The Daily News. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1916. A CHANGE IN ENGLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 October 1916, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1916. A CHANGE IN ENGLAND.

During the last two months a charge has come over the people of this country so noteworthy, and yet so silent and indefinable as to deserve most serious attention; for no outside observer couid discover it for himself from our newspapers, nor could lie easily interpret it from the external demeanour of the population in street or train or office. It is a change of which most men and women are aware within themselves, and of which, if they are observant and sensitive, they are conscious also in those around them, but which few care to aoKnowledge, still less to analyse, for to do so would stir the depths, and tljat the Englishman dislikes. This silent revolution is the reaction upon Britain of the great advance. These illuminating words appear in the "Round Table" in its September issue. "The greateit revolutions in this country have always been silent revolutions," it says. 'AVe have always realised that .outward changes art of no avail unless men's minds have been prepared beforehand to profit by them. We know that new social elasses cannot he created in a moment to undertake the new task? which may be ready for them. We have always believed in progress as a broadening down from precedent to precedent, and- attempted to make ready the workmen before summoning them out to til- 1 .harvest field." English histc/ry, is a record of startling achievements ushered in by silent revolutions. Without Wir.lif and the Lollards there would have be?n no Revolution; without Wesley and the Evangelicals no abolition of the slave trade and no Factory Acts; without the philosophic Radicals no colonial selfgovernment; without Thomas ArnoU and the public school system no Indian Civil Sen-ice; without the forty years' devoted labor of the elementary teacher no Kitchener's Army. It is the quie: work of the mind that makes revolutions possible. Without a change of outlook all external change is meaningless. But if the inner change has taken place, everything is possible, even tlie moving of mountains. And it is this silent inner change which is preparing the way for the new world after the war. It is a change which is strilngely compounded of tlie spirit of hope and the spirit of sacrifice —of the sense of coming victory and the ache of personal loss. We knnv now that the Empire and what is stands for are saved, that the old country will "carry on" for generations to come. But we know too that for tens of thousands life has henceforth lost much of its per sonal meaning, that there are gape in th> home circle which will never be filled, and that life will be-a lonely pilgrima'go to the end. Personal affections and ambitions havp made way for a bigger eaiue. Life seems widei and more impersonal. Our fellow-countrymen seem nearer to us., Rank and class seem to count for less. All have suffered alike ano all have served alike, and all havfc the same world to live in and to repair—■ a world that seems lonely at times beyond all bearing, yet is lit up with the flajne cf sacrifice and the undying memory of those who are gone. How can we best bear our testimony to the spirit in which they died? That is tl:<queition *vhich underlies the activity which has sprung up during the last few month; round the idea of reconstruction after the war. We have become more acutely conscious than ev«r before that there have been two Englands—of of England of tradition, of the public, of the Army, of Parliament, in later yoars of industry and finance, the other the Kngiar.d of individuals who have maintained their personal independence, but have had but a dependent share ( in the great historic past. Continues ti.e writer: "Many have discovered for tlie first time what every foreigner sees, and what every Briton from across the ocean knows, that the British are not a nation as the French are a nation, because the revolution of social equality has never yet been made. The si;eat mass of the

nation 9re fight'iig even now not for an England vvliich is themselves, but for an England which inherits noble traditions and tine qualities, but which is separated from them b) the impalpable barrier of caste. This separation which has added bitterness to e\ery political and economic dispute,.has been wonderfully oridged in the trenches. There i* a growing sense that it must be bridged at homo. Social superiority and pri*. ilege must give way to common humanity and common sacrifice. In future we must be a more united and a more equal people than we have been in the past.''