To the psychologist it is plain that the seriousness of disunion is the discouragement to ourselves it necessarily involves. In this lies its single and its immense importance. Every note of disunion is a loss of moral power of incalculable influence; every evidence of union is an equally incalculable gain of moral power. Both halves of this statement deserve consideration, but the latter is incomparably the more important. If disunion were the more potent influence, a great deal might be done for national morale by the forcible control of opinion and expression. That, however, could yield nothing positive, and we must rely upon voluntary unity as the only source of all the higher developments of moral power. It was towards this object that we dimly groped when we felt in the early weeks of the war the impulses of friendliness, tolerance, and goodwill towards our fellow-citizens, and the readiness to sacrifice what privileges the social system had endowed us with in order to enjoy the power which a perfect homogeneity of the herd would have given us. A very small amount of conscious, authoritative direction at that time, a very little actual sacrifice of privilege at that psychological moment, a series of small, carefully selected concessions none of which need have been actually subversive of prescriptive right, a slight relaxation in the vast inhumanity of the social machine would have given the needed readjustment out of which a true national homogeneity would necessarily have grown. The psychological moment was allowed to pass, and the country was spared the shock of seeing its {147} moral strength, which should of course be left to luck, fortified by the hand of science. The history of England during the first fourteen months of the war was thus left to pursue its characteristically English course. The social system of class segregation soon repented of its momentary softness and resumed its customary rigidity. More than that, it decided that, far from the war being a special occasion which should penetrate with a transforming influence the whole of society from top to bottom, as the common people were at first inclined to think, the proper pose before the enemy was to be that it made no difference at all. We were to continue imperturbably with the conduct of our business, and to awe the Continent with a supreme exhibition of British phlegm. The national consciousness of the working-man was to be stimulated by his continuing to supply us with our dividends, and ours by continuing to receive them. It is not necessary to pursue the history of this new substitute for unity. It is open to doubt whether our enemies were greatly appalled by the spectacle, or more so than our friends; it is certain that the stimulant supplied to the working-man proved to be inadequate and had to be supplemented by others. . . .