And thus, indeed, it was that, to one at least of many thousands, was brought fully and bitterly the significance of that post-war period, of those treacherous, deceiving years that had glittered so bravely on the horizon, that had looked so warm and hospitable, that had promised so much and had brought so little.
1919 was the year of disillusion, not merely of a political disillusion, of disgust at broken faith and forgotten promises and personal treacheries, but of a profounder, subtler disenchantment, of an awakened sense of life’s deception.
We came back from the trenches, the prison camp, the parade ground, radiantly, unspeakably confident. We had looked forward for so long to peace. There had been times when we hardly thought that it would come, certainly not to us. It was like the city of Heaven--a dazzling, remote prospect. We had come to look on it as a tavern where we should rest after our journey; a huge fire would be blazing in the grate, barons of beef would be set before us, mine host would bring from his cellar his richest chambertin. But we had hardly defined the circumstance of our dream. We saw it with the heightened vision of strained and tired nerves as a land of limitless enchantment. And, when peace came, we settled down and waited for the good things to be set before us. And, of course, they were not set before us. And we had not the vitality to fetch them for ourselves; we were tired, not with the exhaustion that follows a day’s hard work, from which after sleep we awake the fitter, but with the exhaustion of dissipation, of a sleepless night. For too long we had been geared too high. The pressure had been maintained by the intoxication of war conditions. We were like tops that are models of poise and balance only as long as they retain their intensity of speed. The stimulation, the incentive had been removed suddenly. We were weak as a drug fiend who has been deprived of morphia; we became listless, lifeless, indifferent.
We have been described as a generation that has flung up the sponge; and the old men grumble about us in their clubs. “No social sense,” they say. “A generation that thinks of nothing except tennis and dancing. Poor stuff!” Perhaps: it may be we are the seed that has been flung on stony ground, that has sprung up quickly, without root in itself or sustenance. It may be that the hot sun has scorched and withered us. It may be. But the Victorians indulged in such an orgy of self-righteousness. They proclaimed so loudly that they were leaving the world better than they found it: and we know what manner of inheritance they handed down to us. It may be pardoned in us, I think, our indifference to politics, and the rights and wrongs of little nations.