The early part of
1920 was a "queer time." People had become, I imagine, pretty well
accustomed to realizing that those two wonderful hours of Armistice day
had not ushered in the millennium any more than those first marvellous
moments of the Russian revolution produced it.
Every one has always hoped for the millennium, but the trouble since
the days of Adam and Eve has always been that people have such
different ideas as to what exactly that millennium shall be. The plain
facts of the matter simply were that during 1919 and 1920 the world
changed from a war of nations to a war of classes, that inevitable
change that history has always shown follows on great wars.
As no one ever reads history, it was natural enough that there should
be a great deal of disappointment and a great deal of astonishment. Men
at the head of affairs who ought to have known better cried aloud, "How
ungrateful these people are, after all we've done for them!" and the
people underneath shouted that everything had been muddled and spoiled
and that they would have done much better had they been at the head of
affairs, an assertion for which there was no sort of justification.
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