an't do pretty well
materially if once we hammer out a sane collective method of getting and
using fuel. Which people generally will understand--in the place of
our present methods of snatch and wrangle. Of that I am absolutely
convinced. Some work, some help, some willingness you can get out of
everybody. That's the red. And the same principle applies to most labour
and property problems, to health, to education, to population, social
relationships and war and peace. We haven't got the right system, we
have inefficient half-baked systems, or no system at all, and a wild
confusion and war of ideas in all these respects. But there is a right
system possible none the less. Let us only hammer our way through to the
sane and reasonable organization in this and that and the other human
affairs, and once we have got it, we shall have got it for good. We may
not live to see even the beginnings of success, but the spirit of order,
the spirit that has already produced organized science, if only there
are a few faithful, persistent people to stick to the job, will in the
long run certainly save mankind and make human life clean and splendid,
happy work in a clear mind. If I could live to see it!"

"And as for us--in our time?"

"Measured by the end we serve, we don't matter. You know we don't
matter."

"We have to find our fun in the building and in our confidence that we
do really build."

"So long as our confidence lasts there is no great hardship," said Sir
Richmond.

"So long as our confidence lasts," she repeated after him.

"Ah!" cried Sir Richmond. "There it is! So long as our confidence lasts!
So long as one keeps one's mind steady. That is what I came away with
Dr. Martineau to discuss. I went to him for advice. I haven't known him
for more than a month. It's amusing to find myself preaching forth to
you. It was just faith I had lost. Suddenly I had lost my power of work.
My confidence in the rightness of what I was doing evaporated. My will
failed me. I don't know if you will understand what that means. It
wasn't that my reason didn't assure me just as certainly as ever that
what I was trying to do was the right thing to try to do. But somehow
that seemed a cold and personally unimportant proposition. The life had
gone out of it...."

He paused as if arrested by a momentary doubt.

"I don't know why I tell you these things," he said.

"You tell them me," she said.

"It's a little like a patient in a hydropa