Chapter 7

CHAPTER THE SECOND

TAKING PART

Section 1

There were now two chief things in the mind of Mr. Britling. One was a
large and valiant thing, a thing of heroic and processional quality, the
idea of taking up one's share in the great conflict, of leaving the
Dower House and its circle of habits and activities and going out--.
From that point he wasn't quite sure where he was to go, nor exactly
what he meant to do. His imagination inclined to the figure of a
volunteer in an improvised uniform inflicting great damage upon a
raiding invader from behind a hedge. The uniform, one presumes, would
have been something in the vein of the costume in which he met Mr.
Direck. With a "brassard." Or he thought of himself as working at a
telephone or in an office engaged upon any useful quasi-administrative
work that called for intelligence rather than training. Still, of
course, with a "brassard." A month ago he would have had doubts about
the meaning of "brassard"; now it seemed to be the very keyword for
national organisation. He had started for London by the early train on
Monday morning with the intention of immediate enrolment in any such
service that offered; of getting, in fact, into his brassard at once.
The morning papers he bought at the station dashed his conviction of the
inevitable fall of Paris into hopeful doubts, but did not shake his
resolution. The effect of rout and pursuit and retreat and retreat and
retreat had disappeared from the news. The German right was being
counter-attacked, and seemed in danger of getting pinched between Paris
and Verdun with the British on its flank. This relieved his mind, but
it did nothing to modify his new realisation of the tremendous gravity
of the war. Even if the enemy were held and repulsed a little there was
still work for every man in the task of forcing them back upon their own
country. This war was an immense thing, it would touch everybody....
That meant that every man must give himself. That he had to give
himself. He must let nothing stand between him and that clear
understanding. It was utterly shameful now to hold back and not to do
one's utmost for civilisation, for England, for all the ease and safety
one had been given--against these drilled, commanded, obsessed millions.

Mr. Britling was a flame of exalted voluntaryism, of patriotic devotion,
that day.

But behind all this bravery was the other thing, the second thing in the
mind of Mr. Britling, a fear. He was prepared now to spread himself like
some valiant turkey-gobbler, every feather at its utmost, against the
aggressor. He was prepared to go out and flourish bayonets, march and
dig to the limit of his power, shoot, die in a ditch if needful,