crash and confusion
and foul language ensued. At length order was restored and he could
let himself go.

"It may seem odd," he said, "but I agree with the last speaker more
than with anyone else: and he was about as wrong as can be. He was
right when he said love mattered but wrong in what he meant by it. The
love that counts isn't the squidgy, religious thing he wants and it
hasn't anything to do with the great passions of poets and intellectual
young men. It isn't even Browning's ethereal penguin, half angel and
half bird. The love that really matters for people who are interested
in the way the world is going is just extensive, sentimental wallowing.
Nothing more. Has it ever struck you remote philosophers that making
love is the only thing that most people really care about? The papers
may rave about a great political crisis or a strike movement. But if
you met the average man you wouldn't bet a button that he cared
twopence either way, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that he cared about
taking a girl out on Saturday night. That's the permanent and
irresistible fact. Every cinema film, every piece of cheap fiction,
every popular song has one message. There must be 'a strong love
interest.' The world has known friendship and sensuality and passion
since the beginning. This great flood of sentimentality is as new as
it is strong."

He paused a moment to look round. The sleepers had been roused:
Lawrence was good when he was under way.

"It came in with the industrial system," he went on. "I believe that
there is in man a natural tendency to look for beauty somewhere.
Capitalism made of work so foul a thing that it couldn't be found
there. And in answer to demand it turned out a numberless horde of
stunted, overworked, half-educated people. Work was foul: for ordinary
amusements there was no time, except on Sunday, and then it was wicked.
Some means of self-expression had to be found, something to bring
comfort of a sort, something that would be suitable for Sundays and the
evenings. There was sex. I wonder why it never occurs to the parsons
who protest against Sunday games (for the poor) that the British
Sabbath is nothing but a forcing-house for sex. The average artisan or
shop-girl has not the possibility of any other occupation.

"The worker has combined with his notion of love the notion of home as
a place where he will be free to do as he likes, to express himself, to
create the ugliness whi