llion
of our men gave up their lives? That question is not my question. It is
the question that was asked by millions of men in England in the months
that followed the armistice, and it was answered in their own brains by
a bitterness and indignation out of which may be lit the fires of the
revolutionary spirit.

At street-corners, in tramway cars, in tea-shops where young men talked
at the table next to mine I listened to conversations not meant for my
ears, which made me hear in imagination and afar off (yet not very far,
perhaps) the dreadful rumble of revolution, the violence of mobs led by
fanatics. It was the talk, mostly, of demobilized soldiers. They asked
one another, "What did we fight for?" and then other questions such as,
"Wasn't this a war for liberty?" or, "We fought for the land, didn't we?
Then why shouldn't we share the land?" Or, "Why should we be bled white
by profiteers?"

They mentioned the government, and then laughed in a scornful way.

"The government," said one man, "is a conspiracy against the people. All
its power is used to protect those who grow fat on big jobs, big
trusts, big contracts. It used us to smash the German Empire in order to
strengthen and enlarge the British Empire for the sake of those who grab
the oil-wells, the gold-fields, the minerals, and the markets of the
world."

VIII

Out of such talk revolution is born, and revolution will not be averted
by pretending that such words are not being spoken and that such
thoughts are not seething among our working-classes. It will only be
averted by cutting at the root of public suspicion, by cleansing our
political state of its corruption and folly, and by a clear, strong
call of noble-minded men to a new way of life in which a great people
believing in the honor and honesty of its leadership and in fair
reward for good labor shall face a period of poverty with courage, and
co-operate unselfishly for the good of the commonwealth, inspired by a
sense of fellowship with the workers of other nations. We have a long
way to go and many storms to weather before we reach that state, if, by
any grace that is in us, and above us, we reach it.

For there are disease and insanity in our present state, due to the
travail of the war and the education of the war. The daily newspapers
for many months have been filled with the record of dreadful crimes,
of violence and passion. Most of them have been done by soldiers or
ex-soldiers. T