§ 13

It is dangerous to gamble with instinct. It is impossible to wholly destroy man’s instinct, which is essentially as well as hereditarily opposed to the artificial life of Industrialism. He is an outdoor animal, he scratches the earth instinctively. It may be through ignorance, but so it is; he will stick a dead shrub in the ground, thinking it will grow. Kill Agriculture and in its place erect Industrialism, and you have killed all that is best, indeed all that really matters in the human race!

Before the war what were called civilised countries, our own included, had reached a point of artificial living as disastrous to them as it had been to Rome and Byzantium in their decadence. We, the English, were growing idle, neglecting agriculture, buying from foreign markets instead of creating our own. We were ceasing to be a productive nation. Whatever we could borrow we borrowed. We propped up Germany, who grew rich out of our lack of foresight and imagination. Ideals were laughed at and Plutus was the god worshipped; never mind how wealth was gotten or spent, wealth was all in all. Education, notwithstanding half-hearted and ill-digested Bills passed through Parliament, was neglected save in so far as it might be money-providing. It is out of such a degenerating state of things that we must be dragged if we cannot be drawn. Artificial life as made by Industrialism must be rectified if England is to make intellectual progress and take again the honourable and respected place she held. What are we making to show to generations to come? Nothing as compared to what the past has left for us! A few iron and steel bridges which time will destroy, a few exceedingly hideous railway stations, a great many railway tracks, a vast amount of “rolling stock,” which will presently be of the value of scrap iron.

Herds of motor cars and new flights of aeroplanes; monstrous ironclads which are no sooner completed than they become out of date; a partial and growing destruction of agriculture; and, in the meantime, necessary expenses of even a rigid economist are trebled, if not more, and wages rise to a point where it seems unlikely that resources will be able to meet them, profiteering by tradesmen has become the habit. If this be so, instead of leaving on our tracks a well-organised road, we shall leave debts and a desert. Shall England be turned into an ash heap? If so, the reason for doing so must be better explained than hitherto.