Mr. Britling Sees It Through, page 179 by H.G. Wells
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f life." He had got what he wanted. He left her standing upon the lawn and hurried back to his desk....
Section 6
When Mr. Britling, after a strenuous morning among high ideals, descended for lunch, he found Mr. Lawrence Carmine had come over to join him at that meal. Mr. Carmine was standing in the hall with his legs very wide apart reading The Times for the fourth time. "I can do no work," he said, turning round. "I can't fix my mind. I suppose we are going to war. I'd got so used to the war with Germany that I never imagined it would happen. Gods! what a bore it will be.... And Maxse and all those scaremongers cock-a-hoop and 'I told you so.' Damn these Germans!"
He looked despondent and worried. He followed Mr. Britling towards the dining-room with his hands deep in his pockets.
"It's going to be a tremendous thing," he said, after he had greeted Mrs. Britling and Hugh and Aunt Wilshire and Teddy, and seated himself at Mr. Britling's hospitable board. "It's going to upset everything. We don't begin to imagine all the mischief it is going to do."
Mr. Britling was full of the heady draught of liberal optimism he had been brewing upstairs. "I am not sorry I have lived to see this war," he said. "It may be a tremendous catastrophe in one sense, but in another it is a huge step forward in human life. It is the end of forty years of evil suspense. It is crisis and solution."
"I wish I could see it like that," said Mr. Carmine.
"It is like a thaw--everything has been in a frozen confusion since that Jew-German Treaty of Berlin. And since 1871."
"Why not since Schleswig-Holstein?" said Mr. Carmine.
"Why not? Or since the Treaty of Vienna?"
"Or since--One might go back."
"To the Roman Empire," said Hugh.
"To the first conquest of all," said Teddy....
"I couldn't work this morning," said Hugh. "I have been reading in the Encyclopædia about races and religions in the Balkans.... It's very mixed."
"So long as