“But there’s been a Russo-Japanese War and the Balkan Wars....” “Well, yes, but they’re different. I can’t believe any of the big European nations would start a war with another. Of course, there are Chauvins and Junkers and Jingoes, but who cares a hang about them? The people don’t want war.” “Of course, I don’t know, but I heard Admiral Partington telling father that the navy is bigger, newer and more efficient than it’s ever been. And he said the German army is huge and most efficient, and the French are so frightened they’ve made the period of conscription three years. And he said, look out when the Kiel canal is opened.” “Good Lord, you surely don’t believe what stodgy old Admirals say, do you? It’s their job to frighten people with war scares so that they can go on getting money out of the country and building their ridiculous Dreadnoughts. I met a coast-guard officer last summer, who got drunk and said he’d sealed orders as to what to do in case of war. I told him I thought that seal would not be broken until the angels in the Apocalypse arrived.” “And what did he say to that?” “He just shook his head, and ordered another whiskey.” “Well, it doesn’t concern us. It’s not our business.” “No, thank God, it doesn’t and can’t concern us.” * * * * * They were in Oxford Street, rolling past the shuttered shop-fronts. A good many people were on the pavements, but the street was comparatively empty of vehicles, empty and sonorous. As they ran down past Selfridge’s, the curved line of lights in the centre of the street looked like an uncoiled necklace of luminous, glittering beads. At Oxford Circus they gazed down old Regent Street with its long lines of _café-au-lait_ Regency houses, broken only at the Quadrant by the new Piccadilly Hotel. “Isn’t that like us?” said George. “We have an attempt at town-planning, and dull as Nash is, at any rate his design is simple and dignified, and then we go and ruin the Quadrant with a horrid would-be-modern hotel.” “But I thought you believed in modernity in art.” “So I do, but I don’t believe in mucking up the art of the past if it can be avoided. Besides, I don’t call these pastiches of Renaissance palaces modern architecture. The only people who have got a live modern architecture are the Americans, and they don’t know it.” “Those awful sky-scrapers!” “They’re awful in one way, but they’re original. I saw some photographs of New York from the harbour recently, and I thought it the most beautiful city in the world, a sort of gigantic and stupendous Venice. I’d like to go there, wouldn’t you?” “No, I’d like to go to Paris and live in the real student’s quarter, and to Italy and Spain.” * * * * * The bus stopped at the end of Tottenham Court Road. They got down, and crossed the street to wait for the Hampstead bus.