Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/40

 And then there was the human charm of some German homes to soothe away suspicion—the scholar's quiet house (beyond the clattering parade-ground at Potsdam) where we clinked glasses and drank "to all good friends in England," and the sweet simplicity of the little town in Westphalia, with its green fields and its sweetly-flowing river, where the nightingale sang all night long, and where, in the midst of musical societies, Goethe Societies and Shakespeare Societies, it was so difficult to think of Germany as a nation dreaming only of world-power and dominion. Even yet it strikes a chill to the heart to recall those German homes as scenes of prolonged duplicity. I prefer not to do so. But all the same I see now that the wings of war were already approaching them, and that the German people heard their far-off murmur long before ourselves—heard it and told us nothing, perhaps much less and worse than nothing.

 THE FALLING OF THE THUNDERBOLT I such an unpromising atmosphere, of national hostility the war came down on us in July 1914, like a thunderbolt. In spite of grave warnings few or none in this country were at that moment giving a thought to it. On the contrary, we were thinking of all manner of  Rh