far above the national average, and recruiting died down to manageable proportions.  There was a quite genuine belief that the war might easily be too exclusively considered; that for the great mass of people it was a disturbing and distracting rather than a vital interest.  The phase “Business as Usual” ran about the world, and the papers abounded in articles in which going on as though there was no war at all was demonstrated to be the truest form of patriotism.  “Leave things to Kitchener” was another watchword with a strong appeal to the national quality.  “Business as usual during Alterations to the Map of Europe” was the advertisement of one cheerful barber, widely quoted....

Hugh was at home all through August.  He had thrown up his rooms in London with his artistic ambitions, and his father was making all the necessary arrangements for him to follow Cardinal to Cambridge.  Meanwhile Hugh was taking up his scientific work where he had laid it down.  He gave a reluctant couple of hours in the afternoon to the mysteries of Little-go Greek, and for the rest of his time he was either working at mathematics and mathematical physics or experimenting in a little upstairs room that had been carved out of the general space of the barn.  It was only at the very end of August that it dawned upon him or Mr. Britling that the war might have more than a spectacular and sympathetic appeal for him.  Hitherto contemporary history had happened without his personal intervention.  He did not see why it should not continue to happen with the same detachment.  The last elections—­and a general election is really the only point at which the life of the reasonable Englishman becomes in any way public—­had happened four years ago, when he was thirteen.

Section 14

For a time it was believed in Matching’s Easy that the German armies had been defeated and very largely destroyed at Liege.  It was a mistake not confined to Matching’s Easy.

The first raiding attack was certainly repulsed with heavy losses, and so were the more systematic assaults on August the sixth and seventh.  After that the news from Liege became uncertain, but it was believed in England that some or all of the forts were still holding out right up to the German entry into Brussels.  Meanwhile the French were pushing into their lost provinces, occupying Altkirch, Mulhausen and Saarburg; the Russians were invading Bukovina and East Prussia; the Goeben, the Breslau and the Panther had been sunk by the newspapers in an imaginary battle in the Mediterranean, and Togoland was captured by the French and British.  Neither the force nor the magnitude of the German attack through Belgium was appreciated by the general mind, and it was possible for Mr. Britling to reiterate his fear that the war would be over too soon, long before the full measure of its possible benefits could be secured.  But these apprehensions were unfounded; the lessons the war had in store for Mr. Britling were far more drastic than anything he was yet able to imagine even in his most exalted moods.