"Is it for an old man's eye also, laddie?" Burgess asked.
"Of course, sir. I'm afraid you won't find anything very new or profound. I've shirked the hard parts and quietly assumed anything I couldn't prove. I assume we're going to win, I assume our Statesmen can exact material peace guarantees that can't be broken when anyone chooses. I assume we shall move gradually towards greater international spirit and become more peaceful as political power spreads downwards. We were getting there, you know,—George, you know it better than anyone,—approaching the time when the stevedores of Hamburg would see no profit in bayoneting the stevedores of Liverpool. My first chapter is a tissue of assumptions."
"It's going to be a book, then?"
"Perhaps. The second chapter deals minutely with England before the war—an England moving rapidly towards social revolution, as I always maintained—sectionized, undisciplined, unco-ordinated, indifferent, soulless. I've tried to point out the dangers. Are we going back to an Irish question, and a Suffrage question, and a General Strike? I've tried to solve a good many problems—old ones and new, wages and the relations of women and labour since the war; birthrate and marriage. We shall have them before us in the House, and I want to be ready. That's all the difficult part of the work—the part other people find so easy. Then we get to the really easy part, the thing we can easily do, the moral revolution, the attempt to make the world worth living in. George knows my criterion."
"Can you get it accepted?" I asked.
He sprang to his feet and faced us with arms outstretched.
"With a war like this searing each man's brain and desolating each man's house? A generation has gone to war, and two-thirds of its manhood will never return. A third may come back, and when peace dawns it will light up an England of old men, women and boys. The returning troops who have looked death in the eyes and been spared—were they spared for nothing? Destiny, Providence, God, Luck—even ... You may choose your name. If they come back when others as good or better are blown or tortured to death, do you suppose their escape hasn't bred in them a soul? For a day and a night they have lived the Grand Life; will they slip back? If they'll die for their country, won't they live for it? Can't you dream of a New Birth ...?"
His hands dropped to his sides, and a spasm of pain was reflected in his eyes like a wave of light.
"And those who remained behind," he went on, "the sick, the women, the old men, the boys. It has cost heroic blood to keep them alive. They can no longer map out existence for their amusement, they are in debt for their lives. And the payment of that debt ..."