Motivations

Wednesday, January 9th., Comarques, Thorpe-le-Soken.

Still working away on "The Pretty Lady". Another chapter on Monday. More today. 

Too much smoking, ostensibly to provide Richard with tobacco ash for chemical experiments. I wonder how much tobacco I have smoked in my lifetime? And how much more money I would have now if I hadn't started? I suppose I am addicted to the stuff. Wonder if I could give it up if I put my mind to it? Now that would be an interesting experiment!

I have been reading in Hammond's "Town Labourer". There is undoubtedly a pleasure in reading recitals of horrible injustice and tyranny. I didn't like reading the child-labour chapter. It exceeded the limits in its physicalness. I wish I had read it before I wrote the child-chapter in "Clayhanger" to which the Hammonds refer. I could have made that chapter even more appalling than it is. But at that date probably all the materials had not been collected, as the Hammonds have since collected them. And the publishers would probably have objected on the grounds of impact on sales. Strange though this business of the attraction of cruelty. Why are people so fascinated by descriptions of torture and such like? There has been a fair amount of that sort of thing during this war. It must be conceded I think that the propensity to inflict harm on others gratuitously is not far below the surface in many men; I don't know about women - probably not. I suppose it is about power and the desire to assert our own status over others, but I don't think that can be a sufficient answer.

Wilson, the American President, has made a speech to Congress about war aims and from what I read he makes good sense. There has been a noticeable absence of clear aims on our part it seems to me. That was a point Sassoon made in his now notorious statement. Wilson wants to avoid punitive measures against Germany when the war ends, and aims to turn German opinion against their government. Very sensible and likely to be well-received by the liberal element here. But all I hear from most people in London is about punishment of Germany. They don't use the word revenge, but that is what they mean.