Either the disaster has
not been vast enough yet or it has not been swift enough to inflict the
necessary moral shock and achieve the necessary moral revulsion. Just as
the world of 1913 was used to an increasing prosperity and thought that
increase would go on for ever, so now it would seem the world is growing
accustomed to a steady glide towards social disintegration, and thinks
that that too can go on continually and never come to a final bump.
So soon do use and wont establish themselves, and the most flaming and
thunderous of lessons pale into disregard.
The question whether a Leblanc is still possible, the question whether
it is still possible to bring about an outbreak of creative sanity in
mankind, to avert this steady glide to destruction, is now one of the
most urgent in the world. It is clear that the writer is temperamentally
disposed to hope that there is such a possibility. But he has to
confess that he sees few signs of any such breadth of understanding and
steadfastness of will as an effectual effort to turn the rush of human
affairs demands. The inertia of dead ideas and old institutions carries
us on towards the rapids. Only in one direction is there any plain
recognition of the idea of a human commonweal as something overriding
any national and patriotic consideration, and that is in the working
class movement throughout the world.
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