He was fairly launched. “It’s the blind folly of it! In the days before the war it was different. Then there was abundance. A little grabbing or cornering was all to the good. All to the good. It prevented things being used up too fast. And the world was running by habit; the inertia was tremendous. You could take all sorts of liberties. But all this is altered. We’re living in a different world. The public won’t stand things it used to stand. It’s a new public. It’s--wild. It’ll smash up the show if they go too far. Everything short and running shorter--food, fuel, material. But these people go on. They go on as though nothing had changed.... Strikes, Russia, nothing will warn them. There are men on that Commission who would steal the brakes off a mountain railway just before they went down in it.... It’s a struggle with suicidal imbeciles. It’s--! But I’m talking! I didn’t come here to talk Fuel.” “You think there may be a smash-up?” “I lie awake at night, thinking of it.” “A social smash-up.” “Economic. Social. Yes. Don’t you?” “A social smash-up seems to me altogether a possibility. All sorts of people I find think that,” said the doctor. “All sorts of people lie awake thinking of it.” “I wish some of my damned Committee would!” The doctor turned his eyes to the window. “I lie awake too,” he said and seemed to reflect. But he was observing his patient acutely--with his ears. “But you see how important it is,” said Sir Richmond, and left his sentence unfinished. “I’ll do what I can for you,” said the doctor, and considered swiftly what line of talk he had best follow. Section 2 “This sense of a coming smash is epidemic,” said the doctor. “It’s at the back of all sorts of mental trouble. It is a new state of mind. Before the war it was abnormal--a phase of neurasthenia. Now it is almost the normal state with whole classes of intelligent people. Intelligent, I say. The others always have been casual and adventurous and always will be. A loss of confidence in the general background of life. So that we seem to float over abysses.” “We do,” said Sir Richmond. “And we have nothing but the old habits and ideas acquired in the days of our assurance. There is a discord, a jarring.” The doctor pursued his train of thought. “A new, raw and dreadful sense of responsibility for the universe. Accompanied by a realization that the job is overwhelmingly too big for us.” “We’ve got to stand up to the job,” said Sir Richmond. “Anyhow, what else is there to do? We MAY keep things together.... I’ve got to do my bit. And if only I could hold myself at it, I could beat those fellows. But that’s where the devil of it comes in. Never have I been so desirous to work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and weak-willed and inaccurate.... Sloppy.... Indolent.... VICIOUS!...”