if he would like a little fire.  He heard himself saying, “No, thank you,” in a hard voice.  The idea of warmth and comfort was disagreeable to him.  Suzanne asked him then if he had had bad news?  And he heard himself saying:  “Yes,” and Suzanne trying, trying very gently, to persuade him that it was perhaps only that Monsieur Nicky was wounded?