Gwen: Oh, Jacko, something in me leaps to that.
John: For five years the men under forty worked together, sacrificed everything they had in life, every hope, prospect, comfort; they underwent suffering, physical suffering and moral suffering, absolutely inconceivable to those who stayed at home, so that to give their lives at the end of it was often a relief ... and they won! By God, Gwen, if the men over forty with the money and the power would get together and work one-twentieth as well, and sacrifice one-hundredth of their personal comfort, what mightn’t they make of the victory—but they won’t! They won’t, because they see no reason why they should. They’ve got no faith to make them. They’ve got nothing great to believe in.... To-day, the wisest of men are cynical, and the cleverest are rich, and none are happy.... There’s no great purpose outside our own lives to give them harmony and meaning. Ask the ordinary people, in the streets, and tubes, and ’buses ... what they’re living for; they don’t know.... All the old duties—our duty to our parents; to our country; to God; they’ve been prostituted; they demanded our blood; and took it; and gave us nothing in return but a dreadful sense of futility ... we’ve got to find something truer to believe in....
Gwen: Can we find something?
John: I believe so.
Gwen: What?
John: ... Why not, just ... our duty to our fellows.... Suppose we all started in with that as a Religion; with half the will we went to war; a common purpose so deeply felt that everybody was ready to spend their lives for it, and make any sacrifices that were called for; I’d be a parson if that was religion, teaching that common purpose—just to clear up the mess a bit; so that the generation that’s waiting just outside the doors of existence, should come in and find it a happier place; it ’ud be a dam’ sight happier place for those in it now, anyhow! and we’d soon do away with any fear of another war; that ’ud be something.
Gwen: John, do you think there’s a hope?
John: There’s always hope—in the young people.
Gwen: Do you believe that?
John: What other hope is there? There are millions and millions waiting to be born; they haven’t got all the prejudices and hatreds that cause the trouble; they get ’em from us; we’ve got to give ’em something better.