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Our modern civilization is, if nothing else, a well-documented one. No sooner were we at war than we began to talk about the post-war world. Our introduction to the marvels of the post-war world began very shortly after Pearl Harbor. Prophets sprang up in every advertising agency and began to lead us into the promised land of the push button and the ever-present plastics—where every prospect was pleasantly postwar-ish and only man seemed likely to remain vile, as indeed he proved by brilliantly discovering how to smash the atom. It was significant that the art of propaganda, perfected to the point of art by the original perpetrators of the war, should become the means of showing us the wondrous shape of things to come.
So well indoctrinated were our people, so thoroughly documented had we become, that it occurred to many to venture opinions on the state of man in this almost perfect state of the future. It was obvious, even to the prophets, that man would engage in activities other than pushing buttons to start and to stop things, to change climate or a record, to launch a war, a ship or a new hydro-electric plant. It seemed obvious, even to the prophets, that there might be malice in this wonderland.
Man, with more leisure than ever before, would undoubtedly manage to stir up more trouble than ever before. And while we certainly were not going to sell apples on street corners, we knew enough, we said, to look for an increase in crime, a new wave of disillusionment and, most certainly, a new point of view.
We were quite resigned to these things. We were prepared to usher in a brave new world to the tune of some fantastic Gotterdammerung in the Bavarian Redoubt. The suicide of the Austrian Corporal was anti-climax indeed, since everyone knew, had known for years, that he had it in him. Things shuddered to a slow halt in Europe and the post-war world seemed about to be launched with nothing more stupendous in the offing than the truth about V-1, 2 and 3. The atom’s howl at Hiroshima came as the cataclysmic climax.
Well, then, once again we had fought in a great war and once again had emerged comparatively victorious. Because victors always anticipate a certain course of events which, we have yet to learn, never follow victory, we had already anticipated the cynicism that was to follow. At least we have learned to anticipate the cynicism, and that of course is an achievement. It represents, one must admit, progress. In developing and enlarging upon our visions of the push-button world we had not neglected to include the conception of push-button wars. This could be called the crowning cynicism—and a less disillusioned world might well do so.
But it is probable that our cynicism is really not quite so bitter as it was the last time, because one isn’t really cynical at discovering that what one never believed in does not exist. At any rate we felt, and perhaps we still do, that there was a pattern to be followed. We have had some prior knowledge of the pattern—it was becoming familiar to us. There might be, of course, some slight variations here and there. For example: in tracing out the pattern before, our cynicism resulted in an escape into realism—and this time it might result in an escape from realism. Cynicism in 1947 or 1948 might very well be an isotope of uranium 235, with a few unknown qualities but with a predictably high escape-velocity.
The post-war era seems to be fairly familiar. The political scene conforms in a great many respects—but our reactions do not. That we will do exactly the same thing about exactly the same problem is not only unthinkable, it is extremely unlikely. Blunder we very probably will, but we will have found new ways of blundering. After all, we do progress. And this time we can blunder with no more effort than is required to push a button. It might be argued, then, that it is extremely unimportant to ponder about the sort of things that will be written in this postwar world—escapist or realist. But that one may predict, in the face of this reality, an escape from realism seems at once probable and inevitable—and there are certain indications that seem to favor the inevitable.
Superficially we might consider that a number of critics and writers have remarked upon certain similarities between the late Forties and the early Twenties. And, so linked have the two decades become, a mere mention of the Twenties leads inevitably to a rediscovery of the Nineties. The Modern Library, which was more than just a publishing venture in the 1920’s, began its series of reprints with Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. One of the first in a recent cycle of films developed about psychological themes was a somewhat sinister version of Dorian Gray. A recent theatrical season featured simultaneous presentations of a play about the Twenties and of several about the Nineties. Indeed, The Importance of Being Earnest—a likely title that!—gave fashion its first really fashionable color since before the war. Yellow, said a foremost fashion magazine was The Color. To be sure, these are only superficial similarities. That Wilde was revived in the Twenties and in the late Forties is a manifestation without much meaning in itself. That Yellow became a favorite color of the season was perhaps no more than a reaction to our khaki consciousness of the war years ... but there were other, and more significant, indications.