Excerpt from A Younger Son: His Recollections and Opinions in Middle Age

This is not a war-book, but it has Sprung out of the war, many of its earlier scenes and experiences having been recalled and dwelt on in the course of some thousands Of miles of travel round the military fronts and munition bases, from 1916 to 1919. Often in the evenings, after an active day, I found myself trying to recall the life especially in the villages and woods and farms where my early years were spent; with its whimsical, affec tionate figures, which touched me like the faded vignettes in an old album. The deeper back I glanced the more excellent those figures and their environment appeared to me. That may have been somewhat an effect of reaction from the tremendous drama I had been moving in during the day. Still, I feel that some of the country things really were wholesomer in, say, the 'seventies and early 'eighties than in 1914 or in 1919. The social life was sounder, I think, then; more natural. There was not the same ignoble scramble for money and Show. Some of the old families were rather proud, and many of the villagers more dependent and poorer than to-day. Yet, there was something worth styling a social system in the countryside of that time. There were county families. There was a tradition. There was vigour. They were followed by week-enders; latterly, by the brazen traffic in land, with the poor who depend on it, as a mere personal chattel - by the evil spirit, too often, of It's mine, I shall jolly well do what I like with it. That was a deplorable falling off.

Everything, during the last few years I have observed in war and working scenes, and thought over, tells me beyond doubt that there is to be a stark Change in the English social system all round, alike in country, and City, and industrial centre. It will overwhelm a great deal Of the selfish and narrow. I view that with entire satisfaction and hope. I feel we have a noble chance Of emerging from the ordeal a fresher and safer people than we were in 1914. But there are features, in the English country life at least, which I Should wish to save. I should like to conserve in the main what is left of the old family tradition, and of the sweetness and light of the two old Universities, Oxford and Cambridge. True, there is not much of the Old family tradition left. But it will be a pity if what still lingers bravely is swept away in the inundation. The tradition of the Wiltshire Longs.

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