The vulgarity and crudity of the things
nearest him impressed him most; the dreadful insincerity of the Press,
the meretriciousness of success, the loudness of the rich, the baseness
of common people in his own land. The world overseas had by comparison
a certain glamour. Except that when you said "United States" to him he
would draw the air sharply between his teeth and beg you not to...
Nobody took him by the collar and shook him.
If our world had considered the advice of William James and insisted
upon national service from everyone, national service in the drains or
the nationalised mines or the nationalised deep-sea fisheries if not
in the army or navy, we should not have had any such men. If it had
insisted that wealth and property are no more than a trust for the
public benefit, we should have had no genteel indispensables. These
discords in our national unanimity are the direct consequence of our bad
social organisation. We permit the profiteer and the usurer; they evoke
the response of the Reluctant Employee, and the inheritor of their
wealth becomes the Genteel Whig.
But that is by the way. It was of course natural and inevitable that the
German onslaught upon Belgium and civilisation generally should strike
these recluse minds not as a monstrous ugly wickedness to be resisted
and overcome at any cost, but merely as a nerve-racking experience.
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