Like a gleaming idol evoked against her, a vivid
life-idol that might triumph.
He came and he went--and she persisted. And then the great war broke out.
He was a man who could not go to the dogs. He could not dissipate
himself. He was pure-bred in his Englishness, and even when he would have
killed to be vicious, he could not.
So when the war broke out his whole instinct was against it: against war.
He had not the faintest desire to overcome any foreigners or to help in
their death. He had no conception of Imperial England, and Rule Britannia
was just a joke to him. He was a pure-blooded Englishman, perfect in his
race, and when he was truly himself he could no more have been aggressive
on the score of his Englishness than a rose can be aggressive on the
score of its rosiness.
No, he had no desire to defy Germany and to exalt England. The
distinction between German and English was not for him the distinction
between good and bad. It was the distinction between blue water-flowers
and red or white bush-blossoms: just difference. The difference between
the wild boar and the wild bear. And a man was good or bad according to
his nature, not according to his nationality.
Egbert was well-bred, and this was part of his natural understanding. It
was merely unnatural to him to hate a nation _en bloc_. Certain
individuals he disliked, and others he liked, and the mass he knew
nothing about.
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