The German occupation, or whatever one likes to call it, is a calamity, but it's not like a molten deluge from Vesuvius that need send us all scuttling away from another Pompeii.

Of course," she added, "there are things that jar horribly on one, even when one has got more or less accustomed to them, but one must just learn to be philosophical and bear them." "Supposing they are not bearable ?" said Yeovil; "during the few days that I've been in the land I've seen things that I cannot imagine will ever be bearable." "That is because they're new to you," said Cicely.
"I don't wish that they should ever come to seem bearable," retorted Yeovil.

"I've been bred and reared as a unit of a ruling race; I don't want to find myself settling down resignedly as a member of an enslaved one." "There's no need to make things out worse than they are," protested Cicely.

"We've had a military disaster on a big scale, and there's been a great political dislocation in consequence.

But there's no reason why everything shouldn't right itself in time, as it has done after other similar disasters in the history of nations.