Герберт Джордж Уэллс
Mr. Britling Sees It Through
§ 15
In this fashion it was that the great war began in Europe and came to one man in Matching's Easy, as it came to countless intelligent men in countless pleasant homes that had scarcely heeded its coming through all the years of its relentless preparation. The familiar scenery of life was drawn aside, and War stood unveiled. "I am the Fact," said War, "and I stand astride the path of life. I am the threat of death and extinction that has always walked beside life, since life began. There can be nothing else and nothing more in human life until you have reckoned with me."
BOOK II
MATCHING'S EASY AT WAR
CHAPTER THE FIRST
ONLOOKERS
§ 1
On that eventful night of the first shots and the first deaths Mr. Britling did not sleep until daylight had come. He sat writing at this pamphlet of his, which was to hail the last explosion and the ending of war. For a couple of hours he wrote with energy, and then his energy flagged. There came intervals when he sat still and did not write. He yawned and yawned again and rubbed his eyes. The day had come and the birds were noisy when he undressed slowly, dropping his clothes anyhow upon the floor, and got into bed…
He woke to find his morning tea beside him and the housemaid going out of the room. He knew that something stupendous had happened to the world, but for a few moments he could not remember what it was. Then he remembered that France was invaded by Germany and Germany by Russia, and that almost certainly England was going to war. It seemed a harsh and terrible fact in the morning light, a demand for stresses, a certainty of destruction; it appeared now robbed of all the dark and dignified beauty of the night. He remembered just the same feeling of unpleasant, anxious expectation as he now felt when the Boer War had begun fifteen years ago, before the first news came. The first news of the Boer War had been the wrecking of a British armoured train near Kimberley. What similar story might not the overdue paper tell when presently it came?
Suppose, for instance, that some important division of our Fleet had been surprised and overwhelmed…
Suppose the Germans were already crumpling up the French armies between Verdun and Belfort, very swiftly and dreadfully…
Suppose after all that the Cabinet was hesitating, and that there would be no war for some weeks, but only a wrangle about Belgian neutrality. While the Germans smashed France…
Or, on the other hand, there might be some amazing, prompt success on our part. Our army and navy people were narrow, but in their narrow way he believed they were extraordinarily good…
What would the Irish do?..
His thoughts were no more than a thorny jungle of unanswerable questions through which he struggled in un-progressive circles.
He got out of bed and dressed in a slow, distraught manner. When he reached his braces he discontinued dressing for a time; he opened the atlas at Northern France, and stood musing over the Belgian border. Then he turned to Whitaker's Almanack to browse upon the statistics of the great European armies. He was roused from this by the breakfast gong.
At breakfast there was no talk of anything but war. Hugh was as excited as a cat in thundery weather, and the small boys wanted information about flags. The Russian and the Serbian flag were in dispute, and the flag page of Webster's Dictionary had to be consulted. Newspapers and letters were both abnormally late, and Mr. Britling, tiring of supplying trivial information to his offspring, smoked cigarettes in the garden. He had an idea of intercepting the postman. His eyes and ears informed him of the approach of Mrs. Faber's automobile. It was an old, resolute-looking machine painted red, and driven by a trusted gardener; there was no mistaking it.
Mrs. Faber was in it, and she stopped it outside the gate and made signals. Mrs. Britling, attracted by the catastrophic sounds of Mrs. Faber's vehicle, came out by the front door, and she and her husband both converged upon the caller.
§ 2
"I won't come in," cried Mrs. Faber, "but I thought I'd tell you. I've been getting food."
"Food?"
"Provisions. There's going to be a run on provisions. Look at my flitch of bacon!"
"But – "
"Faber says we have to lay in what we can. This war – it's going to stop everything. We can't tell what will happen. I've got the children to consider, so here I am. I was at Hickson's before nine…"
The little lady was very flushed and bright-eyed. Her fair hair was disordered, her hat a trifle askew. She had an air of enjoying unwonted excitements. "All the gold's being hoarded too," she said, with a crow of delight in her voice. "Faber says that probably our cheques won't be worth that in a few days. He rushed off to London to get gold at his clubs – while he can. I had to insist on Hickson taking a cheque. 'Never,' I said, 'will I deal with you again – never – unless you do…' Even then he looked at me almost as if he thought he wouldn't.
"It's Famine!" she said, turning to Mr. Britling. "I've laid hands on all I can. I've got the children to consider."
"But why is it famine?" asked Mr. Britling.
"Oh! it is!" she said.
"But why?"
"Faber understands," she said. "Of course it's Famine…"
"And would you believe me," she went on, going back to Mrs. Britling, "that man Hickson stood behind his counter – where I've dealt with him for years, and refused absolutely to let me have more than a dozen tins of sardines. Refused! Point blank!
"I was there before nine, and even then Hickson's shop was crowded —crowded, my dear!"
"What have you got?" said Mr. Britling with an inquiring movement towards the automobile.
She had got quite a lot. She had two sides of bacon, a case of sugar, bags of rice, eggs, a lot of flour.
"What are all these little packets?" said Mr. Britling.
Mrs. Faber looked slightly abashed.
"Cerebos salt," she said. "One gets carried away a little. I just got hold of it and carried it out to the car. I thought we might have to salt things later."
"And the jars are pickles?" said Mr. Britling.
"Yes. But look at all my flour! That's what will go first…"
The lady was a little flurried by Mr. Britling's too detailed examination of her haul. "What good is blacking?" he asked. She would not hear him. She felt he was trying to spoil her morning. She declared she must get on back to her home. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she said. "I've got no end of things to do. There's peas! I want to show cook how to bottle our peas. For this year – it's lucky, we've got no end of peas. I came by here just for the sake of telling you." And with that she presently departed – obviously ruffled by Mrs. Britling's lethargy and Mr. Britling's scepticism.
Mr. Britling watched her go off with a slowly rising indignation.
"And that," he said, "is how England is going to war! Scrambling for food – at the very beginning."
"I suppose she is anxious for the children," said Mrs. Britling.
"Blacking!"
"After all," said Mr. Britling, "if other people are doing that sort of thing – "
"That's the idea of all panics. We've got not to do it… The country hasn't even declared war yet! Hallo, here we are! Better late than never."
The head of the postman, bearing newspapers and letters, appeared gliding along the top of the hedge as he cycled down the road towards the Dower House corner.
§ 3
England was not yet at war, but all the stars were marching to that end. It was as if an event so vast must needs take its time to happen. No doubt was left upon Mr. Britling's mind, though a whole-page advertisement in the Daily News, in enormous type and of mysterious origin, implored Great Britain not to play into the hands of Russia, Russia the Terrible, that bugbear of the sentimental Radicals. The news was wide and sweeping, and rather inaccurate. The Germans were said to be in Belgium and Holland, and they had seized English ships in the Kiel Canal. A moratorium had been proclaimed, and the reports of a food panic showed Mrs. Faber to be merely one example of a large class of excitable people.
Mr. Britling found the food panic disconcerting. It did not harmonise with his leading motif of the free people of the world rising against the intolerable burthen of militarism. It spoilt his picture…
Mrs. Britling shared the paper with Mr. Britling, they stood by the bed of begonias near the cedar tree and read, and the air was full of the cheerful activities of the lawn-mower that was being drawn by a carefully booted horse across the hockey field.
Presently Hugh came flitting out of the house to hear what had happened. "One can't work somehow, with all these big things going on," he apologised. He secured the Daily News while his father and mother read The Times. The voices of the younger boys came from the shade of the trees; they had brought all their toy soldiers out of doors, and were making entrenched camps in the garden.
"The financial situation is an extraordinary one," said Mr. Britling, concentrating his attention… "All sorts of staggering things may happen. In a social and economic system that has grown just anyhow… Never been planned… In a world full of Mrs. Fabers…"
"Moratorium?" said Hugh over his Daily News. "In relation to debts and so on? Modern side you sent me to, Daddy. I live at hand to mouth in etymology. Mors and crematorium – do we burn our bills instead of paying them?"
"Moratorium," reflected Mr. Britling; "Moratorium. What nonsense you talk! It's something that delays, of course. Nothing to do with death. Just a temporary stoppage of payments… Of course there's bound to be a tremendous change in values…"
§ 4
"There's bound to be a tremendous change in values."
On that text Mr. Britling's mind enlarged very rapidly. It produced a wonderful crop of possibilities before he got back to his study. He sat down to his desk, but he did not immediately take up his work. He had discovered something so revolutionary in his personal affairs that even the war issue remained for a time in suspense.
Tucked away in the back of Mr. Britling's consciousness was something that had not always been there, something warm and comforting that made life and his general thoughts about life much easier and pleasanter than they would otherwise have been, the sense of a neatly arranged investment list, a shrewdly and geographically distributed system of holdings in national loans, municipal investments, railway debentures, that had amounted altogether to rather over five-and-twenty thousand pounds; his and Mrs. Britling's, a joint accumulation. This was, so to speak, his economic viscera. It sustained him, and kept him going and comfortable. When all was well he did not feel its existence; he had merely a pleasant sense of general well-being. When here or there a security got a little disarranged he felt a vague discomfort. Now he became aware of grave disorders. It was as if he discovered he had been accidentally eating toadstools, and didn't quite know whether they weren't a highly poisonous sort. But an analogy may be carried too far…
At any rate, when Mr. Britling got back to his writing-desk he was much too disturbed to resume "And Now War Ends."
"There's bound to be a tremendous change in values!"
He had never felt quite so sure as most people about the stability of the modern financial system. He did not, he felt, understand the working of this moratorium, or the peculiar advantage of prolonging the bank holidays. It meant, he supposed, a stoppage of payment all round, and a cutting off of the supply of ready money. And Hickson the grocer, according to Mrs. Faber, was already looking askance at cheques.
Even if the bank did reopen Mr. Britling was aware that his current balance was low; at the utmost it amounted to twenty or thirty pounds. He had been expecting cheques from his English and American publishers, and the usual Times cheque. Suppose these payments were intercepted!
All these people might, so far as he could understand, stop payment under this moratorium! That hadn't at first occurred to him. But, of course, quite probably they might refuse to pay his account when it fell due.
And suppose The Times felt his peculiar vein of thoughtfulness unnecessary in these stirring days!
And then if the bank really did lock up his deposit account, and his securities became unsaleable!
Mr. Britling felt like an oyster that is invited to leave its shell…
He sat back from his desk contemplating these things. His imagination made a weak attempt to picture a world in which credit has vanished and money is of doubtful value. He supposed a large number of people would just go on buying and selling at or near the old prices by force of habit.
His mind and conscience made a valiant attempt to pick up "And Now War Ends" and go on with it, but before five minutes were out he was back at the thoughts of food panic and bankruptcy…
§ 5
The conflict of interests at Mr. Britling's desk became unendurable. He felt he must settle the personal question first. He wandered out upon the lawn and smoked cigarettes.
His first conception of a great convergent movement of the nations to make a world peace and an end to militant Germany was being obscured by this second, entirely incompatible, vision of a world confused and disorganised. Mrs. Fabers in great multitudes hoarding provisions, riotous crowds attacking shops, moratorium, shut banks and waiting queues. Was it possible for the whole system to break down through a shock to its confidence? Without any sense of incongruity the dignified pacification of the planet had given place in his mind to these more intimate possibilities. He heard a rustle behind him, and turned to face his wife.
"Do you think," she asked, "that there is any chance of a shortage of food?"
"If all the Mrs. Fabers in the world run and grab – "
"Then every one must grab. I haven't much in the way of stores in the house."
"H'm," said Mr. Britling, and reflected… "I don't think we must buy stores now."
"But if we are short."
"It's the chances of war," said Mr. Britling.
He reflected. "Those who join a panic make a panic. After all, there is just as much food in the world as there was last month. And short of burning it the only way of getting rid of it is to eat it. And the harvests are good. Why begin a scramble at a groaning board?"
"But people are scrambling! It would be awkward – with the children and everything – if we ran short."
"We shan't. And anyhow, you mustn't begin hoarding, even if it means hardship."
"Yes. But you won't like it if suddenly there's no sugar for your tea."
Mr. Britling ignored this personal application.
"What is far more serious than a food shortage is the possibility of a money panic."
He paced the lawn with her and talked. He said that even now very few people realised the flimsiness of the credit system by which the modern world was sustained. It was a huge growth of confidence, due very largely to the uninquiring indolence of – everybody. It was sound so long as mankind did, on the whole, believe in it; give only a sufficient loss of faith and it might suffer any sort of collapse. It might vanish altogether – as the credit system vanished at the breaking up of Italy by the Goths – and leave us nothing but tangible things, real property, possession nine points of the law, and that sort of thing. Did she remember that last novel of Gissing's? – "Veranilda," it was called. It was a picture of the world when there was no wealth at all except what one could carry hidden or guarded about with one. That sort of thing came to the Roman Empire slowly, in the course of lifetimes, but nowadays we lived in a rapider world – with flimsier institutions. Nobody knew the strength or the weakness of credit; nobody knew whether even the present shock might not send it smashing down… And then all the little life we had lived so far would roll away…
Mrs. Britling, he noted, glanced ever and again at her sunlit house – there were new sunblinds, and she had been happy in her choice of a colour – and listened with a sceptical expression to this disquisition.
"A few days ago," said Mr. Britling, trying to make things concrete for her, "you and I together were worth five-and-twenty thousand pounds. Now we don't know what we are worth; whether we have lost a thousand or ten thousand…"
He examined his sovereign purse and announced he had six pounds. "What have you?"
She had about eighteen pounds in the house.
"We may have to get along with that for an indefinite time."
"But the bank will open again presently," she said. "And people about here trust us."
"Suppose they don't?"
She did not trouble about the hypothesis. "And our investments will recover. They always do recover."
"Everything may recover," he admitted. "But also nothing may recover. All this life of ours which has seemed so settled and secure – isn't secure. I have felt that we were fixed here and rooted – for all our lives. Suppose presently things sweep us out of it? It's a possibility we may have to face. I feel this morning as if two enormous gates had opened in our lives, like the gates that give upon an arena, gates giving on a darkness – through which anything might come. Even death. Suppose suddenly we were to see one of those great Zeppelins in the air, or hear the thunder of guns away towards the coast. And if a messenger came upon a bicycle telling us to leave everything and go inland…"
"I see no reason why one should go out to meet things like that."
"But there is no reason why one should not envisage them…"
"The curious thing," said Mr. Britling, pursuing his examination of the matter, "is that, looking at these things as one does now, as things quite possible, they are not nearly so terrifying and devastating to the mind as they would have seemed – last week. I believe I should load you all into Gladys and start off westward with a kind of exhilaration…"
She looked at him as if she would speak, and said nothing. She suspected him of hating his home and affecting to care for it out of politeness to her…
"Perhaps mankind tries too much to settle down. Perhaps these stirrings up have to occur to save us from our disposition to stuffy comfort. There's the magic call of the unknown experience, of dangers and hardships. One wants to go. But unless some push comes one does not go. There is a spell that keeps one to the lair and the old familiar ways. Now I am afraid – and at the same time I feel that the spell is broken. The magic prison is suddenly all doors. You may call this ruin, bankruptcy, invasion, flight; they are doors out of habit and routine… I have been doing nothing for so long, except idle things and discursive things."
"I thought that you managed to be happy here. You have done a lot of work."
"Writing is recording, not living. But now I feel suddenly that we are living intensely. It is as if the whole quality of life was changing. There are such times. There are times when the spirit of life changes altogether. The old world knew that better than we do. It made a distinction between weekdays and Sabbaths, and between feasts and fasts and days of devotion. That is just what has happened now. Week-day rules must be put aside. Before – oh! three days ago, competition was fair, it was fair and tolerable to get the best food one could and hold on to one's own. But that isn't right now. War makes a Sabbath, and we shut the shops. The banks are shut, and the world still feels as though Sunday was keeping on…"
He saw his own way clear.
"The scale has altered. It does not matter now in the least if we are ruined. It does not matter in the least if we have to live upon potatoes and run into debt for our rent. These now are the most incidental of things. A week ago they would have been of the first importance. Here we are face to face with the greatest catastrophe and the greatest opportunity in history. We have to plunge through catastrophe to opportunity. There is nothing to be done now in the whole world except to get the best out of this tremendous fusing up of all the settled things of life." He had got what he wanted. He left her standing upon the lawn and hurried back to his desk…
