"We appear to have done our best to stop it," I said. "It seems as though there's something of the mad dog in every man."
Lady Loring smiled wistfully.
"Not in my husband, George. Were you too young to remember him? It's not quite fifteen years since he was killed, and I often wonder what good his death did. What would have happened if there'd been no South African War?"
"A great many fine lives would have been spared," I said. "And what good will it do to slaughter the manhood of Russia, France, Germany ...? It's the size of the modern army that appals me, Lady Loring."
"Thank God we aren't called on to swell the slaughter," she replied.
By Sunday morning our further reduced party was in the profoundest depression. While Violet and the Lorings were at Mass, I motored to Chepstow with O'Rane and Val Arden in search of papers. We returned with moist, ill-printed sensational weeklies that the others had never before seen and with heads pressed close together we studied the sinister type, repeating the headlines under our breath and gradually chanting them in a falling dirge. Bertrand's tentative announcement was confirmed, and on the assumption that France would come to the assistance of her ally, German troops were massing in stupendous numbers on the Rhine frontier.
"Some of them actually on French soil!" Loring exclaimed and read on. "Pouring into Luxembourg.... Isn't Luxembourg a neutral, Raney?"
"A la guerre comme à la guerre," murmured O'Rane. "So's Belgium, if you come to that; but they're asking leave to march through and, if leave's refused, they'll dam' well take it." He dropped the paper and walked up and down the room with his hands in his pockets. "The war'll be over in a fortnight if they advance simultaneously from north and east; it'll be another Sedan. We can't allow that."
"For God's sake don't drag us in!" Loring exclaimed.