social strata may be very fully aware of the intensity of class feeling and how complete a substitute for national feeling it affords at the upper end of the social scale, just as those in the upper strata may be very much alive to the class bitterness of their inferiors; but it is difficult for both to believe how complete are segregation and its consequences throughout the whole social gamut.
It is to this state of society that the return from the relative unity of war must be. The few conventional restraints upon the extremity of class feeling that were in any kind of activity before the war have been very greatly weakened. Change has become familiar, violence has been glorified in theory and shown to be effective in practice, the prestige of age has been undermined, and the sanctity of established things defied.
It would, indeed, seem that to re-establish a society based solely on class segregation, and relying upon the maintenance by it of a state of equilibrium, will be a matter of some difficulty, and it will probably be a mistake to depend altogether on fatigue, on the relaxation of feeling, and on the celebration of victory as stabilizing forces.