I
Those of us who had been in exile during the years of war and now
returned to peace found that England had changed in our absence. We
did not know this new England. We did not understand its spirit or
its people. Nor did they understand the men who came back from the
many fronts of war, by hundreds of thousands, now that demobilisation
had become a spate after murmurings that were loud with the menace of
revolt from men who had been long patient.
These “_revenants_,” the men who came back out of the Terror, were
so many Rip van Winkles (of a youthful kind), looking round for the
companions of their boyhood, going to old places, touching old stones,
sitting by the same fireside, but with a sense of ghostliness. A new
generation had arrived since 1914. The children had become boys and
girls, the girls had grown into womanhood precociously. There were
legions of “flappers” in London and other big cities, earning good
wages in Government offices and factories, spending most of their money
on the adornment of their prettiness, self-reliant, audacious, out for
the fun of life, and finding it. The tragedy of the war had not touched
them. It had been a great “lark” to them. They accepted the slaughter
of their brothers or their fathers light-heartedly, after a few bursts
of tears and a period of sentiment in which pride was strongest.
They had grown up to the belief that a soldier is generally killed or
wounded and that he is glad to take the risk, or, if not, ought to
be, as part of the most exciting and enjoyable game of war. Women had
filled many of the jobs which formerly were the exclusive possession of
men, and the men coming back looked at these legions of women clerks,
tram-conductors, ticket-collectors, munition-workers, plough-girls, and
motor-drivers with the brooding thought that they, the men, had been
ousted from their places. A new class had arisen out of the whirlpool
of social upheaval. The Profiteers, in a large way of business, had
prospered exceedingly out of the supply and demand of massacre. The
Profiteer’s wife clothed herself in furs and jewels. The Profiteer’s
daughters were dancing by night and sleeping by day. The farmers and
the shop-keepers had made a good thing out of war. They liked war, so
long as they were untouched by air-raids or not afflicted by boys who
came back blind or crippled. They had always been Optimists. They were
Optimists now, and claimed a share in the merit of the Victory that had
been won by the glorious watchword of “business as usual.” They hoped
the terms of peace would be merciless upon the enemy, and they demanded
the Kaiser’s head as a pleasant sacrifice, adding spice to the great
banquet of Victory celebrations.
Outwardly England was gay and prosperous and light-spirited. It was
only by getting away from the seething crowds in the streets, from the
dancing crowds and the theatre crowds, and the shopping crowds, that
men came face to face with private and hidden tragedy. In small houses,
or big, there were women who had lost their men and were listless
and joyless, the mothers of only sons who did not come back with the
demobilised tide, and the sweethearts of boys who would never fulfil
the promise that had given hope in life to lonely girlhood. There was
a New Rich, but there was also a New Poor, and people on small fixed
incomes or with little nest-eggs of capital, on which they scraped out
life, found themselves reduced to desperate straits by the soaring of
prices and the burden of taxation. Underneath the surface joy of a
victorious people there was bitterness to which Victory was a mockery,
and a haggard grief at the cost of war in precious blood. But the
bitterness smouldered without any flame of passion, and grief nagged at
people’s hearts silently.
Many of the men who came back were in a strange mood: restless, morbid,
neurotic. Their own people did not understand them. They could not
understand themselves. They had hated war, most of them, but this
peace seemed flat and unprofitable to their souls. All purpose and
meaning seemed suddenly to have gone out of life. Perhaps it was the
narrowness of English home-life. Men who had travelled to far places
of the world, who had seen the ways of foreign people, and had been
part of a great drama, found themselves back again in a little house
closed in and isolated by the traditions of English individualism, so
that often the next-door neighbour is a stranger. They had a sense of
being suffocated. They could not stay indoors with the old pleasure in
a pipe, or a book by the fireside, or a chat with mother or wife. Often
they would wander out on the chance of meeting some of the “old pals,”
or after a heavy sigh say, “Oh, God!... let’s go to a theatre or a
‘movie’ show!” The theatres were crammed with men seeking distraction,
yet bored with their pleasures and relapsing into a deeper moodiness
afterwards. Wives complained that their husbands had “changed.” Their
characters had hardened and their tempers were frayed so that they were
strangely irritable, and given to storms of rage about nothing at
all. It was frightening.... There was an epidemic of violence and of
horrible sensual crimes with women-victims, ending often in suicide.
There were mob riots by demobilised soldiers, or soldiers still waiting
in camps for demobilisation. Police-stations were stormed and wrecked
and policemen killed by bodies of men who had been heroes in the war
and now fought like savages against their fellow-citizens. Some of
them pleaded guilty in court and made queer statements about an utter
ignorance of their own actions after the disorder had begun. It seemed
as though they had returned to the psychology of that war when men,
doped with rum, or drunk with excitement, had leapt over the parapet
and remembered nothing more of a battle until they found themselves
panting in an enemy trench, or lying wounded on a stretcher. It was a
dangerous kind of psychology in civil life.
Labourers back at work in factories or mines or railway-stations
or dock-yards, after months or years of the soldier-life, did not
return to their old conditions or their old pay with diligence and
thankfulness. They demanded higher wages to meet the higher cost of
life, and after that a margin for pleasure, and after that shorter
hours for higher pay, and less work in shorter hours. If their demands
were not granted they downed tools and said, “What about it?” Strikes
became frequent and general, and at a time when the cost of war
was being added up to frightful totals of debt which could only be
reduced by immense production, the worker slacked off, or suspended
his labours, and said, “Who gets the profits of my sweat?... I want
a larger share.” He was not frightened of a spectre that was scaring
all people of property and morality in the Western world. The spectre
of Bolshevism, red-eyed, dripping with blood, proclaiming anarchy as
the new gospel, did not cause a shiver to the English working-man. He
said, “What has Russia to do with me? I’m English. I have fought this
war to save England, I have done the job; now then, where’s my reward?”
Men who looked round for a living while they lived on an unemployment
dole that was not good enough for their new desires, became sullen
when they returned home night after night with the same old story of
“Nothing doing.” The women were still clinging to their jobs. They
had earned their independence by good work in war-time. They hated
the thought of going back to little homes to be household drudges,
dependent for pocket-money on father and brothers. They had not only
tasted liberty. They had made themselves free of the large world. They
had proved their quality and strength. They were as good as men, and
mostly better. Why should they slink back to the little narrow rut of
life? But the men said, “Get out. Give us back our jobs.”
It was hard on the officer boys--hardest of all on them. They had gone
straight from school to the war, and had commanded men twice as old as
themselves, and drawn good pay for pocket-money as first lieutenants,
captains, even majors of air-squadrons and tank battalions. They had
gained immense experience in the arts and crafts of war, and that
experience was utterly useless in peace.
“My dear young man,” said the heads of prosperous businesses who had
been out to “beat the Boche,” even though they sacrificed their only
sons, or all their sons (with heroic courage!). “You have been wasting
your time. You have no qualifications whatever for a junior clerkship
in this office. On the contrary, you have probably contracted habits
of idleness and inaccuracy which would cause a lot of trouble. This
vacancy is being filled by a lad who has not been vitiated by military
life, and has nothing to unlearn. Good morning!”
And the young officers, after a statement like that, went home with
swear-words learnt in Flanders, and said, “That’s the reward of
patriotism, eh? Well, we seem to have been fooled, pretty badly. Next
time we shan’t be so keen to strew the fields of death with our fresh
little corpses.”
These words, all this murmur from below, did not reach those who sat in
High Places. They were wonderfully complacent, except when outbreaks
of violence, or the cessation of labour, shocked them with a sense of
danger. They arranged Peace celebrations before the Peace, Victory
marches when the fruits of Victory were as bitter as Dead Sea fruit in
the mouths of those who saw the ruin of the world; and round a Council
Table in Paris statesmen of Europe abandoned all the ideals for which
the war had been fought by humble men, and killed the hopes of all
those who had looked to them as the founders of a new era of humanity
and commonsense.