The Grafin laughed gently, so I knew she thought my manners bad.  I’ve learned that when she laughs gently she disapproves, just as I’ve learned that when she says with a placid sigh that war is terrible and must be avoided, all her hopes are bound up in its not being avoided.  Her only son is in the Cuirassiers, and is, Kloster says, a naturally unsuccessful person.  War is his chance of promotion, of making a career.  It is also his chance of death or maiming, as I said to Helena on Sunday at Koseritz when she was talking about her brother and his chances if there is war to the pastor, who was calling hat in hand and very full of bows.

She stared at me, and so did the pastor.  I’m afraid I plumped into the conversation impetuously.

“I had sooner,” said Helena, “that Werner were dead or maimed for life than that he should not make a career.  One’s brother must not, cannot be a failure.”

And the pastor bowed and exclaimed, “That is well and finely said.  That is full of pride, of the true German patrician pride.”

Helena, you see, forgot, as Germans sometimes do, not to be natural.  She said straight but it was a career she wanted for her brother.  She forgot the usual talk of patriotism and the glory of being mangled on behalf of Hohenzollerns.

Yesterday the menservants disappeared, and women waited on us.  There was no jolt in the machinery.  It went on as smoothly as though the change had been weeks ago.  Even the butler, who certainly is too old to fight, vanished.

Bernd comes in whenever he can.  Luckily we’re quite close to the General Staff Headquarters here, and he has his meals with us.  He persists that the war will be kept rigidly to Austria and Servia, and therefore will be over in a week or two.  He says Sir Edward Grey has soothed bellicose governments before now, and will be able to do so again.  He talks of the madness of war, and of how no Government nowadays would commit such a sheer stupidity as starting it.  I listen to him, and am convinced and comforted; then I go back to the others, and my comfort slips away again.  For the others are so sure.  There’s no question for them, no doubt.  They don’t say so, any of them, neither the Graf, nor the Grafin, nor the son Werner who was here yesterday nor Bernd’s Colonel who dined here last night, nor any of the other people.  Government officials who come to see the Graf, and women friends who come to see the Grafin.  They don’t say war is certain, but each one of them has the look of satisfaction and relief people have when they get something they’ve wanted very much for a very long time and sigh out “At last!” Some of them let out their satisfaction more than others,—­Bernd’s Colonel, for instance, who seems particularly hilarious.  He was very hilarious last night, though not ostensibly about war.  If the possibility of war is mentioned, as of course it constantly is, they at once all shake their heads as if to order, and look serious, and say God grant it may even now be avoided, or something like that; just as the newspapers do.  And last night at dinner somebody added a hope, expressed with a very grave face, that the people of Germany wouldn’t get out of hand and force war upon the Government against its judgment.