Yet people have not risen up _en masse_ and turned them out. No, and this, too, is characteristic of the period. It lacks the ardent juvenile faith in Utopias essential to drive multitudes to action. Instead, people ask coolly: ‘What have you got, to put in place of what we so unsatisfactorily have?’ But it is also a rather mature, almost wise period, saying: ‘Let the Fascisti rave. Whom the Gods would destroy....’ The Republicans and the Conservatives must watch their step closely. In neither case was the large majority obtained a loving endorsement. A tired period but an extremely clear-eyed one, as periods go, with less belief than usual in miraculous panaceas, but with still less in all things being for the best. It is not a romantic period, though it is full of superficially romantic events; there is no youth in it and small enthusiasm. But it is a period out of which more of permanent value may come than if it were. SOPHISTICATION My text is from Michael Arlen’s _The Green Hat_ (iv. i. 116) and from Ford Madox Ford’s _Some Do Not ..._ (II. i. 196; ii. i. 215). _Lady Pynte liked young men to be Healthy and Normal; Mrs. Ammon preferred them to be Original. Lady Pynte liked Boys to be Boys; Mrs. Ammon didn’t mind if they were girls so long as they were Original. Lady Pynte insisted on Working For the Welfare of the People at Large and Not just for Our Own Little Class, she played bridge with a bantering tongue and a Borgia heart, she maintained that the best place to buy shoes was Fortnum and Mason’s, and if she saw you innocently taking the air of a sunny morning she would say: ‘You are not looking at all well, my good young man. Why don’t you take some Clean, Healthy exercise? You ought to be Riding.’ That was why one maintained a defensive alliance with one’s haddock rather than do the manly thing and dance with Lady Pynte. She would say one ought to be riding, and for four years I had hidden from Lady Pynte the fact that I did not know how to ride. I simply did not dare to confess to Lady Pynte that I could not ride. I had already tried to pave the way to that dénouement by confessing that I came from the lower classes, but she did not appear to think that any class could be so Low as that._ * * * * * _Being near Tietjens she lifted her plate, which contained two cold cutlets in aspic and several leaves of salad; she wavered a little to one side and, with a circular motion of her hand, let the whole contents fly at Tietjens’ head. She placed the plate on the table and drifted slowly towards the immense mirror over the fireplace._ _‘I’m bored,’ she said. ‘Bored! Bored!’_ * * * * *