Page:The War and the Future (Masefield, 1918).djvu/20

8 voice of Carlyle, who saw no hope anywhere but in the drill sergeant, and the voice of Ruskin, who saw no hope anywhere but in the coming back of St. George.

There was only one question to those men, the-condition-of-England question. Thinking men might justly be proud of certain achievements in those years, many things were invented, many things were thought out, great books were written, and the world was charted and navigated and exploited, but there was no peace in that England for the men with souls to be saved.

The machine worked, it did great things, men could point to its results, but the great men, the seeing men, were unanimous that England was not a merry England for rich or poor. It was still a land where there was kindness and manliness and a love of life and sport and country. But with this, there was an apathy to things which were vital and kindling. The nation was drunken, and that was looked on with apathy, the nation had ceased to care, as it once had cared, with a most noble, intense, and passionate pride, for things of beauty and of style, in life, and art and music and the means of living. And this deadness and apathy and