Westward the course of empire: America rising in Parade's End

Following on yesterday's post, Ford Madox Ford in the 4th and final volume of Parade's End does begin to examine the issue class privilege - mainly through the point of view of Mark Tietjens who has Iago-like (as he notes, he also misattributes an to Othello a quote from Iago - FMF's error, or his character's?) vowed "never to speak word more" and who begins to ponder his own position in the English class structure - he's of the landed gentry and he feels in some condescending way an obligation to keep the estate running to support the tenant farmers and so - wonder how they might feel about this? - but now he's physically and mentally unable to run the estate - so who are the heirs? He notes that three older siblings (one a sister) died in the war (WWI) - the father committed suicide, and that leaves everything to the oldest surviving child - but he can't handle it - and - the great dilemma - younger brother, Christopher T., the main figure in the three preceding volumes, doesn't want it. We have to give some props to CT here - he doesn't just talk the talk, so to speak - he has really turned his back on potential class privilege - taken up w/ the impoverished though highly educated Valentine Wannop, even while still married (he's such a moralist - won't divorce as he believes it's improper, either morally or perhaps socially, particular when there's a child involved - although I think all readers are surprised to at last meet his son in vol. 4 and find him to be a college-aged kid), and more important he's actually trying to earn a living in the antiques trade rather than just expect that wealth and privilege is due to him by birth. Of course Mark is very scornful of CT's choice - but the war seems to have changed CT in ways that aren't really overtly expressed: the camaraderie w/ men of a different class, the sense of the horrors or war and the sudden, randomness of death; also, he seems to have a sense that westward the course of empire makes its way: America is a rising empire, and is picking up the pieces of the British empire, shattered in the ruins of the war. It's no accident that he makes his money selling to Americans, and that Mark T survives on the estate by renting to an American woman.