Robbie Budd took the occasion to speak about the effect which this new kind of warfare was bound to have upon the position of Englishmen. It deprived them of the advantage of their island solitude. Planes were now flying the Channel, and the Americans had even devised a sort of catapult that could launch a plane from a ship. It was certain that in the next war bombs would be dropped upon munitions centers and factories; and guns that could be fired at planes and airships would surely have to be mounted at vital points. Lanny understood that his father was giving a sales talk — Captain Finchley was on the board which had to decide about the Budd gun with high-angle mountings. Robbie had told his son the previous evening that they were trying to “stall” him; they wouldn't say they would buy the gun, yet they were obviously worried by the idea of his taking it anywhere else.
IX
On their way back to town in the evening the four talked about what they had seen, and the likelihood of these dangerous contrivances being actually put to the test. Kurt Meissher was worried by a letter he had received from home; the situation in the Balkans was more serious than anybody in England seemed to realize. Robbie said, yes, but it was always that way; the English were an easygoing people and left problems for others to solve as much as possible. This was just one more crisis.
“But,” exclaimed Kurt, “do the English or anybody else expect the Austrians to let Serbian hooligans incite the murder of Austrian rulers on Austrian soil?”
“The diplomats will get together and stop it,” Robbie told him soothingly. Nothing to worry about.
“But it is said that the Russians are backing the Serbs!”
“I know; they're always shoving one another about. The Russians say: 'You let my Serbian friends alone.' The Germans say: 'You let my Austrian friends alone.' The French say: 'You let my Russian friends alone' — so it goes. They've been making faces at one another for hundreds of years.”
“I know it, Mr. Budd — but they've been going to war, too.”
“The world has been changing so fast that it no longer pays to go to war, Kurt. The nations couldn't finance a war; it would bankrupt them all.”
“But,” argued Kurt, “when people get angry enough, they don't stop to calculate.”