These effigies of emperors and kings and statesmen
that lead men into war, these legends of nationality and glory, would
collapse before our universal derision, if they were not stuffed tight
and full with the unthinking folly of the common man.
There is in all of us an indolent capacity for suffering evil and
dangerous things, that I contemplate each year of my life with a
deepening incredulity. I perceive we suffer them; I record the futile
protests of the intelligence. It seems to me incredible that men should
not rise up out of this muddy, bloody, wasteful mess of a world war,
with a resolution to end for ever the shams, the prejudices, the
pretences and habits that have impoverished their lives, slaughtered our
sons, and wasted the world, a resolution so powerful and sustained that
nothing could withstand it.
But it is not apparent that any such will arises. Does it appear at all?
I find it hard to answer that question because my own answer varies with
my mood. There are moods when it seems to me that nothing of the sort
is happening. This war has written its warning in letters of blood and
flame and anguish in the skies of mankind for two years and a half. When
I look for the collective response to that warning, I see a multitude
of little chaps crawling about their private ends like mites in an old
cheese.
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