“This is a pause—just a heaven-sent pause—while we get over the first shock and start to collect ourselves, but it’s no more than a pause. Later we’ll have to plow; still later we’ll have to learn how to make plowshares; later than that we’ll have to learn how to smelt the iron to make the shares. What we are on now is a road that will take us back and back and back until we can—if we can—make good all that we wear out. Not until then shall we be able to stop ourselves on the trail that’s leading down to savagery. But once we can do that, then maybe we’ll begin to crawl slowly up again.”
