Mr. Direck’s mind was in a perplexity only too common during the stresses of that tragic year. He was entangled in a paradox; like a large majority of Americans at that time his feelings were quite definitely pro-Ally, and like so many in that majority he had a very clear conviction that it would be wrong and impossible for the United States to take part in the war. His sympathies were intensely with the Dower House and its dependent cottage; he would have wept with generous emotion to see the Stars and Stripes interwoven with the three other great banners of red, white and blue that led the world against German imperialism and militarism, but for all that his mind would not march to that tune. Against all these impulses fought something very fundamental in Mr. Direck’s composition, a preconception of America that had grown almost insensibly in his mind, the idea of America as a polity aloof from the Old World system, as a fresh start for humanity, as something altogether too fine and precious to be dragged into even the noblest of European conflicts. America was to be the beginning of the fusion of mankind, neither German nor British nor French nor in any way national. She was to be the great experiment in peace and reasonableness. She had to hold civilisation and social order out of this fray, to be a refuge for all those finer things that die under stress and turmoil; it was her task to maintain the standards of life and the claims of humanitarianism in the conquered province and the prisoners’ compound, she had to be the healer and arbitrator, the remonstrance and not the smiting hand. Surely there were enough smiting hands.
But this idea of an America judicial, remonstrating, and aloof, led him to a conclusion that scandalised him. If America will not, and should not use force in the ends of justice, he argued, then America has no right to make and export munitions of war. She must not trade in what she disavows. He had a quite exaggerated idea of the amount of munitions that America was sending to the Allies, he was inclined to believe that they were entirely dependent upon their transatlantic supplies, and so he found himself persuaded that the victory of the Allies and the honour of America were incompatible things. And—in spite of his ethical aloofness—he loved the Allies. He wanted them to win, and he wanted America to abandon a course that he believed was vitally necessary to their victory. It was an intellectual dilemma. He hid this self-contradiction from Matching’s Easy with much the same feelings that a curate might hide a poisoned dagger at a tea-party. …
It was entirely against his habits of mind to hide anything—more particularly an entanglement with a difficult proposition—but he perceived quite clearly that neither Cecily nor Mr. Britling were really to be trusted to listen calmly to what, under happier circumstances, might be a profoundly interesting moral complication. Yet it was not in his nature to conceal; it was in his nature to state.
And Cecily made things much more difficult. She was pitiless with him. She kept him aloof. “How can I let you make love to me,” she said, “when our English men are all going to the war, when Teddy is a prisoner and Hugh is in the trenches. If I were a man—!”
She couldn’t be induced to see any case for America. England was fighting for freedom, and America ought to be beside her. “All the world ought to unite against this German wickedness,” she said.
“I’m doing all I can to help in Belgium,” he protested. “Aren’t I working? We’ve fed four million people.”
He had backbone, and he would not let her, he was resolved, bully him into a falsehood about his country. America was aloof. She was right to be aloof. … At the same time, Cecily’s reproaches were unendurable. And he could feel he was drifting apart from her. …
He couldn’t make America go to war.
In the quiet of his London hotel he thought it all out. He sat at a writing-table making notes of a perfectly lucid statement of the reasonable, balanced liberal American opinion. An instinct of caution determined him to test it first on Mr. Britling.
But Mr. Britling realised his worst expectations. He was beyond listening.
“I’ve not heard from my boy for more than three weeks,” said Mr. Britling in the place of any salutation. “This morning makes three-and-twenty days without a letter.”
It seemed to Mr. Direck that Mr. Britling had suddenly grown ten years older. His face was more deeply lined; the colour and texture of his complexion had gone grey. He moved restlessly and badly; his nerves were manifestly unstrung.
“It’s intolerable that one should be subjected to this ghastly suspense. The boy isn’t three hundred miles away.”
Mr. Direck made obvious inquiries.
“Always before he’s written—generally once a fortnight.”
They talked of Hugh for a time, but Mr. Britling was fitful and irritable and quite prepared to hold Mr. Direck accountable for the laxity of the War Office, the treachery of Bulgaria, the ambiguity of Romania or any other barb that chanced to be sticking into his sensibilities. They lunched precariously. Then they went into the study to smoke.
There Mr. Direck was unfortunate enough to notice a copy of that innocent American publication The New Republic, lying close to two or three numbers of The Fatherland, a pro-German periodical which at that time inflicted itself upon English writers with the utmost determination. Mr. Direck remarked that The New Republic was an interesting effort on the part of
