Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells Page B

to realise how sick Germany must be getting of the highroad 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.’ …”
    â€œBut suppose this Balkan trouble becomes acute,” said Manning.
    â€œIt hasn’t; it won’t. Even if it did we should keep out of it.”
    â€œBut suppose Russia grappled Austria and Germany flung herself suddenly upon France—perhaps taking Belgium on the way.”
    â€œOh!—we should fight. Of course we should fight. Could anyone 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. …”
    Â§ 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-decamp 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 thatbrightly costumed crowd, a hot excitement in vivid contrast to the Sabbath calm of Matching’s Easy. …
    Mr. Britling, to whom the explosion was altogether inaudible, continued his dissertation upon the common sense of the world and the practical security of our Western peace.
    Â§ 3
    Lunch was an open-air feast again. Three visitors had dropped in; they had motored down from London piled up on a motor-cycle and a side-car; a brother and two sisters they seemed to be, and they had apparently reduced hilariousness to a principle. The rumours of coming hockey, that had been floating on the outskirts of Mr. Direck’s consciousness ever since his arrival thickened and multiplied. … It crept into his mind that he was expected to play. …
    He decided he would not play. He took various people into his confidence. He told Mr. Britling, and Mr. Britling said, “We’ll make you full-back, where you’ll get a hit now and then and not have very much to do. All you have to remember is to hit with the flat side of your stick and not raise it above your shoulders.” He told Teddy, and Teddy said, “I strongly advise you to dress as thinly as you can consistently with decency, and put your collar and tie in your pocket before the game begins. Hockey is properly a winter game.” He told the maiden aunt-like lady with the prominent nose, and she said almost enviously, “Every one here is asked to play except me. I assuage the perambulator. I suppose one mustn’t be