It is probable that at no moment in the history of the world has a spirit of disillusion been so widespread and so profound as at the present time. Not only apparently have the high ideals which sustained us during the war evaporated completely, but they have yielded place to a sullen exasperation and ill-will dangerous in its temper and purpose. Moral war-weariness has sapped mind and body to such an extent that no powers of resilience remain. Suspicion as between class and class and nation and nation corrodes the foundations of life. Surly ill-will and a wholly anti-helpful attitude permeates the grudging performance of essential social services. People and classes pursue their own ends with complete disregard as to their reactions on other sections of society. Self-interest reigns supreme. The joy as of comrades of the open road faring together in a spirit of common service and brotherhood appears to have vanished. In England unrest and discontent wholly refuse to yield to the opportunist devices of a Government to whom all principles are mere questions of expediency. But England, mercifully for herself, whatever her spiritual sickness, knows nothing of the stark levels of practical misery and starvation on to which millions of continental people have been driven. We have no standard with which to gauge misery and hunger on a scale so appalling as that which has overtaken the dwellers of Eastern Europe. At times one wonders how it is that England, so great, so generous, so magnanimous in her traditional policy, has apparently neither eyes to see nor ears to hear what is going on. The voice of Gladstone could once rouse the country to a white flame of indignation over the sufferings of an oppressed people. But with the tragedy of Europe before our eyes; with women and children perishing by the thousand; with a volume of discontent growing and surging among every nationality, England, always the world’s hope in matters of practical justice, seems incapable of rousing herself to action worthy of her own great tradition. Instead of some fine and generous appreciation of the world’s woes, she looks on dully and from afar.