The new spirit is still but poorly expressed, but it will find
expression. The war goes on, and we discuss this question of economic
reconstruction as though it was an issue that lay between the labour
that has stayed behind and the business men, for the most part old men
with old habits of mind, who have stayed behind.

The real life of Europe's future lies on neither side of that
opposition. The real life is mutely busy at present, saying little
because of the uproar of the guns, and not so much learning as casting
habits and shedding delusions. In the trenches there are workers who
have broken with the old slacking and sabotage, and there are
prospective leaders who have forgotten profit. The men between eighteen
and forty are far too busy in the blood and mud to make much showing
now, but to-morrow these men will be the nation.

When that third factor of the problem is brought in the outlook of the
horoscope improves. The spirit of the war may be counted upon to balance
and prevail against this spirit of individualism, this spirit of
suspicion and disloyalty, which I fear more than anything else in the
world.

I believe in the young France, young England, and young Russia this war
is making, and so I believe that every European country will struggle
along the path that this war has opened to a far more completely
organised State than has existed ever before. The Allies will become
State firms, as Germany was, indeed, already becoming before the war;
setting private profit aside in the common interest, handling
agriculture, transport, shipping, coal, the supply of metals, the
manufacture of a thousand staple articles, as national concerns.