# Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction/Chapter 2

II
SOCIAL MOMENTUM
'To him that hath shall be given.'
In the year 1789 the lucid French People, in its brain-town of Paris, saw visions, generous visions—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. But presently French Idealism lost its hold on Reality, and drifted into the grip of Fate, in the person of Napoleon. With his military efficiency Napoleon restored order, but in doing so organised a French Power the very law of whose being was a denial of Liberty. The story of the great French Revolution and Empire has influenced all subsequent political thought; it has seemed a tragedy in the old Greek sense of a disaster predestined in the very character of Revolutionary Idealism.
When, therefore, in 1848, the peoples of Europe were again in a vision-seeing mood, their idealism was of a more complex nature. The principle of Nationality was added to that of Liberty, in the hope that liberty might be secured against the overreaching ​organiser by the independent spirit of nations. Unfortunately, in that year of revolutions, the good ship Idealism again dragged her anchor, and by and by was swept away by Fate, in the person of Bismarck. With his Prussian efficiency Bismarck perverted the new ideal of German Nationality, just as Napoleon had perverted the simpler French ideals of Liberty and Equality. The tragedy of National Idealism, which we have just seen consummated, was not, however, predestined in the disorder of Liberty, but in the materialism, commonly known as Kultur, of the organiser. The French tragedy was the simple tragedy of the breakdown of Idealism; but the German tragedy has, in truth, been the tragedy of the substituted Realism.
In 1917 the Democratic Nations of the whole Earth thought they had seen a great harbour light when the Russian Czardom fell and the American Republic came into the War. For the time being, at any rate, the Russian Revolution has gone the common revolutionary way, but we still put our hope in Universal Democracy. To the eighteenth-century ideal of Liberty, and the nineteenth-century ideal of Nationality, we have added our twentieth-century ideal of the League of Nations. If a third tragedy were to ensue, ​it would be on a vast scale, for democratic ideals are to-day the working creed of the greater part of humanity. The Germans, with their Real-Politik, their politics of reality—something other than merely practical politics—regard that disaster as being sooner or later inevitable. The War Lord and the Prussian military caste may have been fighting for the mere maintenance of their power, but large and intelligent sections of German society have acted under the persuasion of a political philosophy which was none the less sincerely held because we believed it to be wrong. In this War German anticipations have proved wrong in many regards, but that has been because we have made them so by a few wise principles of government, and by strenuous effort, notwithstanding our mistakes in policy. Our hardest test has yet to come. What degree of International Reconstruction is necessary if the world is long to remain a safe place for democracies? And in regard to the internal structure of those democracies, what conditions must be satisfied if we are to succeed in harnessing to the heavy plough of Social Reconstruction the ideals which have inspired heroism in this War? There can be no more momentous questions. Shall we ​succeed in soberly marrying our new Idealism to Reality?
Idealists are the salt of the Earth; without them to move us, society would soon stagnate and civilisation fade. Idealism has, however, been associated with two very different phases of temper. The older idealisms, such as Buddhism, Stoicism, and Mediæval Christianity, were based on self-denial; the Franciscan Friars vowed themselves to Chastity, Poverty, and Service. But modern democratic idealism, the idealism of the American and French Revolutions, is based on self-realisation. Its aim is that every human being shall live a full and self-respecting life. According to the preamble of the American Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal and endowed with the rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
These two tendencies of idealism have corresponded historically with two developments of reality. In older times the power of nature over man was still great. Hard reality put limits to his ambitions. In other words the world as a whole was poor, and resignation was the only general road to happiness. The few could, no doubt, obtain some scope in ​life, but only at the cost of the serfdom of the many. Even the so-called Democracy of Athens and the Platonic Utopia were based on domestic and industrial slavery. But the modern world is rich. In no small measure man now controls the forces of nature, and whole classes, formerly resigned to their fate, have become imbued with the idea that with a fairer division of wealth there should be a nearer approach to equality of opportunity.
This modern reality of human control over nature, apart from which democratic ideals would be futile, is not wholly due to the advance of scientific knowledge and invention. The greater control which man now wields is conditional, and not absolute like the control of nature over man by famine and pestilence. Human riches and comparative security are based to-day on the division and co-ordination of labour, and on the constant repair of the complicated plant which has replaced the simple tools of primitive society. In other words, the output of modern wealth is conditional on the maintenance of our social organisation and capital. Society is a 'going concern,' and no small part of our well-being may be compared with the intangible 'goodwill' of a business. The owner of a business depends on the habits of his ​customers no less than on the regular running of the machinery in his factory; both must be kept in repair, and when in repair they have the value of the 'going concern'; but should the business stop, they have merely a break-up value—the machinery becomes so much scrap metal, and the goodwill is reduced to the book debts.
Society reposes on the fact that man is a creature of habit. By interlocking the various habits of many men, society obtains a structure which may be compared with that of a running machine. Mrs. Bouncer was able to form a simple society for the occupation of a room, because Box slept by night and Cox by day, but her society was dislocated when one of her lodgers took a holiday, and for the nonce changed his habit. Let any one try to realise what would happen to himself if all those on whom he depends—the postmen, railwaymen, butchers, bakers, printers, and very many others—were suddenly to vary their settled routines; he will then begin to appreciate in how great a degree the power of modern man over nature is due to the fact that society is a 'going concern,' or, in the language of the engineer, has momentum. Stop the running long enough to throw men's habits out of gear with one another, and ​society would quickly run down to the simple reality of control by nature. Vast numbers would die in consequence.
Productive power, in short, is a far more important element of reality in relation to modern civilisation than is accumulated wealth. The total visible wealth of a civilised country, notwithstanding the antiquity of some of its treasures, is generally estimated as equal to the output of not more than seven or eight years. The significance of this statement does not lie in its precise accuracy, but in the rapid growth of its practical meaning for modern men, owing to their dependence on a machinery of production, mechanical and social, which in the past four or five generations has become increasingly delicate and complicated. For every advance in the application of science there has been a corresponding change in social organisation. It was by no mere coincidence that Adam Smith was discussing the division of labour when James Watt was inventing the steam-engine. Nor, in our own time, is it by blind coincidence that beside the invention of the internal combustion engine—the key to the motor-car, submarine, and aeroplane—must be placed an unparalleled extension of the credit system. Lubrication of metal machinery depends on ​the habits of living men. The assumption of some scientific enthusiasts that the study of the humane arts has ceased to be important will not bear examination; the management of men, high and low, is more difficult and more important under the conditions of modern reality than it ever was.
We describe the managers of the social machine as Organisers, but under that general term are commonly included two distinct categories. In the first place, we have Administrators, who are not strictly organisers at all—begetters, that is to say, of new organs in an organism. It is the function of the administrator to keep the running social machine in repair and to see to its lubrication. When men die, or for reasons of ill-health or old age retire, it is his duty to fill the vacant places with men suitably trained beforehand. A foreman of works is essentially an administrator. A Judge administers the Law, except in so far as in fact, though not in theory, he may make it. In the work of the administrator, pure and simple, there is no idea of progress. Given a certain organisation, efficiency is his ideal—perfect smoothness of working. His characteristic disease is called 'Red Tape.' A complicated society, well administered, tends in fact to a Chinese ​stagnation by the very strength of its momentum. The goodwill of a long-established and well-managed business may often be sold for a large sum in the market. Perhaps the most striking illustration of social momentum is to be seen in the immobility of markets themselves. Every seller wishes to go where buyers are in the habit of congregating in order that he may be sure of a purchaser for his wares. On the other hand, every buyer goes, if he can, to the place where sellers are wont to assemble in order that he may buy cheaply as the result of their competition. The authorities have often tried in vain to decentralise the markets of London.
​The possibility of organisation in the constructive sense depends on discipline. Running society is constituted by the myriad interlocking of the different habits of many men; if the running social structure is to be altered, even in some relatively small respect, a great number of men and women must simultaneously change various of their habits in complementary ways. It was impossible to introduce Daylight Saving except by an edict of Government, for any partial adherence to the change of hour would have thrown society into confusion. The achievement of Daylight Saving was, therefore, dependent on social discipline, which is thus seen to consist not in the habits of men but in the power of simultaneous and correlated change of those habits. In an ordered State the sense of discipline becomes innate, and the police are but rarely called upon to enforce it. In other words, social discipline, or the alteration of habit at will or command, itself becomes a habit. Military discipline, in so far as it consists of single acts at the word of command, is of a simpler order, but the professional soldier knows well the difference between habitual discipline and even the most intelligent fighting by quick-trained men.
In times of disorder the interlocking of ​productive habits breaks down step by step, and society as a whole becomes progressively poor, though robbers of one kind or another may for a while enrich themselves. Even more serious, however, is the failure of the habit of discipline, for that implies the loss of the power of recuperation. Consider to what a pass Russia was brought by a year of cumulative revolutions; her condition was like that terrible state of paralysis when the mind still sees and directs, but the nerves fail to elicit any response from the muscles. A nation does not die when so smitten, but the whole mechanism of its society must be reconstituted, and that quickly, if the men and women who survive its impoverishment are not to forget the habits and lose the aptitudes on which their civilisation depends. History shows no remedy but force upon which to found a fresh nucleus of discipline in such circumstances; but the organiser who rests upon force tends inevitably to treat the recovery of mere efficiency as his end. Idealism does not flourish under his rule. It was because history speaks plainly in this regard, that so many of the idealists of the last two generations have been internationalist; the military recovery of discipline is commonly achieved either by conquest from another ​national base or incidentally to a successful national resistance to foreign invasion.
The great organiser is the great realist. Not that he lacks imagination—very far from that; but his imagination turns to 'ways and means,' and not to elusive ends. His is the mind of Martha and not of Mary. If he be a Captain of Industry the counters of his thought are labour and capital; if he be a General of Armies they are units and supplies. His organising is aimed at intermediate ends—money if he be an industrial, and victory if he be a soldier. But money and victory are merely the keys to ulterior ends, and those ulterior ends remain elusive for him throughout. He dies still making money, or, if he be a victorious soldier, weeps like Alexander because there are no more worlds to conquer. His one care is that the business or the army which he has organised shall be efficiently administered; he is hard on his administrators. Above all, he values the habit of discipline; his machine must answer promptly to the lever.
The organiser inevitably comes to look upon men as his tools. His is the inverse of the mind of the idealist, for he would move men in brigades and must therefore have regard to material limitations, whereas the idealist ​appeals to the soul in each of us, and souls are winged and can soar. It does not follow that the organiser is careless of the well-being of the society beneath him; on the contrary, he regards that society as so much man-power to be maintained in efficient condition. This is true whether he be militarist or capitalist, provided that he be far-sighted. In the sphere of politics the organiser views men as existing for the State—for the 'Leviathan' of the Stuart philosopher Hobbes. But the Democratic Idealist barely tolerates the State as a necessary evil, for it limits freedom.
In the established Democracies of the West, the ideals of Freedom have been transmuted into the prejudices of the average citizen, and it is on these 'habits of thought' that the security of our freedom depends, rather than on the passing ecstasies of idealism. For a thousand years such prejudices took root under the insular protection of Britain; they are the outcome of continuous experiment, and must be treated at least with respect, unless we are prepared to think of our forefathers as fools. One of these prejudices is that it is unwise to take an Expert as Minister of State. In the present time of War, when freedom even in a democracy must yield to efficiency, ​there are those who would have us say that the experts whom we have for the time being installed in some of the high offices should be succeeded henceforth by experts, and that our prejudice is antiquated. None the less even in war time Britain has returned to a Civilian Minister for War! The fact is, of course, that the inefficiencies of the normally working British Constitution are merely the obverse of the truth that democracy is incompatible with the organisation necessary for war against autocracies. When the present Chilian Minister first came to England he was entertained by some members of the House of Commons. Referring to the Mother of Parliaments, as seen from the far Pacific, and to the chronic grumbling in regard to Parliamentary government which he found on his arrival in London, he exclaimed, 'You forget that one of the chief functions of Parliaments is to prevent things being done!'
The thought of the organiser is essentially strategical, whereas that of the true democrat is ethical. The organiser is thinking how to use men; but the democrat is thinking of the rights of men, which rights are so many rocks in the way of the organiser. Undoubtedly the organiser must be a master, for, given the waywardness of human nature and the ​inveteracy of habit, he would make little progress otherwise. But he is a bad supreme master, because of his 'ways and means' mind.
The Nemesis of democratic idealism, if it break from the bonds of reality, is the supreme rule of the organiser and of blind efficiency. The organiser begins innocently enough; his executive mind revolts from the disorder, and above all from the indiscipline around him. Soldierly efficiency undoubtedly saved Revolutionary France. But such is the impetus of the going concern, that it sweeps forward even its own creator. To improve the efficiency of his man-power he must in the end seek to control all its activities—working and thinking, no less than fighting. He is in supreme command, and inefficiency is pain to him. Therefore Napoleon added to his Grand Army and his Code Civil, also his Concordat with the Papacy, whereby the priest was to become his servant. He might have enjoyed lasting peace after the Treaty of Amiens, but must needs continue to prepare war. Finally he was impelled to his Moscow, just as a great money maker will overreach himself and end in bankruptcy.
Bismarck was the Napoleon of the Prussians, their man of blood and iron, yet he differed ​from his French prototype in certain regards which, for our present purpose, are worth attention. His end was unlike the end of Napoleon. There was no banishment to Elba after a Moscow, no imprisonment in St. Helena after a Waterloo. True that, after thirty years at the helm, the old pilot was dropped in 1890 by a new captain with a mind to piracy, but it was because of his caution and not because of vaulting ambition. Both Napoleon and Bismarck had supreme minds of the 'ways and means' order, but there was something more in Bismarck. He was not merely the great business man, which is Emerson's description of Napoleon. No statesman ever adjusted war to policy with a nicer judgment than Bismarck. He fought three short and successful campaigns, and made three treaties of peace, from each of which ensued a harvest of advantage to Prussia. Yet what different treaties they were! After the War of 1864 against Denmark, Bismarck took Sleswig and Holstein, with the idea, beyond question, of a Kiel Canal. After the War of 1866 against Austria he refused to take Bohemia, and thereby so offended his King that they were not fully reconciled until after the victories of 1870. There can be no doubt that in this clemency ​Bismarck foresaw a time when Prussia might need the alliance of Austria. In 1871, after Sedan and the Siege of Paris, Bismarck yielded to the pressure of the military party, and took Lorraine as well as Alsace.
The great Chancellor had, in truth, what the Prussian, as a rule, lacks, an insight into the minds of other nations than his own. His methods were psychological by preference. Once he had achieved German unity under Prussia, he waged no more wars. Yet he accomplished great things—for a time he ruled Europe—and his method was no mere exploitation of military prestige. At the Berlin Congress of 1878 he secured the occupation of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina for Austria, and thereby deepened the rivalry of Austria and Russia in the Balkan Peninsula. At the same Berlin Congress he privately incited France to occupy Tunis, and when France presently effected that occupation, Italy, as he foresaw, was sharply wounded. The Dual Alliance with Austria followed in 1879, and the Triple Alliance with Austria and Italy in 1881. It was as though he had sent his sheep-dog round his flock to drive his sheep to him. By subtleties of the same order he antagonised France and Britain, and also Britain and Russia. So, too, did he ​deal in his domestic policy. In 1886 he ceased from struggling with the Vatican, and brought over the Catholic party to his support, thereby neutralising the socialist tendency in the industrial but Catholic Province of the Rhineland, and the particularist tendency in the Catholic kingdom of Bavaria in the south.
The true parallel is to be drawn not between Napoleon and Bismarck, but between Napoleon and the entire Prussian ruling caste. The end of that caste, which we are now witnessing, is like the end of Napoleon; the blindly organising man goes to his Moscow, and the blindly organising State to its Armageddon. Kultur is the name given to that philosophy and education which imbued a whole race with the 'ways and means' mind. The French are an artistic, and therefore an idealistic people; Napoleon prostituted their idealism with the glory of his genius. Bismarck, on the other hand, was the child of materialistic Kultur, but, greater than the average of his race, he could reckon also with spiritual forces.
Kultur had its origin not in the victories of Frederick the Great, but in the defeat of Jena. The rule of Frederick in the eighteenth century was a personal rule like that of ​Napoleon, whereas the Prussia of the nineteenth century, behind whatever other pretence, was governed by an oligarchy of intellectual 'Experts'—staff officers, bureaucrats, professors. Frederick, sole organiser, raised only administrators, with the result that when he died he left Prussia a mere mechanism, to be broken on the field of Jena.
In the very winter of Jena the philosopher Fichte came to lecture in Berlin, while it was still in the occupation of the French. There was no University in the Prussian capital of those days, and the lectures were delivered not to young students, but to the maturest brains of the country in the fever of a great crisis. Fichte taught the philosophy of Patriotism at a time when the German Universities were devoted to the abstract worship of knowledge and art. In the next few years, between 1806 and 1813, was established that close connection between the army, the bureaucracy, and the schools, or, in other words, between the needs of government and the aims of education, which constituted the essence and perverse strength of the Prussian system. Universal military service was ​correlated with universal compulsory schooling, inaugurated in Prussia two generations before the English Education Act of 1870; the University of Berlin, with a brilliant professoriate, was established as sister to the Great General Staff. Thus knowledge in Prussia was no longer pursued mainly for its own sake, but as a means to an end, and that end was the success of a State which had experienced bitter disaster. It was a Camp-State, moreover, in the midst of a plain, without the natural bulwarks of a Spain, a France, or a Britain. The end determines the means, and since the Prussian end was military strength, based of necessity on stark discipline, the means were inevitably materialistic. Judged from the standpoint of Berlin, it was a wonderful thing to have impressed Kultur, or Strategical mentality, on the educated class of a whole people, but from the standpoint of civilisation at large it was a fatal momentum to have given to a nation—fatal, that is to say, in the long run, either to civilisation or that nation.
We have had for a byword in these times the German war map. It may be questioned, however, whether most people in Britain and America have fully realised the part played by the map in German education during the ​past three generations. Maps are the essential apparatus of Kultur, and every educated German is a geographer in a sense that is true of very few Englishmen or Americans. He has been taught to see in maps not merely the conventional boundaries established by scraps of paper, but permanent physical opportunities—'ways and means' in the literal sense of the words. His Real-Politik lives in his mind upon a mental map. The serious teaching of geography in German High Schools and Universities dates from the very beginning of Kultur. It was organised in the generation after Jena, mainly by the labours of four men—Alexander von Humboldt, Berghaus, Carl Ritter, and Stieler—who were attached to the new University of Berlin and to the since famous map-house of Perthes of Gotha. To this day, notwithstanding all that has been done by two or three exceptional map-houses in this country, if you want a good map, conveying accurately and yet graphically the fundamental contrasts, you must have resort as often as not to one of German origin. The reason is that in Germany there are many cartographers who are scholarly geographers and not merely surveyors or draftsmen. They can exist, because there is a wide public educated to ​appreciate and pay for intelligently drawn maps.
In this country we value the moral side of education, and it is perhaps intuitively that we have neglected materialistic geography. Before the War not a few teachers, within my knowledge, objected to geography as a subject of education, on the ground that it tended to promote Imperialism, just as they objected to physical drill because it tended to militarism. We may laugh at such excesses of political caution, as men of former centuries scoffed at the anchorites who secreted themselves from the world, but the protest in each case was against an excess in the opposite direction.
Berlin-Baghdad, Berlin-Herat, Berlin-Pekin—not heard as mere words, but visualised on the mental relief map—involve for most Anglo-Saxons a new mode of thought, lately and imperfectly introduced among us by the rough maps of the newspapers. But your Prussian, and his father, and his grandfather have debated such concepts all their lives, pencil in hand. In arranging the detailed terms of peace, our statesmen will, no doubt, have the ​advice of excellent geographical experts, but the German representatives will have behind them not merely a few experts but a great geographically instructed public, long familiar with every important aspect of the questions which will arise, and quick to give a far-sighted support to their leaders. This may easily become a decisive advantage, especially should our people pass into a magnanimous frame of mind. It would be a curious thing if the successes of Talleyrand and Metternich, in the secret diplomacy of 1814, were repeated by the spokesmen of the defeated States of our own time under the conditions imposed upon diplomacy by popular government!
The map habit of thought is no less pregnant in the sphere of economics than it is in that of strategy. True that Laissez-faire had little use for it, but the 'most favoured nation' clause which Germany imposed on defeated France in the Treaty of Frankfurt had quite a different meaning for the strategical German mind to that which was attached ​to it by honest Cobdenites. The German bureaucrat built upon it a whole structure of preferences for German trade. Of what use to Britain under her northern skies was the most favoured nation clause when Germany granted a concession to Italy in the matter of import duties on olive-oil? Would there not also be railway trucks to be returned to Italy which might as well return loaded with German exports? The whole system of most voluminous and intricate commercial treaties between Germany and her neighbours was based on a minute study of commercial routes and of the lie of productive areas. The German official was thinking in the concrete detail of 'living,' while his British counterpart was absorbed in the negative principle of 'letting live.'
Kaiser Wilhelm told us that this War was a struggle between two views of the world. 'View' is characteristic of the organiser; he sees things from above. Kipling agreed with the Kaiser, but in the language of simple men below, when he declared that there is human feeling and German feeling. The organiser, as organiser, is inevitably inhuman, or rather unhuman. No doubt both Kaiser ​and poet exaggerated in order to emphasise opposing tendencies; even a democracy must have organisers, just as there must be some remnant of kindliness even among the students of Kultur. The real question is as to which shall have the last word in the State—the idealists or the organisers. Internationalists are in futile revolt against all organisation when they would have war of the proletariat on the bourgeoisie.
Democracy refuses to think strategically unless and until compelled to do so for purposes of defence. That, of course, does not prevent democracy from declaring war for an ideal, as was seen during the French Revolution. One of the inconsistencies of our pacifists to-day is that they so often urge intervention in the affairs of other nations. In the Middle Ages vast unorganised crowds set out to march against the infidel and perished fecklessly by the way. It was not from lack of warning that the Western democracies were unprepared for the present War. At the same moment, early in this century, to cite only the case of Great Britain, three honoured voices were appealing to our sovereign people and were not heard; Lord Rosebery called for efficiency, Mr. Chamberlain for economic defence, and Lord Roberts ​for military training. Democracy implies rule by consent of the average citizen, who does not view things from the hill-tops, for he must be at his work in the fertile plains. There is no good in railing at the characteristics of popular government, for they are its qualities and no mere defects. President Wilson admits them when he says we must make the world a safe place henceforth for democracies. They were no less admitted in the British House of Commons when responsible Ministers took pride in the fact that, save in respect of the defensive force of the Navy, we were not prepared for the War.
The democrat thinks in principles, be they—according to his idiosyncrasy—ideals, prejudices, or economic laws. The organiser, on the other hand, plans construction, and, like an architect, must consider the ground for his foundations and the materials with which he will build. It must be concrete and detailed consideration, for bricks may be most suitable for his walls, but stone for his lintels, and timber and slate for his roof. If it be a State which he is erecting—not, be it noted, a nation which is growing—he must carefully consider the territory which it is desirable to occupy and the social structures—not economic laws—which are to his hand as the ​result of history. So he opposes his strategy to the ethics of the democrat.
Fierce moralists allow no extenuation for sin however persistent the temptation, and great undoubtedly must be the reward in heaven for the slum-dweller who 'keeps straight.' But practical reformers give much of their thought to the Housing problem! Of late our political moralists have been very fierce. They preached the narrow way of 'no annexations, no indemnities.' In other words, they refused to reckon with the realities of geography and economics. Had we but faith as a grain of mustard seed in average human nature, could we not remove the mountains!
Practical sense, however, warns us that it would be wise to seize the present opportunity, when for once the democratic nations are efficiently armed, to make the world a safe place for democracies when going about their ordinary business. In other words, we must see to the housing problem of our coming League of Nations. We must reckon presciently with the realities of space and time, and not be content merely to lay down on paper good principles of conduct. The good may not always appear the same even to those who are now Allies, and will pretty ​surely appear not good, for a time at least, to our present enemies.
'No annexations, no indemnities' was no doubt a rallying cry not meant by its authors to support existing tyrannies. But it is surely legitimate to remark that there is a wide difference between the attitude of the lawyer with his presumptions unless there be proof to the contrary, and that of the business man untied by formulæ. The one does things, and the other, at best, allows them to be done.
In the past, democracy has looked with suspicion on the activities even of popular governments, and therein has shown a wise self-knowledge. It used to be thought, and sooner or later will be thought again, that the main function of the State in free countries is to prevent tyrannous things from being done whether by offenders at home or invaders from abroad. Average citizenship is not a likely base for daring innovations. Adventurers, sole or corporate, must therefore be left to blaze the way to progress. In military and bureaucratic States it is otherwise; Napoleon could be a pioneer, as might have been Joseph ii. if his conservative subjects had not successfully revolted against him. In Prussia all progress has been State​engineered, but then progress there has meant merely increase of efficiency.
To save democracy, however, in its recent jeopardy we suspended the very safeguards of democracy, and allowed our governments to organise us not merely for defence but for offence. Had the War been short, this would have been a mere parenthesis in history. But it has been long, and social structures have wasted in part, and in part have been diverted to new uses, so that habits and vested interests have dissolved, and all society is as clay in our hands, if only we have the cunning to mould it while it is still yielding. But the art of the clay-moulder, as of the worker in hot metal, lies not merely in knowing what he would make, but also in allowing for the properties of the material in which he is working. He must not only have artistic aims, but also technical knowledge; his human initiative must reckon with reality; he must cultivate his 'ways and means' mind, while he tries to retain his ideals of form.
As the artist endeavours to his dying day to learn ever more about the medium in which he works—and not merely more in a scientific ​sense, but in a practical 'tactile' way, gaining, as we say, greater command over his material—so has it been with the knowledge of humanity at large in regard to the Realities of the round world on which we must practise the intricate art of living together. It is not merely that we have amassed vast encyclopædias of fact, but that, as we live through each new epoch, we see all the past and all the present with new eyes and from new standpoints. It is obvious that these four years of war have wrought a change in human outlook the like of which was not effected in all the previous life of those of us who have grey hairs. Yet, when we look back with our present knowledge, is it not clear that the currents of thought now running so tumultuously were already setting in gently some twenty years ago? In the last years of last century and the first of this, the organisers at Berlin and the minorities in London and Paris had already discerned the new drift of the straws.
I propose trying to depict some of the Realities, geographical and economic, in their ​twentieth-century perspective. The facts will most of them be old and familiar. But, in the language of the Mediæval schoolmen, there is a great difference between Vera causa and Causa causans—mere academic learning and the realisation which impels to action.
* ↑ See The Evolution of Prussia, by Marriott and Grant Robertson. Clarendon Press, 1915.
* ↑ In my Address to the Geographical Section of the British Association at Ipswich in 1895 will be found an account of the rise of the German schools of geography.
* ↑ It is true that there is a 'horse-sense' of geography among those of us who have travelled. It is true, also, that we keep atlases in our offices and libraries, to be consulted as we would consult a dictionary for the spelling of a word. But correct spelling does not always imply literary power! A trained sense of geographical perspective is essential to the mode of thought here in question.
* ↑ Twelve years ago I met a Prussian Staff Officer who told me that he spent his life trying to save half an hour on mobilisation.
* ↑ Mr. Chamberlain resigned from the Cabinet in order to free himself as a leader in September 1903, and Lord Roberts resigned from Commander-in-Chief with a similar idea in January 1904.