The most urgent necessity will be to get back the vast moiety of the
population that has been engaged either in military service or the
making of munitions to productive work, to the production of food and
necessary things, and to the restoration of that export trade which, in
the case of Great Britain at least, now that her overseas investments
have been set off by overseas war debts, is essential to the food
supply. There will be coming back into civil life, not merely thousands,
but millions of men who have been withdrawn from it. They will feel that
they have deserved well of their country. They will have had their
imaginations greatly quickened by being taken away from the homes and
habits to which they were accustomed. They will have been well fed and
inured to arms, to danger, and the chances of death. They will have no
illusions about the conduct of the war by the governing classes, or the
worshipful heroism of peers and princes. They will know just how easy is
courage, and how hard is hardship, and the utter impossibility of doing
well in war or peace under the orders of detected fools.

This vast body will constitute a very stimulating congregation of
spectators in any attempt on the part of landlord, lawyer and investor
to resume the old political mystery dance, in which rents are to be sent
up and wages down, while the old feuds of Wales and Ireland, ancient
theological and sectarian jealousies and babyish loyalties, and so forth
are to be waved in the eyes of the no longer fascinated realist.

"Meanwhile," they will say, with a stiff impatience unusual in their
class, "about _us_?" ...

Here are the makings of internal conflict in every European country. In
Russia the landlord and lawyer, in France the landlord, are perhaps of
less account, and in France the investor is more universal and jealous.