Page:England After War A Study.djvu/23



war is over, and in most of the victorious countries at least there is a feeling of relief that things are no worse. The catastrophe seemed so immense, the toll of life and treasure so terrible, the end so uncertain, that men looked to the close with the deepest foreboding. There was fear that this close would find all the nations so exhausted as to cause a general collapse of civilisation itself. Work and the impulse to work would cease. The demand for commodities would be unaccompanied by such reward as would excite supply. The very foundations of Society would vanish. Men would be found returning to the condition of a hungry mob, without hope or purpose, scrambling in the deepening darkness for the bare means of sustenance. And undoubtedly had it been possible for the war to continue for ten years instead of five, "this old Europe" would have perished in some such twilight of the gods. Peace came in time to save at least a portion of it. Bled white by the loss of the flower of the nation, oppressed by enormous indebtedness to foreign powers, and with profound disturbance in the minds of their surviving citizens, Britain and the Western nations are setting themselves to the re-establishment of such normal conditions as are possible after so great a calamity. In one the people are again cultivating the rich soil. In another the war itself has provided unexpected stimulus to production. In a third every workshop or factory is inundated with orders for its goods because it can pay its workers in