"I am trying--as we shall all have to try--to look at things as they are. This trouble has been brewing ever since the South African War, . . . and for ten years at least Germany has been shaping up for a quarrel which we have hoped to decline. On a hundred points of preparation they are ready and we are not; they have probably sown this idle nation with their spies as they sowed France before 1870: they make no more bones about a broken oath or two to-day than they made about forging the Ems telegram. They are an unpleasant race,-- the North Germans, at least--and an uncivilised--" "They make the most appalling noises with their soup. . . . Do you remember that German baron at the _table d'hote_ at Genoa?" "The point is that, with all their thoroughness in plotting, they have no _savoir faire_; they are educated beyond the capacity of their breeding; and the older, lazier, civilised nations have--as the saying is--caught the barbarian stiff. It is--as you choose to look at it--a tragedy of tactlessness or a triumph of tact; and for our time, anyway, the last word upon the Church of Christ--call it Eastern or Western, Roman, Lutheran, or Anglican." Mrs Steele looked at her husband earnestly. "If you believe that--" "But I do believe it," he interrupted. "If you believe that," she persisted, "I can understand your doubting, even despairing over a hundred things. . . . But below it all I feel that you are angry with something deeper." "Eh?" "With something in yourself." "Yes, you're right," he answered savagely. "You shall know what it is," said he, on the instant correcting himself to tenderness, "when I've taken hat and stick and gone out and wrestled with it." As luck would have it, on his way down the hill he encountered Mr Hambly, and delivered his message. "The notion is that we form a small Emergency Committee. Here at home, in the next few weeks or months, many things will want doing. For the most important, we must keep an eye on the wives and families whose breadwinners have gone off to fight; see that they get their allotments of pay and separation allowances; and administer as wisely as we can the relief funds that are already being started. Also the ladies will desire, no doubt, to form working-parties, make hospital shirts, knit socks, tear and roll lint for bandages. My wife even suggests an ambulance class; and I have written to Mant, at St Martin's, who may be willing to come over (say) once a week and teach us the rudiments of 'First Aid' on the chance--a remote one, I own-- that one of these days we may get a boat-load of wounded at Polpier. I'll admit, too, that all these preparations may well strike you as petty, and even futile. But they may be good, anyhow, for our own souls' health. They will give us a sense of helping."