“Yes. Of course the cross has meant something to people. It must have meant tremendous things to some people. But men imitate. One sticks up a cross because it means all sorts of deep things to him. Then the man down the road thinks he will have a cross too. And the man up the road doesn’t quite see what it’s all about but doesn’t like to be out of it. So they go on, until sticking up crosses becomes a habit. It becomes a necessity. They’d be shocked to see a new church without four or five crosses on it. They organize a business in golden crosses. Everybody says, ’You must have a cross.’ Long ago every one has forgotten that deep meaning....”
“H’m,” said Oswald, “you think that?”
“It’s just a crowd,” said Peter, thinking aloud. “Underneath the crosses it’s just a swarming and breeding of men.... Like any other men.”
“But don’t you think that all that million odd down there is held together by a distinctive idea? Don’t you feel sometimes the Russian idea about you—like the smell of burnt wood on the breeze?”
“Well, call it a breeze,” said Peter. “It’s like a breeze blowing over mud. It blows now and then. It’s forgotten before it is past. What does it signify?”
He was thinking as he talked. Oswald did not want to interrupt him, and just smiled slightly and looked at Peter for more.
“I don’t think there’s any great essential differences between cities,” said Peter. “It’s easy to exaggerate that. Mostly the differences are differences of scenery. Beneath the differences it’s the same story everywhere; men shoving about and eating and squabbling and multiplying. We might just as well be looking at London from Hampstead bridge so far as the human facts go. Here things are done in red and black and gold against a background of white snow; there they are done in drab and grey and green. This is a land of dull tragedy instead of dull comedy, gold crosses on green onions instead of church spires, extremes instead of means, but it’s all the same old human thing. Even the King and Tsar look alike, there’s a state church here, dissenters, landowners....”
“I suppose there is a sort of parallelism,” Oswald conceded....
“We’re not big enough yet for big ideas, the Russian idea, or the Christian idea or any such idea,” said Peter. “Why pretend we have them?”
“Now that’s just it,” said Oswald, coming round upon him with an extended finger. “Because we want them so badly.”