In the Victorian trilogy, Dr. Wingfield – Stratford presented the history of the eighty years preceding the war as a vast tragedy working inevitably to a climax in the partial suicide of civilization. In this book, we see the unfolding of an even vaster drama in which we ourselves are the actors, and on whose last act the curtain mat even now be rising.
The period dealt with is from 1918 to the general strike of 1926. It opens with delirious exaltation at a victory that seemed complete beyond the victor’s wildest dreams. But already the tragic folly of those who held the destinies of civilization in their hands had sown the seeds of chaos. A new era of prosperity was proclaimed, but it had no foundation whatsoever in reality. The major problems bequeathed by the war have been and are still being evaded, not solved. Only after the collapse of the crazy system of debts paid by advances from the creditor, of treaties which are made to be broken, and of competitive efforts to strangle trade instead of to promote it, to the forces destined to make or mar the new age begin to reveal themselves.
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