It is, we are assured, turning people to
religion, making them moral and thoughtful. It is also, we are assured
with equal confidence, turning them to despair and moral disaster. It
will be followed by (1) a period of moral renascence, and (2) a debauch.
It is going to make the workers (1) more and (2) less obedient and
industrious. It is (1) inuring men to war and (2) filling them with a
passionate resolve never to suffer war again. And so on. I propose now
to ask what is really happening in this matter? How is human opinion
changing? I have opinions of my own and they are bound to colour my
discussion. The reader must allow for that, and as far as possible I
will remind him where necessary to make his allowance.
Now first I would ask, is any really continuous and thorough
mental process going on at all about this war? I mean, is there any
considerable number of people who are seeing it as a whole, taking it in
as a whole, trying to get a general idea of it from which they can form
directing conclusions for the future? Is there any considerable number
of people even trying to do that? At any rate let me point out first
that there is quite an enormous mass of people who--in spite of the fact
that their minds are concentrated on aspects of this war, who are at
present hearing, talking, experiencing little else than the war--are
nevertheless neither doing nor trying to do anything that deserves to
be called thinking about it at all.
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