In the field of social problems the outlook was of the hopefullest. The conscience of men had been aroused more sharply than ever before to the mass of evil in our society which was inevitable only as a fruit of selfish apathy, and could be exterminated by sound knowledge and strong action. The very loud clamour of the indecently rich was in itself the best proof that the main cause had been bull’s-eyed, and the best guarantee of approaching change. On the other hand the emptiness of the old Socialism, its inadequacy not only to the spiritual but to the bodily business of life, had emerged into clear vision. Property for every man, and not too much property for any man, had become the watchword of sensible men. Trusts, combines, and private conspiracies of every kind, economic and political, were growing more nervous and by consequence more honest under a growing acuteness of scrutiny. Conservatism, which, for all its faults, had kept the roots of life from being torn up, and Democracy, which, for all its, had been like the sap in the tree forcing itself out into new forms of life, were coming to understand that they were not enemies but allies. If you refused all change it was death; if you changed everything at once it was equally death. There were, indeed, obvious blots. Men, and not irresponsible men, were playing with fire in these countries. The King’s conference at Buckingham Palace was known to have failed just twelve days before Armageddon. We were committed to the monstrous doctrine that only through the criminal madness of civil war could the political future of Ireland be settled. Women, or some women, were already at guerilla war with men, or with some men, and the failure to find a way out was a grave reproach to statesmanship. Perhaps our most damning defect of that vanished time before the war was our entire lack of the sense of proportion. All the little fishes of controversy talked like whales. The galled jade did not _wince_, it trumpeted and charged like a wounded bull-elephant. If you put another penny on the income tax the rich howled out in chorus that Dick Turpin had got himself into the Exchequer, that all industry would come to an end, that the stately homes of England would fall into decay, and that all capital would emigrate to Kamchatka. If a bilious works manager spoke crossly to a similarly indisposed Trade Union workman, there was grave danger that in a week we should have a national crisis and a national strike. The scene has changed. There must be many a man who, looking out on the spectacle of blood and disaster which now passes for Europe, exclaims: “If I had only known!” There is many a home, deep in the mourning of this titanic tragedy, in which they sigh: “If we could only bring back that 1914 in which we were not wise!”