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BEFORE THE WAR
IT is to me a strange thing that since the
beginning of the war Utopia-building has gone
on more merrily than ever. Almost every one
has a scheme for social reconstruction ; and
of these schemes, though most are of that
familiar kind which discovers in compulsory
strike-arbitration the true and only panacea,
some are in themselves attractive enough,
being more or less intelligent attempts to
combine Socialist economics with the maximum
of personal liberty. And yet I can take
no interest in any of them, though my apathy,
I know, vexes my friends who complain that
in old days, before the war, no castle-builder
was more reckless than I.
Very true : but things have changed since
then. Before the war England was immensely
rich ; and the upper classes, before the war,
were beginning to find barbarism boring.
Consequently the lower and lower-middle, as
they got money and pushed up towards the
entered a world that could afford to be
light,
liberal, about which floated, vaguely enough,
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