others say that the goose is not indispensable, and that it doesn't matter whether it dies or not.

The ratio of reward that will be just to the brain-worker and that will form an incentive to his endeavour may seem to us a point of difference too minute to justify the hurling of the smallest bomb. Our own problems are so infinitely complicated by the deep lines of ancient class distinction, by the habits and traditions of a society that knows better how to play than how to work. Yet on the whole the danger of social disruption seems greater in America than in England. We are always ready for the inevitable compromise, perhaps because we do not feel so strongly, and because we have from old experience no very great belief either that the present system is so bad as it is painted, or that any new one will produce the millennium. The classes may be very distinct in England, but they understand each other well, and the traditions that bind them together are stronger than the problems that divide them. But in the American melting-pot the temperature is always at boiling-point. The melting-pot is in reality too intimate a simile for so volcanic a social experiment. The energy and vitality of a people that has no social or political memories naturally tends to violent explosions. Both rich and poor are sure that they are rightsure with a certainty and with an uncompro

mising determination that the English have never felt, and that their easy-going, sceptical temperament is incapable of feeling. Super.ficially the rich in America have a better case than they have in England. They are more useful, more efficient, and they appear to fill a necessary function in the scheme of modern civilization. But they are not so human or so kindly. They live lives far more selfish and detached. And they look upon the poor, not as those whom we have always with us, but merely as those who have failed. Hence the hatred they excite is far deeper than it is with us. Human beings do not relish the feeling that it is their own stupidity that has kept them poor, and they take refuge in the belief that the rich man must have cheated, that certain qualities of trickery and cunning are the foundations of prosperity. And indeed it may be so. But it is curious to find that the more the rich man justifies his existence by his industry the more intolerable he becomes to the poor.

III

As Hamlet noticed, there is something very discouraging about mankind. The world is quite satisfactory as long as you merely live in it and enjoy yourself when you can. But if you have ideas about it, if you are born to set

it right as Mr. Wells is, if you can't bear it to be untidy, to be permanently muddled and immoral, then Job himself could more easily be comforted. I do not object so much to the obtuseness of my companions in this battered caravanserai; that defect can in some moods be twisted into a convenient and flattering foil to my own superior vision. And in any case, in more modest moments, it is natural that they should not know why we are here and where we are going or ought to go, since even I myself have no idea what is the answer to these conundrums. No, it is not their obtuseness, it is their slackness, their lack of interest in general questions, their inability to maintain their intermittent enthusiasms that drives one to despair. It is true that the intellectuals are often wrong, but the faith, the vital energy that moves them would, if all men could be fashioned so, solve most of the problems that trouble these tiresome times. It is natural that people should be selfish, but they seem to be unable even to harness their own selfishness for any useful purpose, and the powerful force of enlightened self-interest is lost because it is never sustained for any length of time.

It is possible that democracy may be a failure. Certainly it is not a final form. In feudal times there were weak kings. Men who lacked energy, determination, and force of character,

men who loved pleasure and wasted their vitality on wine and women and song, sat doggedly on their thrones and hung up the progress of mankind. But there were also strong kings, who hustled and struggled and got things done. Democracy, on the other hand, is always weak. Its essence is the idea of majority" rule, and the majority of mankind, although just as likely to be right as wrong in their beliefs and desires, are always certain to be indifferent and unstable. It is not necessary to be Aristotle to know that the first axiom of Politics is that those who have the power must do the governing themselves, and not be led by the nose. Yet Philip II in the grip of the Inquisition and Louis XV in the arms of Madame de Pompadour were free agents compared with the secret bondage in which Democracy is fettered. Like any dissipated king, the people toy with their mistresses and forget the duties of their high estate; but those who lead them by the nose have deteriorated in type, from Cardinal Richelieu to Mr. Bottomley. The feeble king, too, was aware that he had delegated his authority into hands stronger than his own. But the Democracy is merely deceived; it has the illusion of authority, and is not conscious of the secret cunning of the usurper.

There is, of course, nothing to be said for the discarded monarchical form of Government.

It is a sign of helpless pessimism to be sentimental about the past, to lay inordinate stress upon the merits of dead ideas and to forget the faults that made them obsolete. But the past throws up just as dangerous a mirage before the eyes of those who hate it as of those who love it, and much of the blind adoration of the present is derived from too constantly making a favourable comparison with the past. Those who have fought for Democracy, who are accustomed to look back to the traditional forms of thought as the enemies of their cause, cannot be blamed for their blind belief in the purity of what they have obtained. But this setting up of our attained ambitions as if they were the ark of the covenant is a form of vanity which delays the progress of mankind. We have to make up our minds that though whatever we have done may be good and a thousand times worth doing, it is only a step forward leading to the next, and that any attempt of ours to prove it the summit of the mountain will be but a hindrance to those that climb.

The Greek philosophers placed Politics on the same plane as Ethics. Surely that sentence alone should be enough to rouse our Democracy from its lethargic optimism. optimism. Granted that Spanish priests and Roman priests did in the past organize the ritual of belief into a corrupt system that made necessary the Reformation,