“I never thought of you as a soldier before,” said Teddy.

“I have deferred my service until I have done my thesis,” said Herr Heinrich.  “Now all that will be—­Piff!  And my thesis three-quarters finished.”

“That is serious,” said Teddy.

“Verdammte Dummheit!” said Herr Heinrich.  “Why do they do such things?”

On Thursday, the 30th of July, Caillaux, Carson, strikes, and all the common topics of life had been swept out of the front page of the paper altogether; the stock exchanges were in a state of wild perturbation, and food prices were leaping fantastically.  Austria was bombarding Belgrade, contrary to the rules of war hitherto accepted; Russia was mobilising; Mr. Asquith was, he declared, not relaxing his efforts “to do everything possible to circumscribe the area of possible conflict,” and the Vienna Conference of Peace Societies was postponed.  “I do not see why a conflict between Russia and Austria should involve Western Europe,” said Mr. Britling.  “Our concern is only for Belgium and France.”

But Herr Heinrich knew better.  “No,” he said.  “It is the war.  It has come.  I have heard it talked about in Germany many times.  But I have never believed that it was obliged to come.  Ach!  It considers no one.  So long as Esperanto is disregarded, all these things must be.”

Friday brought photographs of the mobilisation in Vienna, and the news that Belgrade was burning.  Young men in straw hats very like English or French or Belgian young men in straw hats were shown parading the streets of Vienna, carrying flags and banners portentously, blowing trumpets or waving hats and shouting.  Saturday saw all Europe mobilising, and Herr Heinrich upon Teddy’s bicycle in wild pursuit of evening papers at the junction.  Mobilisation and the emotions of Herr Heinrich now became the central facts of the Dower House situation.  The two younger Britlings mobilised with great vigour upon the playroom floor.  The elder had one hundred and ninety toy soldiers with a considerable equipment of guns and wagons; the younger had a force of a hundred and twenty-three, not counting three railway porters (with trucks complete), a policeman, five civilians and two ladies.  Also they made a number of British and German flags out of paper.  But as neither would allow his troops to be any existing foreign army, they agreed to be Redland and Blueland, according to the colour of their prevailing uniforms.  Meanwhile Herr Heinrich confessed almost promiscuously the complication of his distresses by a hitherto unexpected emotional interest in the daughter of the village publican.  She was a placid receptive young woman named Maud Hickson, on whom the young man had, it seemed, imposed the more poetical name of Marguerite.

“Often we have spoken together, oh yes, often,” he assured Mrs. Britling.  “And now it must all end.  She loves flowers, she loves birds.  She is most sweet and innocent.  I have taught her many words in German and several times I have tried to draw her in pencil, and now I must go away and never see her any more.”