But people move about. Cross over. Get mixed. You cannot actually fasten down humanity as neatly as on a map; a line here, and a line there, and this side is English, and this side German. During all these years of peace, little separate individuals busily and happily intermarrying and begetting children; becoming entangled in trade and in friendship; by a million amenities of commerce and art and amusement and family, semi-obliterating the sharp boundary outlines——
“People drift about. And then a war happens. Like a ripping of canvas. No—like two lines of trenches.... A scramble apart to either trench—lucky beggars who know quite distinctly where they belong. And No Man’s Land between. And some stranded in No Man’s Land....
“To be officially of No Man’s Land—that’s one thing; can’t be helped; penalty of carelessness beforehand. But is it possible, I wonder, to feel yourself not for one country nor another? neither mattering? neither victory mattering?
“Socialism—international socialism. But then one must care principally for all humanity—in a lump. And that’s patriotism too, on the largest scale of all. Just like a man crazy only on his own duck-pond is a patriot—a local patriot. All Man’s Land ... One Man’s Land....
“Not for me, thanks. If I had been twenty-one before all this shindy, I’d have been naturalized English!”
Naturalized! Was that only an official cover again? And under the covers, what were those people actually thinking? The Rothenburgs? thousands like them—the half-and-half people....
“I like a German to be a German!”... “Naturalized or unnaturalized, it’s all the same to me!”... “Can a leopard change his spots?”...
Memory offered him these stray phrases perpetually uttered and repeated in a penetrating rasp—where?... in the hall downstairs, and at—at breakfast, surely? (memory struggled)—Oh yes! old Gryce. Behind the voice a crude pink face materialized, with an ugly sag of line at the corners of the mouth and a wisp of white beard wagging from the chin. Old Gryce was always ejecting that type of remark.
“Intern them all!... We didn’t ask them to settle over here. We don’t want them....”
The boy paced up and down the room, head bent, hands locked behind him, brows heavily knit, thinking it out: