Just as men have mingled on the battlefield, women have mingled at home, understanding perhaps for the first time in our social history the view-point of classes other than their own, seeing the best in each other's lives and sharing anxieties and burdens as perhaps only women can. But if the good understanding was to be permanent it was essential that privilege should be laid aside. People can enjoy riches without a thought and suffer poverty without a murmur, but contrasts build barriers. It is the sense of sharp contrast that is the undoing of so many girls, that makes for so much bitterness among women. All too often the rich do not understand, the poor are painfully suspicious or self-conscious. There could not be any common meeting ground until all were rich or all were poor. It is not possible under existing social conditions--soon one hopes to be amended--for all to live in comfort. Thank God, it is at least possible for all to be poor.
Not by what we have, but by what we are, let us be judged, and for those who had great possessions there will be a certain satisfaction in the new conditions that money could not purchase.
Flattery, adulation, jealousy, envy, malice and all uncharitableness could be provoked by wealth even though it was wisely dispensed; gratitude was always hard to gain in the genuine form. Love, affection, simple unaffected candour, these were rarely vouchsafed to those whose material prosperity was considerable. It is intolerable that one should patronise or endure patronage, frank and simple relations cannot endure in an atmosphere of inequalities. In England the infection of snobbery was eating into our national life. A considerable section of the press caters for snobs and thrives in the catering. In the United States and in the British Dominions Overseas the state of the public mind is far healthier. It may be that our plight had come about through our insularity, by reason of our super-abundant national riches, by the force of our habit of despising the creator of national wealth and honouring only those who squander it. Whatever the cause the effect was ugly. War has taken drastic steps to abate the evil by depriving of their _locus standi_ those who stood for great possessions. They are poorer and better. We shall have a certain number of plutocrats in our midst; out of a war expenditure of four or five millions a day somebody must make money. But the money spinners will find that while the hand of the State will weigh heavily upon them, any lavish expenditure will be eyed askance by the moderate-minded men and women of all classes. The eyes of the majority are opened. Above all, English women of the leisured classes have deliberately laid aside many of the habits and indulgences to which their practice gave a sanction. This tendency is still in its infancy, but the tragedy of war has enforced and will continue to enforce it. All, or at least the greater part of Europe, after this war will be a house of mourning. Death leads the van of a procession in which Poverty brings up the rear. As in a flash the world that lived almost without a serious care two years ago sees its own real needs and duties and the terrible inadequacy of the means to fulfil and perform them.