The religious movement which I think _is_ going on is of a subtler and a
deeper sort altogether. Men are discovering that human beings are finer
than they had supposed. A young man said to me: "Well, I don't know
about religion, but I know that my opinion of human nature is about
fifty per cent. better than it was." That conclusion has been arrived at
by countless thousands. It is a great factor--seeing that the belief of
the future will be belief in the God within; and a frank agnosticism
concerning the great "Why" of things. Religion will become the
exaltation of self-respect, of what we call the divine in man. "The
Kingdom of God" is within you. That belief, old as the hills, and
reincarnated by Tolstoi years ago, has come into its own in the war; for
it has been clearly proved to be the real faith of modern man,
underneath all verbal attempts to assert the contrary. This--the white
side of war--is an extraordinarily heartening phenomenon; and if it sent
every formal creed in the world packing there would still be a gain to
religion.
Another main characteristic of the Briton, especially of the "working"
Briton, is improvidence--he likes, unconsciously, to live from hand to
mouth, careless of the morrow. The war is deepening that characteristic
too--it must, for who could endure if he fretted over what was going to
happen to him, with death so in the wind?
Thus the average soldier-workman will return from the war confirmed and
deepened in at least three main national characteristics: His combative
hardihood, his ironic humour, and his improvidence. I think he will have
more of what is called "character"; whether for good or evil depends, I
take it, on what we connote by those terms, and in what context we use
them. I may look on "character" as an asset, but I can well imagine
politicians and trades union leaders regarding it with profound
suspicion. Anyway, he will not be the lamb that he was not even before
the war. He will be a restive fellow, knowing his own mind better, and
possibly his real interest less well; he will play less for safety,
since safety will have become to him a civilian sort of thing, rather
contemptible. He will have at once a more interesting and a less
reliable character from the social and political point of view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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