Mr. Direck attempted explanations that were ill received.
"You were ready enough to fight the Spaniards when they blew up the Maine. But the Germans can sink the Lusitania! That's—as you say—a different proposition."
His mind was shot by an extraordinary suspicion that she thought the Lusitania an American vessel. But Mr. Direck was learning his Cissie, and he did not dare to challenge her on this score.
"You haven't got hold of the American proposition," he said. "We're thinking beyond wars."
"That's what we have been trying to do," said Cissie. "Do you think we came into it for the fun of the thing?"
"Haven't I shown in a hundred ways that I sympathise?"
"Oh—sympathy!..."
He fared little better at Mr. Britling's hands. Mr. Britling talked darkly, but pointed all the time only too plainly at America. "There's two sorts of liberalism," said Mr. Britling, "that pretend to be the same thing; there's the liberalism of great aims and the liberalism of defective moral energy...."
§ 18
It was not until Teddy had been missing for three weeks that Hugh wrote about him. The two Essex battalions on the Flanders front were apparently wide apart, and it was only from home that Hugh learnt what had happened.