In Germany, where Junker and Court are most influential and brutal,
there is a larger and sounder and broader tradition of practical
efficiency, a modernised legal profession, and a more widely diffused
scientific imagination.

How far in each country will imagination triumph over tradition and
individualism? How far does the practical bankruptcy of Western
civilisation mean a revolutionary smash-up, and a phase that may last
for centuries, of disorder and more and more futile conflict? And how
far does it mean a reconstruction of human society, within a few score
of years, upon sounder and happier lines? Must that reconstruction be
preceded by a revolution in all or any of the countries?

To what extent can the world produce the imagination it needs? That, so
far, is the most fundamental question to which our prophetic
explorations have brought us.




IV. BRAINTREE, BOCKING, AND THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD


Will the war be followed by a period of great distress, social disorder
and a revolution in Europe, or shall we pull through the crisis without
violent disaster? May we even hope that Great Britain will step straight
out of the war into a phase of restored and increasing welfare?

Like most people, I have been trying to form some sort of answer to this
question. My state of mind in the last few months has varied from a