Ten years after, the classes have fallen apart again. The old
hostilities between Capital and Labour have been revived with
increasing bitterness in many minds. The old barriers have been
rebuilt in many countries. For a time, even in England, there was a
revolutionary spirit among the men who had served, and a sense of fear
and hostility against those who had said that nothing was too good for
them. “Our heroes” became very quickly “those damned Socialists,” or
those “dirty dogs” who are never satisfied, or those lazy scoundrels
who would rather live on the “dole” than take an honest job. The men
who had saved England were suspected of plotting for her overthrow,
subsidised by Russian money and seduced by the propaganda of a secret
society inspired by the spirit of Anti-Christ.
Ten years after the closing up of ranks, the surrender of self
interest, and a spiritual union, England is again seething with
strikes, industrial conflict, political passion, and class
consciousness. There are still a million and a quarter unemployed
officially registered in Great Britain, and half a million more not
on the registers and worse off. Instead of “homes for heroes” the
working people in the great cities are shamefully overcrowded. In the
agricultural districts of England young men who fought in the Last
Crusade and marched with Allenby to Jerusalem, or those boys who left
their fields in ’14 for the dirty ditches in Flanders—for England’s
sake—are getting twenty-five shillings a week, upon which a single man
can hardly live and a married man must starve. And ten years after
they poured out their blood and treasure without a grudge, without
reservation, first in the field and last out of it, the old “quality”
of England or their younger sons are selling up their old houses to
pay taxes which are extinguishing them as a class, depriving them of
their old power and prerogatives, and changing the social structure
of the nation by an economic revolution which is almost accomplished.
On both sides there is bitterness, a sense of injustice, and an utter
disillusion with the results of victory.