I believe a newer and
greater Britain will arise out of the ashes of the old. There will be
many problems between capital and labor to work out; there must be a
redistribution of land; people will have to work much harder than they
have ever had to before. But to five millions of men in the army of
the British Empire a man has become a man once more. When men stand
side by side in the trenches, while the German shells play upon them,
the men of wealth, or education, or title realize that a shell does
not discriminate between him and the workman by his side. The soldier
knows that the only thing that counts is whether a man is really a
man; when he has stood before his maker for weeks at a time in the
front line, not knowing when his hour would strike, he realizes that
there are few things in life that really count. He is going to take
that point of view back with him into civilian life and he is going to
put it into practice. He will have no fear of anybody. He will want to
make a comfortable living but he will not, at least for years to come,
adopt the old ideas that money or so-called position really count.
Because he knows what really does count; he has had the greatest
experiences and has felt the most tremendous excitement that can come
to a man in life and a great deal of what would have appealed to him
before the war no longer moves him.
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