Does everyone know everyone else in England? : Parade's End

Part of the dark humor of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End is that insane sense that the entire island of Britain is about the size of a city block, with everyone constantly running across people they know or finding odd connections that tie families and acquaintances together over generations - of course what we're really seeing is an exaggeration of the insularity of social class in England in the early 20th century and maybe still, they were, at least the literary evidence would have it, tiny little enclaves, self-centered and narcissistic - this patter taken up a generation later by Powell in his Dance to the Music of Time in which the appearance and reappearance of characters in odd places as absurd as a French farce. In Parade's End, if I can get this straight: Tietjens was abandoned for a time by his wife, Sylvia, for another guy in their set and there's a question as to whether their child, whom we actually never see at least through the first 250 pp., is his; he, meanwhile, falls for a daughter of a late Oxford prof., Valentine Wannop (these names!), and oddly Sylvia gives him permission to spend his last night before leaving for the front with her. These people - almost impossible to believe the hard-heartedness and lack of feeling and empathy. Through long chapter and conversation between C. Tietjens and his brother, Mark, we learn a lot of back story: their v. wealthy father had heard rumors about Chris's dissipation, even that he'd fathered a child by V. Wannop (not true); apparently her father and Tietjens's father were tight, and there's even rumor than V. Wannop my be Tietjen senior's daughter (Chris T. is amazingly blase about this possible incest). Tietjen senior has a long meeting in his club going over his affairs, then goes back to the vast estate in North Riding and while hunting shoots himself, an obvious suicide. Mark now trying to straighten out the affairs, in all senses: he offers Chris a large stipend, plus money for his wife, plus money for his mistress, plus money to help T's best friend, Macmaster - that's where all T's money goes anyway, for some reason - he is indifferent to money, no doubt because he has a lot of it - to support his new wife (whom Mark T still believes to be his mistress, not wife - who knows?). Got all that? All of this unfolds as T. about to leave for the front; he stops by at an office to give a report and his recommendations on how to better care for returning injured soldiers; they offer to keep him at home, where he would be valuable, but he declines the offer - he wants to go back to the front. They ok that, noting: Some do. Some do not - which is in part the title of this first volume. Very complex and kind of crazy but as the pieces come into place it's ever more compelling, a great big baggy gossipy "state of England" story.