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I became acutely aware of a sense of gratification when the bus stopped beneath a magnificent beech tree and I got off to be met by a small figure, now a toddler, doing her best to run to meet me. Her eyes were almost closed in the throes of concentration required for mobility and the equal necessity for concentration on where she was going. At last the perilous ten yards would be achieved and tiny arms strove to meet round my neck. A rapid change into week-end clothes, and then the cycle ride.
All this gratifying world now began to be invaded by thought. The calm fascination of picking, coring and slicing the excellent and plentiful Bramley apples preparatory to bottling them in a sulphur preparation for storage in an array of huge jars discarded by the sweetshop, became troubled by the doubts which flowed over the boundaries of my consulting room and the week's work and seeped into my private life and home. It was no longer private.
The invasion could not be repelled or contained. It is an invasion if one allows oneself to be aware of it; unfortunately it does not cease to be an invasion if one chooses to be, and succeeds in being, unaware of it. This should have been evident when the country had ceased to be aware of German aspirations to break out of the limitations thoughtfully provided by the ‘victorious’ allies in 1919. Had the allied powers not given the German authorities a plausible reason to feel enclosed, perhaps they would have had to realize that the compositions of Wagner, the lucubrations of Goethe, no more afforded adequate scope for expression of the Nazi violence. My present invasion of the realms of speculation about International Relations did not solve my resistance to the confinement of being satisfied with my home and professional life.