Forster argues that one should invest in personal relationships: "one must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life".
He goes on to explain: Such a choice may scandalize the modern reader, and he may stretch out his patriotic hand to the telephone at once and ring up the police.
Dante places Brutus and Cassius in the lowest circle of Hell because they had chosen to betray their friend Julius Caesar rather than their country Rome.Forster cautiously welcomes democracy for two reasons: Thus, he calls for "two cheers for democracy" (also the title of the book which contains his essay) but argues that this is "quite enough" and that "there is no occasion to give three."
For Forster it is a tragedy that no way has been found to transmit private decencies into public life: The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink; the nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events restrained by taboos.
It is a humiliating outlook—though the greater the darkness, the brighter shine the little lights, reassuring one another, signalling: "Well, at all events, I'm still here.