of our men are seeing with their own eyes the results which can
be achieved by naked force will not be without its effect on their
attitude when they return to their homes. If force is so necessary and
so successful on the field of battle why not equally so in the
industrial field? If nations find it necessary to face each other with
daggers drawn, it may be that classes will have to do the same.

Personally I doubt whether this argument is likely to carry much weight.
It is much more likely in my view that our men will be filled with so
deep a hatred of everything that even remotely savours of battle, that a
great tide of reaction against mere force will set in, and a great
impetus be given to those higher and more spiritual motor-powers which
during the war we have put out of court.

On the other hand it is easy to cherish a rather shallow hope as to the
continuation in the future of that unity of classes which obtains in the
trenches. Surely, it is argued, men who have stood together at the
danger point and gone over the top together at the moment of assault
will never be other than brothers in the more peaceful pursuits which
will follow. Yet it is not easy to foretell what will happen when the
tremendous restraint of military service is withdrawn, when Britain no
longer has her back to the wall, and when the overwhelming loyalty which
leaps forth at the hour of crisis falls back into its normal quiescence,
like the New Zealand geyser when its momentary eruption is over. Any
hopefulness which we may cherish for the future must rest on firmer
foundations than these.

Such a foundation, I believe, has come to light, and I must say a few
words about it as I close.

Broadly speaking it is this. The war has taught us that it is possible
to live a national family life, in which private interests are
subordinated in the main to the service of the State; and further that
this new social organisation of the nation has called forth an
unprecedented capacity in tens of thousands both of men and women, not
merely for self-denying service, but for the utmost heights of heroism
even unto death.

Men have vaguely cherished this ideal of national life before the war,
but now it has been translated into concrete fact, and the nation can
never forget the deep sense of corporate efficiency, even of corporate
joy, which has ensued from this obliteration of the old class
distinctions, this amalgamation of all and sundry in a commo