nd 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
considerable optimism to profound depression. I have met and talked to
quite a number of young men in khaki--ex-engineers, ex-lawyers,
ex-schoolmasters, ex-business men of all sorts--and the net result of
these interviews has been a buoyant belief that there is in Great
Britain the pluck, the will, the intelligence to do anything, however
arduous and difficult, in the way of national reconstruction. And on the
other hand there is a certain stretch of road between Dunmow and
Coggeshall....

That stretch of road is continually jarring with my optimistic
thoughts. It is a strongly pro-German piece of road. It supports
allegations against Great Britain, as, for instance, that the British
are quite unfit to control their own affairs, let alone those of an
empire; that they are an incompetent people, a pig-headedly stupid
people, a wasteful people, a people incapable of realising that a man
who tills his field badly is a traitor and a weakness to his country....

Let me place the case of this high road through Braintree (Bocking
intervening) before the reader. It is, you will say perhaps, very small
beer. But a straw shows the way the wind blows. It is a trivial matter
of road metal, mud, and water-pipes, but it is also diagnostic of the
essential difficulties in the way of the smooth and rapid reconstruction
of Great Britain--and very probably of the reconstruction of all
Europe--after the war. The Braintree high road, I will confess, becomes
at times an image of the world for me. It is a poor,