The two pictures would not stay steadily in his mind together.  When he thought of the broken faith that had poured those slaughtering hosts into the decent peace of Belgium, that had smashed her cities, burnt her villages and filled the pretty gorges of the Ardennes with blood and smoke and terror, he was flooded with self-righteous indignation, a self-righteous indignation that was indeed entirely Teutonic in its quality, that for a time drowned out his former friendship and every kindly disposition towards Germany, that inspired him with destructive impulses, and obsessed him with a desire to hear of death and more death and yet death in every German town and home....

Section 6

It will be an incredible thing to the happier reader of a coming age—­if ever this poor record of experience reaches a reader in the days to come—­to learn how much of the mental life of Mr. Britling was occupied at this time with the mere horror and atrocity of warfare.  It is idle and hopeless to speculate now how that future reader will envisage this war; it may take on broad dramatic outlines, it may seem a thing, just, logical, necessary, the burning of many barriers, the destruction of many obstacles.  Mr. Britling was too near to the dirt and pain and heat for any such broad landscape consolations.  Every day some new detail of evil beat into his mind.  Now it would be the artless story of some Belgian refugee.  There was a girl from Alost in the village for example, who had heard the fusillade that meant the shooting of citizens, the shooting of people she had known, she had seen the still blood-stained wall against which two murdered cousins had died, the streaked sand along which their bodies had been dragged; three German soldiers had been quartered in her house with her and her invalid mother, and had talked freely of the massacres in which they had been employed.  One of them was in civil life a young schoolmaster, and he had had, he said, to kill a woman and a baby.  The girl had been incredulous.  Yes, he had done so!  Of course he had done so!  His officer had made him do it, had stood over him.  He could do nothing but obey.  But since then he had been unable to sleep, unable to forget.

“We had to punish the people,” he said.  “They had fired on us.”

And besides, his officer had been drunk.  It had been impossible to argue.  His officer had an unrelenting character at all times....

Over and over again Mr. Britling would try to imagine that young schoolmaster soldier at Alost.  He imagined with a weak staring face and watery blue eyes behind his glasses, and that memory of murder....