Section 11

That night brought the British declaration of war against Germany. To nearly every Englishman that came as a matter of course, and it is one of the most wonderful facts in history that the Germans were surprised by it. When Mr. Britling, as a sample Englishman, had said that there would never be war between Germany and England, he had always meant that it was inconceivable to him that Germany should ever attack Belgium or France. If Germany had been content to fight a merely defensive war upon her western frontier and let Belgium alone, there would scarcely have been such a thing as a war party in Great Britain. But the attack upon Belgium, the westward thrust, made the whole nation flame unanimously into war. It settled a question that was in open debate up to the very outbreak of the conflict. Up to the last the English had cherished the idea that in Germany, just as in England, the mass of people were kindly, pacific, and detached. That had been the English mistake. Germany was really and truly what Germany had been professing to be for forty years, a War State. With a sigh—and a long–forgotten thrill—England roused herself to fight. Even now she still roused herself sluggishly. It was going to be an immense thing, but just how immense it was going to be no one in England had yet imagined.

Countless men that day whom Fate had marked for death and wounds stared open–mouthed at the news, and smiled with the excitement of the headlines, not dreaming that any of these things would come within three hundred miles of them. What was war to Matching's Easy—to all the Matching's Easies great and small that make up England? The last home that was ever burnt by an enemy within a hundred miles of Matching's Easy was burnt by the Danes rather more than a thousand years ago…. And the last trace of those particular Danes in England were certain horny scraps of indurated skin under the heads of the nails in the door of St. Clement Danes in London….

Now again, England was to fight in a war which was to light fires in England and bring death to English people on English soil. There were inconceivable ideas in August, 1914. Such things must happen before they can be comprehended as possible.