So that this war involves, in this as in so many matters, no fundamental set-back, no reversals nor restorations.  At the most it will but realise things already imagined, release things latent.  The nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented modification of social relationships; but great as these changes were, they were trivial in comparison with the changes in religious thought and the criticism of moral ideals.  Hell was the basis of religious thinking in A.D. 1800, and the hangman was at the back of the law; in 1900 both Hell and the hangman seemed on the verge of extinction.  The creative impulse was everywhere replacing fear and compulsion in human motives.  The opening decade of the twentieth century was a period of unprecedented abundance in everything necessary to human life, of vast accumulated resources, of leisure and release.  It was also, because of that and because of the changed social and religious spirit, a period of great social disorganisation and confused impulses.

We British can already look back to the opening half of 1914 as to an age gone for ever.  Except that we were all alive then and can remember, it has become now almost as remote, almost as “historical,” as the days before the French Revolution.  Our days, our methods and reactions, are already so different.  The greater part of the freedom of movement, the travel and going to and fro, the leisure, the plenty and carelessness, that distinguished early twentieth century life from early nineteenth century life, has disappeared.  Most men are under military discipline, and every household economises.  The whole British people has been brought up against such elementary realities of need, danger, and restraint as it never realised before.  We discover that we had been living like Olympians in regard to worldly affairs, we had been irresponsibles, amateurs.  Much of that fatness of life, the wrappings and trimmings of our life, has been stripped off altogether.  That has not altered the bones of life; it has only made them plainer; but it has astonished us as much as if looking into a looking-glass one suddenly found oneself a skeleton.  Or a diagram.

What was going on before this war in the relations of men and women is going on still, with more rapidity perhaps, and certainly with more thoroughness.  The war is accentuating, developing, defining.  Previously our discussions and poses and movements had merely the air of seeking to accentuate and define.  What was apparently being brought about by discursive efforts, and in a mighty controversy and confusion, is coming about now as a matter of course.