"I am?" Tietjens asked uninterestedly. He added: "Yes, that probably _would_ bitch my career. . . ." He went on, with a little more animation and a little more of his mind: "Ah! _that_ will be a war worth seeing. . . . None of their drunken rat-fighting for imbecile boodlers . . ." "It would drive mother mad!" Sylvia said. "Oh, no it wouldn't," Tietjens said. "It will stimulate her if she is still alive. . . . Our heroes won't be drunk with wine and lechery: our squits won't stay at home and stab the heroes in the back. Our Minister for Water-closets won't keep two and a half million men in any base in order to get the votes of their women at a General Election--that's been the first evil effects of giving women the vote! With the French holding Ireland and stretching in a solid line from Bristol to Whitehall, we should hang the Minister before he had time to sign the papers. And we should be decently loyal to our Prussian allies and brothers. . . . Our Cabinet won't hate them as they hate the French for being frugal and strong in logic and well-educated and remorselessly practical. Prussians are the sort of fellows you can be hoggish with when you want to. . . ." Sylvia interjected violently: "For God's sake stop it. You almost make me believe what you say is true. I tell you mother would go mad. Her greatest friend is the Duchesse Tonnerre Châteaulherault. . . ." "Well!" Tietjens said. "Your greatest friends are the Med . . . Med . . . the Austrian officers you take chocolates and flowers to. That there was all the row about . . . we're at war with _them_ and you haven't gone mad!" "I don't know," Sylvia said. "Sometimes I think I am going mad!" She drooped. Tietjens, his face very strained, was looking at the tablecloth. He muttered: "Med . . . Met . . . Kos . . ." Sylvia said: "Do you know a poem called _Somewhere_? It begins: 'Somewhere or other there must surely be . . .'" Tietjens said: "I'm sorry. No! I haven't been able to get up my poetry again." Sylvia said: "_Don't!_" She added: "you've got to be at the War Office at 4.15, haven't you? What's the time now?" She extremely wanted to give him her bad news before he went; she extremely wanted to put off giving it as long as she could. She wanted to reflect on the matter first; she wanted also to keep up a desultory conversation, or he might leave the room. She didn't want to have to say to him: "Wait a minute, I've something to say to you!" for she might not, at that moment, be in the mood. He said it was not yet two. He could give her an hour and a half more. To keep the conversation going, she said: "I suppose the Wannop girl is making bandages or being a Waac. Something forceful." Tietjens said: "No; she's a pacifist. As pacifist as you. Not so impulsive; but, on the other hand, she has more arguments. I should say she'll be in prison before the war's over. . . ."