We have a long way to go and many storms to weather before we reach
that state, if, by any grace that is in us, and above us, we reach it.
For there are disease and insanity in our present state, due to the
travail of the war and the education of the war. The daily newspapers
for many months have been filled with the record of dreadful crimes,
of violence and passion. Most of them have been done by soldiers or
ex-soldiers. The attack on the police station at Epsom, the
destruction of the town hall at Luton, revealed a brutality of
passion, a murderous instinct, which have been manifested again and
again in other riots and street rows and solitary crimes. Those last
are the worst because they are not inspired by a sense of injustice,
however false, or any mob passion, but by homicidal mania and secret
lust. The many murders of young women, the outrages upon little girls,
the violent robberies that have happened since the demobilizing of the
armies have appalled decent--minded people.
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