ith the spirit of the men who
came back. Something was wrong. They put on civilian clothes again,
looked to their mothers and wives very much like the young men who had
gone to business in the peaceful days before the August of '14. But they
had not come back the same men. Something had altered in them. They
were subject to queer moods, queer tempers, fits of profound depression
alternating with a restless desire for pleasure. Many of them were
easily moved to passion when they lost control of themselves. Many were
bitter in their speech, violent in opinion, frightening. For some time,
while they drew their unemployment pensions, they did not make any
effort to get work for the future. They said: "That can wait. I've done
my bit. The country can keep me for a while. I helped to save it...
Let's go to the 'movies.'" They were listless when not excited by some
"show." Something seemed to have snapped in them; their will-power. A
quiet day at home did not appeal to them.

"Are you tired of me?" said the young wife, wistfully. "Aren't you glad
to be home?"

"It's a dull sort of life," said some of them.

The boys, unmarried, hung about street-corners, searched for their pals,
formed clubs where they smoked incessantly, and talked in an aimless
way.

Then began the search for work. Boys without training looked for jobs
with wages high enough to give them a margin for amusement, after the
cost of living decently had been reckoned on the scale of high prices,
mounting higher and higher. Not so easy as they had expected. The girls
were clinging to their jobs, would not let go of the pocket-money
which they had spent on frocks. Employers favored girl labor, found it
efficient and, on the whole, cheap. Young soldiers who had been very
skilled with machine-guns, trench-mortars, hand-grenades, found that
they were classed with the ranks of unskilled labor in civil life. That
was not good enough. They had fought for their country. They had served
England. Now they wanted good jobs with short hours and good wages. They
meant to get them. And meanwhile prices were rising in the shops. Suits
of clothes, boots, food, anything, were at double and treble the price
of pre-war days. The profiteers were rampant. They were out to bleed the
men who had been fighting. They were defrauding the public with sheer,
undisguised robbery, and the government did nothing to check them.
England, they thought, was rotten all through.

Who cared for