Notably he would not recognise at first the extreme bitterness of this war.  He would not believe that the attack upon Britain and Western Europe generally expressed the concentrated emotion of a whole nation.  He thought that the Allies were in conflict with a system and not with a national will.  He fought against the persuasion that the whole mass of a great civilised nation could be inspired by a genuine and sustained hatred.  Hostility was an uncongenial thing to him; he would not recognise that the greater proportion of human beings are more readily hostile than friendly.  He did his best to believe—­in his “And Now War Ends” he did his best to make other people believe—­that this war was the perverse exploit of a small group of people, of limited but powerful influences, an outrage upon the general geniality of mankind.  The cruelty, mischief, and futility of war were so obvious to him that he was almost apologetic in asserting them.  He believed that war had but to begin and demonstrate its quality among the Western nations in order to unify them all against its repetition.  They would exclaim:  “But we can’t do things like this to one another!” He saw the aggressive imperialism of Germany called to account even by its own people; a struggle, a collapse, a liberal-minded conference of world powers, and a universal resumption of amiability upon a more assured basis of security.  He believed—­and many people in England believed with him—­that a great section of the Germans would welcome triumphant Allies as their liberators from intolerable political obsessions.

The English because of their insularity had been political amateurs for endless generations.  It was their supreme vice, it was their supreme virtue, to be easy-going.  They had lived in an atmosphere of comedy, and denied in the whole tenor of their lives that life is tragic.  Not even the Americans had been more isolated.  The Americans had had their Indians, their negroes, their War of Secession.  Until the Great War the Channel was as broad as the Atlantic for holding off every vital challenge.  Even Ireland was away—­a four-hour crossing.  And so the English had developed to the fullest extent the virtues and vices of safety and comfort; they had a hatred of science and dramatic behaviour; they could see no reason for exactness or intensity; they disliked proceeding “to extremes.”  Ultimately everything would turn out all right.  But they knew what it is to be carried into conflicts by energetic minorities and the trick of circumstances, and they were ready to understand the case of any other country which has suffered that fate.  All their habits inclined them to fight good-temperedly and comfortably, to quarrel with a government and not with a people.  It took Mr. Britling at least a couple of months of warfare to understand that the Germans were fighting in an altogether different spirit.