They strolled towards a place of seats and hammocks between the big trees and the rose garden, and the talk turned for a time upon Rendezvous.  “They have the tidiest garden in Essex,” said Manning.  “It’s not Mrs. Rendezvous’ fault that it is so.  Mrs. Rendezvous, as a matter of fact, has a taste for the picturesque.  She just puts the things about in groups in the beds.  She wants them, she says, to grow anyhow.  She desires a romantic disorder.  But she never gets it.  When he walks down the path all the plants dress instinctively....  And there’s a tree near their gate; it used to be a willow.  You can ask any old man in the village.  But ever since Rendezvous took the place it’s been trying to present arms.  With the most extraordinary results.  I was passing the other day with old Windershin.  ‘You see that there old poplar,’ he said.  ‘It’s a willow,’ said I.  ‘No,’ he said, ’it did used to be a willow before Colonel Rendezvous he came.  But now it’s a poplar.’...  And, by Jove, it is a poplar!"...

The conversation thus opened by Manning centred for a time upon Colonel Rendezvous.  He was presented as a monster of energy and self-discipline; as the determined foe of every form of looseness, slackness, and easy-goingness.

“He’s done wonderful work for the local Boy Scout movement,” said Manning.

“It’s Kitchenerism,” said Britling.

“It’s the army side of the efficiency stunt,” said Manning.

There followed a digression upon the Boy Scout movement, and Mr. Direck made comparisons with the propaganda of Seton Thompson in America.  “Colonel Teddyism,” said Manning.  “It’s a sort of reaction against everything being too easy and too safe.”

“It’s got its anti-decadent side,” said Mr. Direck.

“If there is such a thing as decadence,” said Mr. Britling.

“If there wasn’t such a thing as decadence,” said Manning, “we journalists would have had to invent it."...

“There is something tragical in all this—­what shall I call it?—­Kitchenerism,” Mr. Britling reflected “Here you have it rushing about and keeping itself—­screwed up, and trying desperately to keep the country screwed up.  And all because there may be a war some day somehow with Germany.  Provided Germany is insane.  It’s that war, like some sort of bee in Rendezvous’ brains, that is driving him along the road now to Market Saffron—­he always keeps to the roads because they are severer—­through all the dust and sunshine.  When he might be here gossiping....

“And you know, I don’t see that war coming,” said Mr. Britling.  “I believe Rendezvous sweats in vain.  I can’t believe in that war.  It has held off for forty years.  It may hold off forever.”

He nodded his head towards the German tutor, who had come into view across the lawn, talking profoundly with Mr. Britling’s eldest son.