melodramatic about it. So much is left out of
history and biography which would spoil the ef-
fect. The anti-climax is almost always omitted.

Perhaps that is the reason why Arnold Ben-
nett's description of the siege of Paris in "The
Old Wives' Tale" is so disconcerting to many
people. It is hard to believe that daily life con-
tinues with its stretches of boredom and its per-
sonal interests even while the enemy is bombard-
ing a city. How much more difficult is it to
imagine a revolution that is to come -- to space it
properly through a long period of time, to con-
ceive what it will be like to the people who live
through it. Almost all social prediction is catas-
trophic and absurdly simplified. Even those who
talk of the slow "evolution" of society are likely
to think of it as a series of definite changes easily
marked and well known to everybody. It is what
Bernard Shaw calls the reformer's habit of mis-
taking his private emotions for a public move-
ment.

Even though the next century is full of dramatic
episodes -- the collapse of governments and labor
wars -- these events will be to the social revolu-
tion what the smashing of machines in Lancashire
was to the industrial revolution. The reality that
is worthy of attention is a change in the very tex-

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