Mr. Britling Sees It Through by H. G. Wells Page B

impressions. And did you notice how beautifully my pianola rolls are all numbered and catalogued? He did that. He set to work and did it as soon as he got here, just as a good cat when you bring it into a house sets to work and catches mice. Previously the pianola music was chaos. You took what God sent you.
    â€œAnd he looks like a German,” said Mr. Britling.
    â€œHe certainly does that,” said Mr. Direck.
    â€œHe has the fair type of complexion, the rather full habit of body, the temperamental disposition, but in addition that close-cropped head—it is almost as if it were shaved—the plumpness, the glasses—those are things that are made. And the way he carries himself. And the way he thinks. His meticulousness. When he arrived he was delightful, he was wearing a student’s corps cap and a rucksack, he carried a violin; he seemed to have come out of a book. No one would ever dare to invent so German a German for a book. Now a young Frenchman or a young Italian or a young Russian coming here might look like a foreigner, but he wouldn’t have the distinctive national stamp a German has. He wouldn’t be plainly French or Italian or Russian. Other peoples are not made; they are neither made nor created but proceeding—out of a thousand indefinablecauses. The Germans are a triumph of directive will. I had to remark the other day that when my boys talked German they shouted. ‘But when one talks German one must shout,’ said Herr Heinrich. ‘It is taught so in the schools.’ And it is. They teach them to shout and to throw out their chests. Just as they teach them to read notice-boards and not think about politics. Their very ribs are not their own. My Herr Heinrich is comparatively a liberal thinker. He asked me the other day, ‘But why should I give myself up to philology? But then,’ he considered, ‘it is what I have to do.’ ”
    Mr. Britling seemed to have finished, and then just as Mr. Direck was planning a way of getting the talk back by way of Teddy to Miss Corner, he snuggled more deeply into his chair, reflected and broke out again.
    â€œThis contrast between Heinrich’s carefulness and Teddy’s easygoingness, come to look at it, is I suppose one of the most fundamental in the world. It reaches to everything. It mixes up with education, statecraft, morals. Will you make or will you take? Those are the two extreme courses in all such things. I suppose the answer of wisdom to that is, like all wise answers, a compromise. I suppose one must accept and then make all one can of it. … Have you talked at all to my eldest son?”
    â€œHe’s a very interesting young man indeed,” said Mr. Direck. “I should venture to say there’s a very great deal in him. I was most impressed by the few words I had with him.”
    â€œThere, for example, is one of my perplexities,” said Mr. Britling.
    Mr. Direck waited for some further light on this sudden transition.
    â€œAh! your troubles in life haven’t begun yet. Wait till you’re a father. That cuts to the bone. You have the most delicate thing inthe world in hand, a young kindred mind. You feel responsible for it, you know you are responsible for it; and you lose touch with it. You can’t get at it. Nowadays we’ve lost the old tradition of fatherhood by divine right—and we haven’t got a new one. I’ve tried not to be a cramping ruler, a director, a domestic tyrant to that lad—and in effect it’s meant his going his own way. … I don’t dominate. I hoped to advise. But you see he loves my respect and good opinion. Too much. When things go well I know of them. When the world goes dark for him, then he keeps his trouble from Just when I would so eagerly go into it with him. … There’s something the matter now, something—it may be grave. I feel he wants to tell me. And there it is!—it seems I am the