It was just a day or so over three weeks after this last letter from
Hugh that Mr. Direck reappeared at Matching's Easy. He had had a trip to
Holland--a trip that was as much a flight from Cissie's reproaches as a
mission of inquiry. He had intended to go on into Belgium, where he had
already been doing useful relief work under Mr. Hoover, but the
confusion of his own feelings had checked him and brought him back.
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
Roumania 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 "_la Jeunesse Américaine_." Mr.
Britling regarded the interesting effort with a jaded, unloving eye.
"You Americans," he said, "are the most extraordinary people in the
world."
"Our conditions are exceptional," said Mr. Direck.
"You think they are," said Mr. Britling, and paused, and then began to
deliver his soul about America in a discourse of accumulating
bitterness. At first he reasoned and explained, but as he went on he
lost self-control; he became dogmatic, he became denunciatory, he became
abusive. He identified Mr. Direck more and more with his subject; he
thrust the uncivil "You" more and more directly at him. He let his cigar
go out, and flung it impatiently into the fire. As though America was
responsible for its going out....
Like many Britons Mr. Britling had that touch of patriotic feeling
towards America which takes the form of impatient criticism. No one in
Britain ever calls an American a foreigner. To see faults in Germany or
Spain is to tap boundless fountains of charity; but the faults of
America rankle in an English mind almost as much as the faults of
England. Mr. Britling could explain away the faults of England readily
enough; our Hanoverian monarchy, our Established Church and its
deadening effect on education, our imperial obligations and the strain
they made upon our supplies of administrative talent were all very
serviceable for that purpose. But there in America was the old race,
without Crown or Church or international embarrassment, and it was
still falling short of splendid. His speech to Mr. Direck had the
rancour of a family quarrel. Let me only give a few sentences that were
to stick in Mr. Direck's memory.
"You think you are out of it for good and all. So did we think. We were
as smug as you are when France went down in '71.... Yours is only one
further degree of insularity. You think this vacuous aloofness of yours
is some sort of moral superiority. So did we, so did we....
"It won't last you ten years if we go down....
"Do you think that our disaster will leave the Atlantic for you? Do you
fancy there is any Freedom of the Seas possible beyond such freedom as
we maintain, except the freedom to attack you? For forty years the
British fleet has guarded all America from European attack. Your Monroe
doctrine skulks behind it now....
"I'm sick of this high thin talk of yours about the war.... You are a
nation of ungenerous onlookers--watching us throttle or be throttled.
You gamble on our winning. And we shall win; we shall win. And you will
profit. And when we have won a victory only one shade less terrible than
defeat, then you think you will come in and tinker with our peace. Bleed
us a little more to please your hyphenated patriots...."
He came to his last shaft. "You talk of your New Ideals of Peace. You
say that you are too proud to fight. But your business men in New York
give the show away. There's a little printed card now in half the
offices in New York that tells of the real pacificism of America.
They're busy, you know. Trade's real good. And so as not to interrupt it
they stick up this card: 'Nix on the war!' Think of it!--'Nix on the
war!' Here is the whole fate of mankind at stake, and America's
contribution is a little grumbling when the Germans sank the
_Lusitania_, and no end of grumbling when we hold up a ship or two and
some fool of a harbour-master makes an overcharge. Otherwise--'Nix on
the war!'...
"Well, let it be Nix on the war! Don't come here and talk to me! You who
were searching registers a year ago to find your Essex kin. Let it be
Nix! Explanations! What do I want with explanations? And"--he mocked his
guest's accent and his guest's mode of thought--"dif'cult prap'sitions."
He got up and stood irresolute. He knew he was being preposterously
unfair to America, and outrageously uncivil to a trusting guest; he knew
he had no business now to end the talk in this violent fashion. But it
was an enormous relief. And to mend matters--_No!_ He was glad he'd said
these things....
He swung a shoulder to Mr. Direck, and walked out of the room....
Mr. Direck heard him cross the hall and slam the door of the little
parlour....
Mr. Direck had been stirred deeply by the tragic indignation of this
explosion, and the ring of torment in Mr. Britling's voice. He had stood
up also, but he did not follow his host.
"It's his boy," said Mr. Direck at last, confidentially to the
writing-desk. "How can one argue with him? It's just hell for him...."