The country was on the eve of war. He was to go
back through London to Surrey. His first feeling, he records, was one of
extreme relief that his days of 'hopeless battering at the underside
of civilisation' were at an end. Here was something definite to do,
something definitely provided for. But his relief was greatly modified
when he found that the mobilisation arrangements had been made
so hastily and carelessly that for nearly thirty-six hours at the
improvised depot at Epsom he got nothing either to eat or to drink but
a cup of cold water. The depot was absolutely unprovisioned, and no one
was free to leave it.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE LAST WAR
Section 1
Viewed from the standpoint of a sane and ambitious social order, it is
difficult to understand, and it would be tedious to follow, the motives
that plunged mankind into the war that fills the histories of the middle
decades of the twentieth century.
It must always be remembered that the political structure of the world
at that time was everywhere extraordinarily behind the collective
intelligence. That is the central fact of that history. For two hundred
years there had been no great changes in political or legal methods and
pretensions, the utmost change had been a certain shifting of boundaries
and slight readjustment of procedure, while in nearly every other aspect
of life there had been fundamental revolutions, gigantic releases, and
an enormous enlargement of scope and outlook.
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