I did not find, at Coventry at least, that the
bogeys of compulsion, conscription or fascism were very effective. On the contrary, there are countless men and women who realise that conscription has great social value and who resent the thought that the unselfish should be sacrificed while the se:fish are immune. I found also that there is a real, an under- stood, and a quite dynamic conviction that democracy should show to the totalitarians that voluntary energy can be as serious as disciplined obedience. It is not the selfishness of the country which one has to combat, but its incurable optimism. Those who go against the wishful thinking of the electorate are certain to lose votes. I returned that night to Euston with a drab thought slumbering in my mind. " Why is it," I thought, " that the British people, in losing their idealism, have also lost their sense of reality? "
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