“Look at that pleasant person.  There he is—­Echt Deutsch—­if anything ever was.  Look at my son there!  Do you see the two of them engaged in mortal combat?  The thing’s too ridiculous.  The world grows sane.  They may fight in the Balkans still; in many ways the Balkan States are in the very rear of civilisation; but to imagine decent countries like this or Germany going back to bloodshed!  No....  When I see Rendezvous keeping it up and keeping it up, I begin to see just how poor Germany must be keeping it up.  I begin to realise how sick Germany must be getting of the high road and the dust and heat and the everlasting drill and restraint....  My heart goes out to the South Germans.  Old Manning here always reminds me of Austria.  Think of Germany coming like Rendezvous on a Sunday morning, and looking stiffly over Austria’s fence.  ‘Come for a good hard walk, man.  Keep Fit....’”

“But suppose this Balkan trouble becomes acute,” said Manning.

“It hasn’t; it won’t.  Even if it did we should keep out of it.”

“But suppose Russia grappled Austria and Germany flung herself suddenly upon France—­perhaps taking Belgium on the way.”

“Oh!—­we should fight.  Of course we should fight.  Could any one but a congenital idiot suppose we shouldn’t fight?  They know we should fight.  They aren’t altogether idiots in Germany.  But the thing’s absurd.  Why should Germany attack France?  It’s as if Manning here took a hatchet suddenly and assailed Edith....  It’s just the dream of their military journalists.  It’s such schoolboy nonsense.  Isn’t that a beautiful pillar rose?  Edith only put it in last year....  I hate all this talk of wars and rumours of wars....  It’s worried all my life.  And it gets worse and it gets emptier every year....”

Section 2

Now just at that moment there was a loud report....

But neither Mr. Britling nor Mr. Manning nor Mr. Direck was interrupted or incommoded in the slightest degree by that report.  Because it was too far off over the curve of this round world to be either heard or seen at Matching’s Easy.  Nevertheless it was a very loud report.  It occurred at an open space by a river that ran through a cramped Oriental city, a city spiked with white minarets and girt about by bare hills under a blazing afternoon sky.  It came from a black parcel that the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, with great presence of mind, had just flung out from the open hood of his automobile, where, tossed from the side of the quay, it had descended a few seconds before.  It exploded as it touched the cobbled road just under the front of the second vehicle in the procession, and it blew to pieces the front of the automobile and injured the aide-de-camp who was in it and several of the spectators.  Its thrower was immediately gripped by the bystanders.  The procession stopped.  There was a tremendous commotion amongst that brightly-costumed crowd, a hot excitement in vivid contrast to the Sabbath calm of Matching’s Easy....