In the time between World War I and World war II, the world wrestled with enormous questions - can Capitalism survive? Is Democracy desirable? How do we cope in a world that is filled with possibilites; a suddenly urban society where women wear short skirts and demand equal rights to pay and vote, where people are suddenly only a telephone call and a train ride away, where information in the shape of papers, pamphlets, books etc. are suddenly swelling to hitherto unknown proportions? 'Breathing', Beatrice Webb wrote in 1932, 'from infancy an up, an atmosphere of morbid sexuality and alcoholism, furtive larceny and unashamed mendacity [...] the average man is, mentally as well as physically, poisoned.'*
From our perspective, the world back then tends to look simpler. However, it's likely more because distance tends to blur out the things that didn't happen and so it seems like the choices that were made weren't actually choices but just the natural flow of events.
The world we see looking back, however, is not the world they saw looking forward. Or else, would anyone have dared hope for a brighter future in 1934?
(click the picture to be taken to a video of the PMs New Year's speech 1934)
HAPPIER DAYS AHEAD
*Overy, R. J.,
The morbid age: Britain and the crisis of civilization, Penguin, London, 2010[2009], p. 70
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