. . .
It was only very slowly that he had come to realize the important
part played by economic and class hostilities in the disordering of
human affairs. This was a very natural result of his peculiar
social circumstances. Most people born to wealth and ease take the
established industrial system as the natural method in human
affairs; it is only very reluctantly and by real feats of sympathy
and disinterestedness that they can be brought to realize that it is
natural only in the sense that it has grown up and come about, and
necessary only because nobody is strong and clever enough to
rearrange it. Their experience of it is a satisfactory experience.
On the other hand, the better off one is, the wider is one's outlook
and the more alert one is to see the risks and dangers of
international dissensions. Travel and talk to foreigners open one's
eyes to aggressive possibilities; history and its warnings become
conceivable. It is in the nature of things that socialists and
labour parties should minimize international obligations and
necessities, and equally so that autocracies and aristocracies and
plutocracies should be negligent of and impatient about social
reform.
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