You will naturally ask what effect the war is likely to have on this problem of class distinction. How far will it hinder or enhance the social unity for which we seek?
We must of course beware of being unduly optimistic. The fact that millions of our men are seeing with their own eyes the results which can be achieved by naked force will not be without its effect on their attitude when they return to their homes. If force is so necessary and so successful on the field of battle why not equally so in the industrial field? If nations find it necessary to face each other with daggers drawn, it may be that classes will have to do the same.
Personally I doubt whether this argument is likely to carry much weight. It is much more likely in my view that our men will be filled with so deep a hatred of everything that even remotely savours of battle, that a great tide of reaction against mere force will set in, and a great impetus be given to those higher and more spiritual motor-powers which during the war we have put out of court.
On the other hand it is easy to cherish a rather shallow hope as to the continuation in the future of that unity of classes which obtains in the trenches. Surely, it is argued, men who have stood together at the danger point and gone over the top together at the moment of assault will never be other than brothers in the more peaceful pursuits which will follow. Yet it is not easy to foretell what will happen when the tremendous restraint of military service is withdrawn, when Britain no longer has her back to the wall, and when the overwhelming loyalty which leaps forth at the hour of crisis falls back into its normal quiescence, like the New Zealand geyser when its momentary eruption is over. Any hopefulness which we may cherish for the future must rest on firmer foundations than these.
Such a foundation, I believe, has come to light, and I must say a few words about it as I close.
Broadly speaking it is this. The war has taught us that it is possible to live a national family life, in which private interests are subordinated in the main to the service of the State; and further that this new social organisation of the nation has called forth an unprecedented capacity in tens of thousands both of men and women, not merely for self-denying service, but for the utmost heights of heroism even unto death.
Men have vaguely cherished this ideal of national life before the war, but now it has been translated into concrete fact, and the nation can never forget the deep sense of corporate efficiency, even of corporate joy, which has ensued from this obliteration of the old class distinctions, this amalgamation of all and sundry in a common service. The fact is that a new class distinction has in a measure taken the place of the old, a distinction which has nothing to do with blood or with money, but solely with service. The nation is graded, not in degrees of social importance but in degrees of capacity for service. The only superiority is one of sacrifice. And each grade takes its hat off to the other on the equal standing ground of an all pervading patriotism. The only social competition is not in getting but in giving. National advantage takes the place of personal profit, and there is a sense of neighbourliness such as Britain has not experienced for many a long day, possibly for many a long century.
The supreme problem before us, I take it, is how to conserve this relationship and carry it over from the day of war to the day of peace. To do it will call for just that same spirit of sacrifice and service which is its own most predominant characteristic.
For one thing we must be quite definitely prepared in every section of society for a new way of life. From the economic point of view this will mean that the rich will be less rich, and the poor will be enabled to lead a larger life. Already the wealthy classes have been learning to live a simple life, and to substitute the service of the country for their own personal enjoyment. A serious call will come to them to continue in that state of life when the war is over. In some degree at least the pressure of the financial burden which the nation will have to bear will compel them to do so.
To the workers too in the same way the call will come to a new and more worthy way of life. I am thinking now of the workers at home who have been earning unprecedented wages, and thereby in many cases are already assaying a larger life. They will be reluctant to give this up, but only a gradual redistribution of wealth can make it permanent. It is not of course merely or mainly a matter of wages. The only real enlargement of life is spiritual. It is an affair of the mind and the soul.