Edward Phillips Oppenheim

“ Terniloff looked after him curiously.
"It is the type of young man, that," he declared, "which we cannot understand. What would happen to him, in the event of a war?— In the event of his being called upon, say, either to fight or do some work of national importance for his country?"
"I expect he would do it," Dominey replied. "He would do it pluckily, whole-heartedly and badly. He is a type of the upper-class young Englishman, over-sanguine and entirely undisciplined. They expect, and their country expects for them that in the case of emergency pluck would take the place of training." ”

“ Terniloff and Dominey, one morning about six months later, lounged underneath a great elm tree at Ranelagh, having iced drinks after a round of golf. Several millions of perspiring Englishmen were at the same moment studying with dazed wonder the headlines in the midday papers.
"I suppose," the Ambassador remarked, as he leaned back in his chair with an air of lazy content, "that I am being accused of fiddling while Rome burns."
"Every one has certainly not your confidence in the situation," Dominey rejoined calmly.
"There is no one else who knows quite so much," Terniloff reminded him. ”

“ No nation in the world would dream of attacking Germany, nor has Germany the slightest intention of imperilling her coming supremacy amongst the nations by such crude methods as military enterprise. Servia must be punished, naturally, but to that, in principle, every nation in Europe is agreed. We shall not permit Austria to overstep the mark."
"You are at least consistent, Prince," Dominey remarked. Terniloff smiled. ”