“Sack him!” he replied blankly. “Employers don’t give the sack any more; they get it.”
And this is true.
But a change must come, and the interesting thing to see will be how complete that change is. One thing is certain, and that is that Capital and Labour will never resume their old relations; Labour has tasted too much blood. And you can’t put servants into khaki and tell them they are our saviours and then expect them to return to the status of servitude—at any rate not the same ones. The process of grinding the working classes back to their old position of subjection is going to be impossible; and the statesmen will find that reconstruction must be based on foundations which are set on a higher level than the old.
A man in the train gave me a new definition of the extreme of meanness: Saving a rose from Queen Alexandra’s Day for use again next year.
Here is the poem:—
Since all that I can ever do for thee
Is to do nothing, this my prayer must be:
That thou may’st never guess nor ever see
The all-endured this nothing-done costs me.
Good night.