With this has come, inevitably, the loss of sense of responsibility. So long as I can enjoy myself and get my own way, why should I vex myself with the outworn question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" No! That has gone into the limbo of effete superstition.
And further, loss of the sense of proportion. There are some to whom it causes no moral shock to wear a dress costing a hundred guineas, while a vast number of seamstresses, shirtmakers, artificial flower makers, boot-closers, and the like, are working seventy hours for 5s. to 8s. a week. One mantle-presser, in Dalston, receives 1/2_d._ per mantle; she is most respectable, has four children, and earns from 5_s._ 6_d._ to 7_s._ a week!
We do not grumble at the hundred guineas being spent upon the dress, or a thousand guineas even, if the money went in due proportion all round to supply the _full living wage to each one engaged in its production_: and if the wearer interested herself keenly in social problems, and used her means wisely and well to afford relief where it was needed. This, alas! does not happen when the sense of proportion is lacking.
Take another case--alas! a fearfully common one. Men and women will gamble recklessly at Bridge, lose heavily, pay up, at whatever cost, because it is _a debt of honour_. All the while a hard-pressed tailor, a famished dressmaker and her children are kept out of their money, because it is only _a debt of commerce_. Could there be a more ghastly parody on the word honour?
Yet once more--the lack of seriousness. By seriousness we do not mean gloominess, nor withdrawal from society, or anything of the kind. We mean the flippant attitude towards life, the lack of serious, sustained interest in literature, in music, in art, in the legitimate drama; witness the theatres being turned into cinema shows, and the terrible paucity of sound, strong plays. Everything must be scrappy, light, and if a little (or more than a little) risky, so much the better.
We do not for a moment say that these evils are universal, God forbid, but none can deny that they have eaten deep into a large part of society, using the word in its broadest, not in its technical sense.
The soul of the nation needed discipline, and it has come suddenly, sharply, but, who shall dare to say, not mercifully?