In Europe, before it happened, there was a sense of peace in the minds of the peoples. Do they remember how safe they felt? French peasants in their fields were looking forward to a good harvest, the French shopkeeper to a good season. Alsace Lorraine?... An old sore, almost healed. Not worth re-opening at the price of the blood of a single French soldier! The German folk were drinking their laager beer as usual after days of industry. Their trade was good, they were capturing the markets of the world. Life was good. The Junkers and the militarists were talking rather loudly, and there was a lot of argument about Germany being “hemmed in” and “insulted” by England, but it was, after all, no more than high-sounding talk. The German Army was supreme in Europe, unchallenged and unchallengeable. The German Fleet was the Kaiser’s hobby. Who would attack them? Not France. Russia? Well, in East Prussia that was a secret fear, something like a nightmare, a bogey in the background of the mind—but really unthinkable. England? Bah! England was friendly in the mass and without an army worth mentioning. Poor old England! Weak and decadent as an Empire, without the power to hold what she had grabbed. One day perhaps ... but not with Socialism spreading in Germany like an epidemic. Anyhow, the good old German God was presiding over the destiny of the great German people, who were safe, strong, industrious, prosperous, and, for the present, satisfied. In England this sense of peace, I remember, was strongest. It was hardly ruffled by any anxieties among the mass of our folk. There was trouble in Ireland. There always had been. The suffragettes were a horrible nuisance. Strikes were frequent and annoying. But the old order of English life went on, placid, comfortable, with a sense of absolute security. The aristocracy grumbled at the advance of democracy, but within their old houses, their parklands and walled gardens, they were undisturbed. They had great reserves of wealth. The beauty of the life they had built around them was not invaded. Their traditions of service, loyalties, sports, continued and would continue, they believed, because those things belonged to the blood and spirit of England. Middle-class England was prosperous and contented. Business was good in “a nation of shopkeepers,” in spite of fierce competition. Life—apart from private tragedy—was comfortable, gay, with many social pleasures unknown in Victorian days, with a greater sense of liberty in thought and manners, and a higher standard of life for small folk. “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world!”—barring politics, newspaper scares, women’s claims to votes—and Ireland. The people of the British Isles felt utterly secure.