Even if the War shall have taught us nothing else, this it will have
taught us almost from its very outset: to mistrust all prophets,
whether of good or of evil. Pray stone me if I predict anything at
all. It may be that the War, and that remarkable by-product, the
Russian Revolution, will have so worked on the minds of Noblemen that
they will prefer to have not one footman in their service. Or it may
be that all those men who might be footmen will prefer to earn their
livelihood in other ways of life. It may even be that no more
parlourmaids and housemaids, even for very illustrious houses, will be
forthcoming. I do not profess to foresee. Perhaps things will go on
just as before. But remember: things were going on, even then. Suppose
that in the social organism generally, and in the attitude of servants
particularly, the decades after the War shall bring but a gradual
evolution of what was previously afoot. Even on this mild supposition
must it seem likely that some of us will live to look back on domestic
service, or at least on what we now mean by that term, as a curiosity
of past days.
You have to look rather far behind you for the time when `the servant
question,' as it is called, had not yet begun to arise. To find
servants collectively `knowing their place,' as the phrase (not is,
but) was, you have to look right back to the dawn of Queen Victoria's
reign.
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