The war which seemed
such a definable catastrophe in 1914 was, after all, only the first loud
crack and smash of the collapse. The war is over and--nothing is over.
This peace is a farce, reconstruction an exploded phrase. The slide goes
on,--it goes, if anything, faster, without a sign of stopping. And all
our poor little adaptations! Which we have been elaborating and trusting
all our lives!... One after another they fail us. We are stripped....
We have to begin all over again.... I'm fifty-seven and I feel at times
nowadays like a chicken new hatched in a thunderstorm."
The doctor walked towards the bookcase and turned.
"Everybody is like that...it isn't--what are you going to do? It
isn't--what am I going to do? It's--what are we all going to do!... Lord!
How safe and established everything was in 1910, say. We talked of this
great war that was coming, but nobody thought it would come. We had been
born in peace, comparatively speaking; we had been brought up in peace.
There was talk of wars. There were wars--little wars--that altered
nothing material.... Consols used to be at 112 and you fed your
household on ten shillings a head a week. You could run over all Europe,
barring Turkey and Russia, without even a passport. You could get to
Italy in a day.
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