Functional socialism

174 FUNCTIONAL SOCIALISM

What of ourselves? Indeed, of the English speaking peoples generally?

The end of the war saw the women of England enjoying a political and social freedom they never anticipated in 1914. ‘The young men, too, announced in no uncertain tones that the day of old age had gone, the day of youth had come. They expressed themselves in liberty of speech, in cutting loose from various sex inhibitions, in clipping much conversational verbiage. Then they took themselves to market to find their gallant selves undersold and supplemented by their sisters. The social problem, _ of which this was a symptom, did not appeal to their intelligence; it savoured too much of the studious patience which the seniors gave to it before the war. The note of youth at this period was shrill without being convincing. We catch it in the music, novels and plays of a decade ago.

Now these young men are middled-aged; their faces are lined; they are hard put to it to keep themselves and their families. Those of an enquiring turn of mind have discovered that post-war cocksureness is hardly a substitute for the pre-war study and selfsacrifice; that the pre-war men of their corresponding age were spiritually better armed, more intellectually receptive than they are. Put bluntly, that the prewar men had more guts: were more determined in whatever they undertook. Perhaps post-war zeurosis explains it; perhaps not. The post-war men excuse their inaction, their lethargy and light-hearted indifference by declaring themselves realists and dis-