Chapter III

Again, you have to get away from the illusion that you can live a new life and still keep on living the old life. Everybody, as has somewhere been stated, possesses twenty-four hours in each day. Everybody occupies every one of his twenty-four hours. You do, though you may think you don’t. If you do not occupy them in labour then you occupy them in idleness; if not in usefulness, then in futility. Now idleness and futility are much more difficult to expel from hours which they have appropriated than labour and usefulness are difficult to expel. But if war-work is brought in, something will have to be expelled. Habits of labour and usefulness are sometimes hard enough to change; habits of idleness and futility are still harder. If you were previously spending your afternoons in giving and accepting elaborate afternoon teas, you will have more trouble in devoting your afternoons to war-work than if you had been spending them, for example, in the pursuit of knowledge. It is child’s play to abandon the pursuit of knowledge; no moral stamina is required; but to give up the exciting sociabilities of afternoon tea is a tremendous feat. So much so, that if you are a votary of this indigestive practice, you will infallibly endeavour to persuade yourself at first: ‘I can manage the two--war-work and afternoon teas as well. I can fit them in.’

You cannot fit them in--at any rate successfully. The essence of war-work is that it may not be fitted in. If it does not mean sacrifice, it means naught. Sacrifice is giving something for nothing. You cannot give something and yet stick to it. Certain persons are apt to buy an article to give away, and then are so pleased with the article that they decide to keep it for themselves. They thus obtain for a period the sensation of benevolence without any ultimate corresponding sacrifice. This is the nearest approach, that I know of, to giving something and yet sticking to it; but it has no relation whatever to war-work.

Axiom: If a tea-cup is full you cannot pour anything into it until you have poured something out.