There might still be a few
Englishmen, but they would have to look about for somewhere to live.
Serbia would be a good place; it has made no peace-treaty with Germany.
We are profoundly at one; and are divided only by illusions, which the
press, in times past, has done much to keep alive. One of these
illusions is the illusion of party. I have never been behind the scenes,
among the creaking machinery, but my impression, as a spectator, is that
parties in England are made very much as you pick up sides for a game. I
have observed that they are all conservative. The affections are
conservative; every one has a liking for his old habits and his old
associates. There is something comic in a well-nourished rich man who
believes that he is a bold reformer and a destructive thinker. For real
clotted reactionary sentiment I know nothing to match the table-talk of
any aged parliamentary Radical. When we get a Labour Government, it will
be patriotic, prejudiced, opposed to all innovation, superstitiously
reverential of the past, sticky and, probably, tyrannical.
The party illusion has been much weakened by the War, and those who
still repeat the old catch-words are very near to lunacy.
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