idea of America as a polity aloof from the Old World system, as a fresh start for humanity, as something altogether too fine and precious to be dragged into even the noblest of European conflicts.  America was to be the beginning of the fusion of mankind, neither German nor British nor French nor in any way national.  She was to be the great experiment in peace and reasonableness.  She had to hold civilisation and social order out of this fray, to be a refuge for all those finer things that die under stress and turmoil; it was her task to maintain the standards of life and the claims of humanitarianism in the conquered province and the prisoners’ compound, she had to be the healer and arbitrator, the remonstrance and not the smiting hand.  Surely there were enough smiting hands.

But this idea of an America judicial, remonstrating, and aloof, led him to a conclusion that scandalised him.  If America will not, and should not use force in the ends of justice, he argued, then America has no right to make and export munitions of war.  She must not trade in what she disavows.  He had a quite exaggerated idea of the amount of munitions that America was sending to the Allies, he was inclined to believe that they were entirely dependent upon their transatlantic supplies, and so he found himself persuaded that the victory of the Allies and the honour of America were incompatible things.  And—­in spite of his ethical aloofness—­he loved the Allies.  He wanted them to win, and he wanted America to abandon a course that he believed was vitally necessary to their victory.  It was an intellectual dilemma.  He hid this self-contradiction from Matching’s Easy with much the same feelings that a curate might hide a poisoned dagger at a tea-party....

It was entirely against his habits of mind to hide anything—­more particularly an entanglement with a difficult proposition—­but he perceived quite clearly that neither Cecily nor Mr. Britling were really to be trusted to listen calmly to what, under happier circumstances, might be a profoundly interesting moral complication.  Yet it was not in his nature to conceal; it was in his nature to state.

And Cecily made things much more difficult.  She was pitiless with him.  She kept him aloof.  “How can I let you make love to me,” she said, “when our English men are all going to the war, when Teddy is a prisoner and Hugh is in the trenches.  If I were a man—!”

She couldn’t be induced to see any case for America.  England was fighting for freedom, and America ought to be beside her.  “All the world ought to unite against this German wickedness,” she said.

“I’m doing all I can to help in Belgium,” he protested.  “Aren’t I working?  We’ve fed four million people.”

He had backbone, and he would not let her, he was resolved, bully him into a falsehood about his country.  America was aloof.  She was right to be aloof....  At the same time, Cecily’s reproaches were unendurable.  And he could feel he was drifting apart from her....