Most of them have realised reality through work; some
through starvation; some through damnation, or something damnably like it.
I think it is simply and seriously true that they are tired of their job.
As the general said in M. Rostand's play, "la fatigue!"
I do really believe that this is one of the ways in which God (don't get
flurried, Nature if you like) is unexpectedly avenged on things infamous
and unreasonable. And this method is that men's moral and even physical
tenacity actually give out under such a load of lies. They go on writing
their leading articles and their Parliamentary reports. They go on doing
it as a convict goes on picking oakum. But the point is not that we are
bored with their articles; the point is that they are. The work is done
worse because it is done weakly and without human enthusiasm. And it is
done weakly because of the truth we have told so many times in this book:
that it is not done for monarchy, for which men will die; or for democracy,
for which men will die; or even for aristocracy, for which many men have
died. It is done for a thing called Capitalism: which stands out quite
clearly in history in many curious ways. But the most curious thing about
it is that no man has loved it; and no man died for it.
THE AMNESTY FOR AGGRESSION
If there is to rise out of all this red ruin something like a republic of
justice, it is essential that our views should be real views; that is,
glimpses of lives and landscapes outside ourselves.
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