Now, why do people in Fleet-street talk such tosh? People in
Fleet-street are not fools. Most of them have realised reality through
work; some through starvation; some through damnation, or something
damnably like it. I think it is simply and seriously true that they
are tired of their job. As the general said in M. Rostand’s play, “la
fatigue!”
I do really believe that this is one of the ways in which God (don’t get
flurried, Nature if you like) is unexpectedly avenged on things infamous
and unreasonable. And this method is that men’s moral and even physical
tenacity actually give out under such a load of lies. They go on writing
their leading articles and their Parliamentary reports. They go on doing
it as a convict goes on picking oakum. But the point is not that we are
bored with their articles; the point is that they are. The work is done
worse because it is done weakly and without human enthusiasm. And it
is done weakly because of the truth we have told so many times in this
book: that it is not done for monarchy, for which men will die; or for
democracy, for which men will die; or even for aristocracy, for which
many men have died. It is done for a thing called Capitalism: which
stands out quite clearly in history in many curious ways. But the most
curious thing about it is that no man has loved it; and no man died for
it.