CRUMBLING    HERITAGE	299
war they were far nearer, though they did not know it, to the
vanished England of 1840 or even 1740 than to the laissez-faire
industrial society of 1914, The encrustations of a hundred years
of urban development had fallen from them, shed on the dusty,
bullet-swept downs above Contalmaison or in the blood and mud
of the Salient, leaving their souls naked as they had inherited
them from their remote forebears. Bereft by the pitiless tempest
of war of almost everything they had known in their brief,
stunted city lives, their desires and needs were unconsciously
dictated by their country's forgotten tradition. Put to the test
the slum boy, made man by ordeal of battle, had acquired an
atavistic memory of the things he had lost.
He wanted a home he could call his own, with perhaps a
garden for vegetables and flowers, a regular job of work in which
he could take pleasure and pride, security in his livelihood and
the self-respect that comes from status and a fixed place in society.
It was not a very exacting ambition, and by the universal acclama-
tion of the nation he had deserved it. He had even been promised
it by the politicians. There was nobody who wanted to deny
it him.
Amid a wild delirium of hooters, squeakers, and flag-wagging
men and girls on car-roofs, the nation shut off steam. No more
digging potatoes for victory in dreary allotments beside the gas-
works, no more going out on Special Constable's duty on cold
winter nights: good-bye, reflected business England, to all that.
The hour had come for every man to help himself and in his
leisure to enjoy the good time to which his patriotic efforts had
entitled him. For the British were not merely a profit-seeking
people: they were an enjoying people. Golf, cricket, seaside
holidays, sunny June afternoons on the river or at the wheel
were the prizes which those able to awarded themselves.
Even in the armies overseas, after a slight pause, the same
thing happened. The war was over: the goal was reached.
There was no point in men who were not professional soldiers
remaining soldiers any longer. The only thing to do was to get
absorbed in civilian employment as quickly as possible. Self-
sacrifice, devotion to the corporate ideal, esprit de corps, were no
longer needed: dreams must wait Within a few weeks the
amateur soldier had only one thought: to get "demobbed^17 and
back to clean sheets—if he had them—warm wife and the familiar
sights of Blighty. A few old soldiers, cynical about politicians*