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BEFORE THE WAR 255
beneath the scandalized brows of neo-Catholic
grandchildren, one becomes exceedingly sorry
for oneself.
Even before the war we were not such fools
as to suppose that a new world would grow up
in a night. First had to grow up a generation
of civilized men and women to desire and
devise it. That was where the intellectual
dilettanti came in. Those pert and unpopular
people who floated about propounding unpleasant
riddles and tweaking up the law
wherever it had been most solemnly laid down
were, in fact, making possible the New Age.
Not only did they set chattering the rich and
gibbering with rage the less presentable revo-
out the
lutionaries, it was they who poured
ideas that filtered through to the trades-union
class ; and, if that class was soon to create
and direct a brand-new State, it was high
time that it should begin to handle the sort
of ideas these people had to offer. Doubtless
the trade-unionists would have developed a
civilization sweeter and far more solid than
that which flitted so airily from salon to studio,
from Bloomsbury to Chelsea ; before long, I
dare say, they would have dismissed our
theories as heartless and dry and absurd to
boot in ; the end, perhaps, they would have
had our heads off but not, I think, until
they had got some ideas into their own. The