Potterism | Page 8

out while they were at Lyme Regis. Mrs. Potter
sent the twins a copy. In their detached way, the twins read it, and gave
it to the others to look at.
'Very typical stuff,' Gideon summed it up, after a glance. 'It will no
doubt have an excellent sale.... It must be interesting for you to watch it
being turned out. I wish you would ask me to stay with you some time.
Yours must be an even more instructive household than mine.'
Gideon was a Russian Jew on his father's side, and a Harrovian. He had
no decency and no manners. He made Juke, who was an Englishman
and an Etonian, and had more of both, uncomfortable sometimes. For,
after all, the rudiments of family loyalty might as well be kept, among

the general destruction which he, more sanguinely than Gideon, hoped
for.
But the twins did not bother. Jane said, in her equable way, 'You'll be
bored to death; angry, too; but come if you like.... We've a sister, more
Potterish than the parents. She'll hate you.'
Gideon said, 'I expect so,' and they left his prospective visit at that, with
Jane chuckling quietly at her private vision of Gideon and Clare in
juxtaposition.
4
But Socialist Cecily did not have a good sale after all. It was guillotined,
with many of its betters, by the European war, which began while the
Anti-Potters were at Swanage, a place replete with Potterism. Potterism,
however, as a subject for investigation, had by this time given place to
international diplomacy, that still more intriguing study. The
Anti-Potters abused every government concerned, and Gideon said, on
August 1st, 'We shall be fools if we don't come in.'
Juke was still dubious. He was a good Radical, and good Radicals were
dubious on this point until the invasion of Belgium.
'To throw back the world a hundred years....'
Gideon shrugged his shoulders. He belonged to no political party, and
had the shrewd, far-seeing eyes of his father's race.
'It's going to be thrown back anyhow. Germany will see to that. And if
we keep out of it, Germany will grab Europe. We've got to come in, if
we can get a decent pretext.'
The decent pretext came in due course, and Gideon said, 'So that's that.'
He added to the Potters, 'For once I am in agreement with your father's
press. We should be lunatics to stand out of this damnable mess.'
Juke also was now, painful to him though it was to be so, in agreement

with the Potter press. To him the war had become a crusade, a fight for
decency against savagery.
'It's that,' said Gideon. 'But that's not all. This isn't a show any country
can afford to stand out of. It's Germany against Europe, and if Europe
doesn't look sharp, Germany's going to win. _Germany._ Nearly as bad
as Russia.... One would have to emigrate to another hemisphere.... No,
we've got to win this racket.... But, oh, Lord, what a mess!' He fell to
biting his nails, savage and silent.
Jane thought all the time, beneath her other thoughts about it, 'To have
a war, just when life was beginning and going to be such fun.'
Beneath her public thoughts about the situation, she felt this deep
private disgust gnawing always, as of one defrauded.

CHAPTER III
OPPORTUNITY
1
They did not know then about people in general going to the war. They
thought it was just for the army and navy, not for ordinary people. That
idea came a little later, after the Anti-Potter party had broken up and
gone home.
The young men began to enlist and get commissions. It was done; it
was the correct idea. Johnny Potter, who belonged to an O.T.C., got a
commission early.
Jane said within herself, 'Johnny can go and I can't.' She knew she was
badly, incredibly left. Johnny was in the movement, doing the thing
that mattered. Further, Johnny might ultimately be killed in doing it;
her Johnny. Everything else shrank and was little. What were books?
What was anything? Jane wanted to fight in the war. The war was
damnable, but it was worse to be out of it. One was such an utter

outsider. It wasn't fair. She could fight as well as Johnny could. Jane
went about white and sullen, with her world tumbling into bits about
her.
Mr. Potter said in the press, and Mrs. Potter in the home, 'The people of
England have a great opportunity before them. We must all try to rise
to it'--as if the people of England were fishes and the opportunity a fly.
Opportunity, thought Jane. Where is it? I see none. It was precisely
opportunity which the war had put an end to.
'The women of England must now