III
In the last ten years, all those who find in mental inertia the chief obstacle to progress have been forced to enquire what does matter to the men and women whom they have been meeting. With comparatively few exceptions these people are temperate, kindly and faithful within conventional limits; they are as honourable and veracious as they are expected to be; almost without exception they are physically courageous, though they have little moral and less intellectual courage; they have a sluggish pride and hardly any dignity; they have great energy and resource, versatility and endurance; many have charm, most have ability and some have brilliance. A feudal aristocracy leavened by commerce has produced a society of men and women whom an alien may, with admiring detachment, consider the finest raw material for any human enterprise in any part of the world. No nation scored as high a total in as many different tests during the war. Before 1914, indeed, it seemed as if this incomparable human material was running to waste; since 1919 it seems to be running to waste again. The war shewed that in an emergency there was no less available supply of courage and endurance, of self-sacrifice and ability than ever before; these qualities are still there if any knew how to rouse them; but it seems that, though the English will always train for a race, they will not at other times keep themselves in even moderately good condition.
In the reaction from the war nothing seems to matter. The argot of London varies from week to week, like the style of dressing and dancing; but the atmosphere is the same, the restlessness is the same, the mad striving after effect is the same, the want of purpose is the same; and it may be doubted whether the money and energy demanded of such a life are justified by the tepid, flat pleasure which they purchase. In ten years London has become steadily and uncaringly more greedy and vulgar. Breeding is a memory of childhood; manners grew blunt and were discarded during the years between the South African war and 1914; happiness has been lost to view in the hunt for distraction; and success is measured, arithmetically, by invitations.
"Queer place," Mr. Jingle said of Rochester. "Dock-yard people of upper rank don't know Dock-yard people of lower rank—Dock-yard people of lower rank don't know small gentry—small gentry don't know tradespeople—Commissioner don't know anybody."
London, it has been suggested, is less exclusive; and the only person who is in serious danger of not being received is the man who is detected cheating at cards. For all this facile accessibility, however, the tradespeople cannot expect to visit the small gentry without effort and assiduity. Before the war, since the war and despite the harrowing preoccupation with war's intensest crisis, a busy army of soft-voiced, watchful women have plied their unflagging trade of "getting to know people"; in wealth or in rank, in charm or in notoriety, in a combination of all or any, there is always some one to be found on a slightly higher plane, there is always one greater eminence from which exclusion is synonymous with disgrace: to cross the threshold they will fawn on those whom they despise and accept favours from those whom they detest. Among men the vice is confined to the very young, the mean, the vain and the insufficient; women are afflicted more widely and deeply, for they feel their value depreciated when an invitation passes them by. In the words of 'Algernon Moncrieff,' "Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations."