constructive effort and research; but on the other hand it produced

the quality of a panic, hasty preparation, impatience of thought, a

wasteful and sometimes quite futile immediacy. In 1909, for

example, there was a vast clamour for eight additional Dreadnoughts-

"We want eight

And we won't wait,"

but no clamour at all about our national waste of inventive talent,

our mean standard of intellectual attainment, our disingenuous

criticism, and the consequent failure to distinguish men of the

quality needed to carry on the modern type of war. Almost

universally we have the wrong men in our places of responsibility

and the right men in no place at all, almost universally we have

poorly qualified, hesitating, and resentful subordinates, because

our criticism is worthless and, so habitually as to be now almost

unconsciously, dishonest. Germany is beating England in every

matter upon which competition is possible, because she attended

sedulously to her collective mind for sixty pregnant years, because

in spite of tremendous defects she is still far more anxious for

quality in achievement than we are. I remember saying that in my

paper. From that, I remember, I went on to an image that had

flashed into my mind. "The British Empire," I said, "is like some

of those early vertebrated monsters, the Brontosaurus and the

Atlantosaurus and such-like; it sacrifices intellect to character;

its backbone, that is to say,-especially in the visceral region-is

bigger than its cranium. It's no accident that things are so.

We've worked for backbone. We brag about backbone, and if the

joints are anchylosed so much the better. We're still but only half

awake to our error. You can't change that suddenly."

"Turn it round and make it go backwards," interjected Thorns.

"It's trying to do that," I said, "in places."

And afterwards Crupp declared I had begotten a nightmare which

haunted him of nights; he was trying desperately and belatedly to

blow a brain as one blows soap-bubbles on such a mezoroic saurian as

I had conjured up, while the clumsy monster's fate, all teeth and

brains, crept nearer and nearer…

I've grown, I think, since those days out of the urgency of that

apprehension. I still think a European war, and conceivably a very

humiliating war for England, may occur at no very distant date, but

I do not think there is any such heroic quality in our governing

class as will make that war catastrophic. The prevailing spirit in

English life-it is one of the essential secrets of our imperial

endurance-is one of underbred aggression in prosperity and

diplomatic compromise in moments of danger; we bully haughtily where

we can and assimilate where we must. It is not for nothing that our

upper and middle-class youth is educated by teachers of the highest

character, scholars and gentlemen, men who can pretend quite

honestly that Darwinism hasn't upset the historical fall of man,

that cricket is moral training, and that Socialism is an outrage

upon the teachings of Christ. A sort of dignified dexterity of

evasion is the national reward. Germany, with a larger population,

a vigorous and irreconcilable proletariat, a bolder intellectual

training, a harsher spirit, can scarcely fail to drive us at last to

a realisation of intolerable strain. So we may never fight at all.

The war of preparations that has been going on for thirty years may

end like a sham-fight at last in an umpire's decision. We shall

proudly but very firmly take the second place. For my own part,

since I love England as much as I detest her present lethargy of

soul, I pray for a chastening war-I wouldn't mind her flag in the

dirt if only her spirit would come out of it. So I was able to

shake off that earlier fear of some final and irrevocable

destruction truncating all my schemes. At the most, a European war

would be a dramatic episode in the reconstruction I had in view.

In India, too, I no longer foresee, as once I was inclined to see,

disaster. The English rule in India is surely one of the most

extraordinary accidents that has ever happened in history. We are

there like a man who has fallen off a ladder on to the neck of an

elephant, and doesn't know what to do or how to get down. Until

something happens he remains. Our functions in India are absurd.

We English do not own that country, do not even rule it. We make

nothing happen; at the most we prevent things happening. We

suppress our own literature there. Most English people cannot even

go to this land they possess; the authorities would prevent it. If

Messrs. Perowne or Cook organised a cheap tour of Manchester

operatives, it would be stopped. No one dare bring the average

English voter face to face with the reality of India, or let the

Indian native have a glimpse of the English voter. In my time I

have talked to English statesmen, Indian officials and ex-officials,

viceroys, soldiers, every one who might be supposed to know what

India signifies, and I have prayed them to tell me what they thought

we were up to there. Iam not writing without my book in these

matters. And beyond a phrase or so about "even-handed justice"-and

look at our sedition trials!-they told me nothing. Time after time

I have heard of that apocryphal native ruler in the north-west, who,