Could she bring herself to so happy a condition of mind?
"Take no thought for the morrow."
That injunction couldn't be ignored. Nevertheless, she had ignored it all her life. Hence, from a material point of view, her sound economic condition. She was independent of the 'bus.
Such thoughts were obsessing, also, the parson of the parish.
Hamlin was quite as handicapped as Mrs. Yellam by principles adopted long ago which he deemed, before the war, to be bomb-proof. He had pinned his faith to the masses, dismissing the classes as effete and lapped in luxury and indifference. All workers appealed to him irresistibly; men and women of leisure rather exasperated him. He held with Matthew Arnold that conduct was three-fourths of life, whereas culture might or might not claim the odd quarter.
The masses had disappointed him. The classes seemed to have justified their claim to superiority not in mere education but in a capacity and willingness to scrap self-interest which astounded him. He had expected, too, a tremendous upward movement from German Socialists. Indeed, he had regarded the Socialists of Europe as a band of brothers prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder against autocracy.
And they had not done so.
He could find for the masses, not at the front, all the excuses which fell so glibly from the lips of Democracy's champions. Strikers complained of lack of good faith on the part of the Government, of local injustices, of this and that, but the fact remained that self-interest swayed them, as it had swayed the privileged classes before the war. The tables seemed to be turned. Aristocracy, governed possibly by its fine motto, "Noblesse oblige," hurled self-interest to the void; Democracy picked it up and hugged it. Indisputable evidence exhibited Labour as rejoicing in an increased wage, and spending pounds a week upon luxuries, many actually praying that the war might continue, because they believed that the end of it would mean a return to dull, grinding pre-war conditions.
And Hamlin admitted sorrowfully to himself that if the war did end suddenly, leaving Labour triumphant, insatiate for more and more wealth, and in a position to dictate terms to Capital, that the country would be plunged into abysmal depths, depths in which new tyrants would impose a new slavery without any of the restrictions which culture and tradition had prescribed upon the former autocrats and plutocrats.
He envisaged England at the mercy of the mob!