The New Machiavelli

hat we wanted what I may call "hinterlanders." Of course I do not mean by aristocracy the changing unorganised medley of rich people and privileged people who dominate the civilised world of to-day, but as opposed to this, a possibility of co-ordinating the will of the finer individuals, by habit and lit

y peculiar difficulty as against crude democracy comes in. If humanity at large is capable of that high education and those creative freedoms our hope demands, much more must its better and more vigorous types be so capable. And if those who have power and leisure now, and freedom to respond to imaginative appeals, cannot be won to the idea of collective self-development, then the whole of humanity cannot be won to that. From that one passes to what has become my general conception in politics, the conception of the constructive imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful people,

big people, the wealthy and influential people, against whom Liberalism pits its forces. I was asking myself definitely whether, after all, it was not my particular job to work through them and not against them. Was I not altogether out of my elem

ersuasion that after all in some development of the idea of Imperial patriotism might be found that wide, rough, politically acceptable expression of a constructive dream capable of sustaining a great educational and philosophical movement such as no formula of Liberalism supplied. The fact that it readily took vulgar forms only witnessed to its strong popular appeal. Mixed in with the noisiness and humbug of the movement there appeared a real regard for social efficiency, a real spirit of animation and enterprise. There suddenly appeared in my world--I saw them first, I think,

it. We dined monthly at the Mermaid in Westminster, and for a couple of years we kept up an average attendance of ten out of fourteen. The dinner-time was given up to desultory conversation, and it is odd how warm and good the social atmosphere of that little gathering became as time went on; then over the dessert, so soon as the waiters had swept away the crumbs and ceased to fret us, one of us would open with perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes' exposition of some specially prepared question, and after him we would de

still think mistakenly, that Tariff Reform would have an immense popular appeal. They were also very keen on military organisation, and with a curious little martinet twist in their minds that boded ill for that side of public liberty. So much against them. But they were disposed to spend money much more generously on education and research of all sorts than our formless host of Liberals seemed likely to do; and they were altogether more accessible than the Young Liberals to bold, constructive ideas affecting the universities and upper classes. The Liberals are abjectly afraid of the universities. I found myself constantly falling into li

his eye to the ceiling in a way he had while he threw warmth into the ancient platitudes of Liberalism, and Minns leaning forward, and a little like a cockatoo with a taste for confidences, telling us in a hushed voice of his faith in the Destiny of Mankind. Thorns lounges, rolling his round face and round eyes from speaker to speaker and sounding the visi

d his he

toil. We want to get hold of the handles, and to do that, one must go where the

ling's--or

wear theirs out. You and I and Bailey are all after

federate?" I a

ret nobody te

he Confeder

I suppose. Just as, I ga

bership nobody knew, pledged, it was said, to impose Tariff Reform and an ample constructive policy upon the Conservatives. In the p

f my own powers. All through that period I was asking over and over again: how far are these Confederates mere dreamers? How far--and this was more vital--are they rendering lip-service to social organisations? Is it true they desire war because it confirms the ascendency of their cl

people be? How generous?--not incidentally, but all round? How far can you educate sons beyond the outlook of their fathers, and how far lift a rich, proud, self-indulgent class above the protests of its business agents and solicit

y party. I do that without any excessive egotism, because my essay was no solitary man's production; it was my reaction to forces that had come to me very large through my fellow-members; its quick reception by them showed that I wa

sor of his father and elder brother. I remember his heavy, inexpressively handsome face lighting to his rare smile at the sight of me, and how little I dreamt of the tragic entanglement that was destined to involve us b

idea: it was, "The World Exists for Exceptional People." It is not the title I should choose now--for since that time I ha

ith me to Italy the menu for the evening; its back black with the scrawled notes I made of the discussion for my reply. I found it the

gues, he sitting back in his chair with that small obstinate eye of his fixed on the ceiling, and a sort of cadaverous glow upon his face, repeating--quite regardless of all my reasoning and all that had been said by others in the debate--the sacred empty phrases that were his soul's refuge from reality. "Y

n over him to my next propositions. The prime essential in a progressive civilisation was the establishment of a more effective selective process for the privilege of higher education, and the very highest educational opportunity for the educable. We were too apt to patronise scholarship winners, as though a scholarship was toffee given as a reward for virtue. It wasn't any reward at all; it was an invitation to capacity. We had no more right to drag in virtue, or any merit but quality, than we

ak. He slewed round upon me

('Less,' said Thorns.) To be more precise, by the mental hinterlands of three or four thousand individuals. We who know some of the band entertain no illusions as to their innate rarity. We know that they are just the few out of many, the few who got in our world of chance and confusion, the timely stimulus, the ap

ton to his bread-crumbs, with h

ifferentiated a public. Most of the good men we know are not really doing the very best work of their gifts; nearly all are a little adapted, most are shockingly adapted to some second-best use. Now, I take it, this is the very centre and origin of the muddle, futility, and unhappiness that distresses us; it's the cardinal problem of the state--to discover, develop, and use the exceptional gifts of men. And I see that best done--I drift more and more a

, nodding of the head, and an ex

burning." I went on to attack the present organisation of our schools and universities, which seemed elaborately designed to turn the well-behaved, uncritical, and uncreative

doubt from which party or combination of groups these developments of science and literature and educational

left it

we emerged from his flood after a time, and Dayton had his int

enna, his plump, short-fingered hand crushing up a walnut shell into smaller and smaller fragments. "Remington," he said, "has given us the da

ement in education and training," said Gane. "Reming

made it. "The modern community needs its serious men to be artistic and its artists to be taken serio

own out of using some sort of review or weekly to express and ela

s and that ancient enterprise of ours, and how Cossington had rushed it. Well, Cossington had t

pp, with his eye on me. "You can't get away from that. The Liberals

orship," said Thorns, with a note of minute fairn

"we've got to pick up the tradition of aristocracy, reorganis

p," said Dayton, darkly to the ceiling, "i

cking it up," said Neal. "F

from the ashes, aristocrats indeed--if the L

decide that," said

e," sai

d Thorns. "I doubt if

Britten, I think, got more said than any one. "You all seem to think you want to organise people, particular groups and classes of individuals," he insisted. "It isn't that. That's the standing error of politicians. You want to organise a cult

behave?" said Crupp. "You yourself

ill be a movement to reorganise aristocracy--Reform of t

ks that," sa

abolition," said some on

, sketching a pos

ne of those indeterminate, confused, eventful times ahead

it," said Dayton,

aid Thorns und

nitiative, I rememb

d do--extensive th

e been tried so often," said Thorns, "

aid. "It's the peculiarity of English conservatism t

our presence, after some clumsy sentence that I decided upon

n a country through its spoilt children," he said. "What you call aristocrats are re

lways be educat

LT children,

ese big people get their power clipped, what's going to happen? Have you

Vacuum," said Cru

ed officials,"

ora," said Thorns. "I admit the horrors of the a

fine creative minds, and all the necessary tolerances, opennesses, considerations, that march with that. For my own part, I think that is the Most Vital Thing. Build you

is first remark for a long time. "A first

real progress in a country, except a rise in the level of its free intellectual activity. All other progress is secondary and dependant. If you take on Bailey's dreams of efficient machinery and a sort of fanatical discipline with no free-moving brains behind it, confused ugliness becomes rigid ugl

id Shoesmith, fa

didn't get said at all on that occasion. "We could do immense things with a weekly," he repeated, echoing Neal, I think. And there he l

glow one doesn't act upon without much reconsideration, and it was some mont

ato or the labour laws of More. Among other questions that were never very distant from our discussions, that came apt to every topic, was the true significance of democracy, Tariff Reform as a method of international hostility, and the imminence of war. On the first issue I can still recall little Bailey, glib and winking, explaining that democracy was really just a dodge for getting assent to the ordinances of the

must happen there--something very serious to our Empire. Dayton frankly detested these topics. He was full of that old Middle Victorian persuasion that whatever is inconvenient or disagreeable to the English mind could be annihilated by not thinking about it. He used to sit low in his chair and

lackness, mental dishonesty, presumption, mercenary respectability and sentimentalised commercialism of the Victorian period, at the hands of the better organised, more vigorous, and now far more highly civilised peoples of Central Europe, seemed to me to have both a good and bad series of consequences. It seemed the only t

want

won't

rthless 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 Em

ake it go backwards,

do that," I sa

desperately and belatedly to blow a brain as one blows soap-bubbles on such a mezoroic saurian as

t 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

an 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. I am 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, when asked what would happen if we left India, replied that in a week his men would be in the saddle, and in six months not a rupee nor a virgin would be left in Lower Bengal. That is always given as our conclusive justification. But is it our business to preserve the rupees and virgins of Lower Bengal in a so

nd Dayton, Cladingbowl in the club, and the HOME CHURCHMAN in the home, cant about "character," worship of strenuous force and contempt of truth; for the sake of such men and things as these, we must abandon in fact, if not in appearance, tha

a power arises in India in spite of us, be it a man or a culture, or a native state, we shall be willing to deal with it. We may or may not have a war, but our governing class will be quick to learn when we are beaten. Then they will repeat our South African diplomacy, and arrange for some settlement that will abandon the reality, such as it is, and preserve the semblance of power. The

cy. There comes a broad spectacular effect of wide parks, diversified by woods and bracken valleys, and dappled with deer; of great smooth lawns shaded by ancient trees; of big facades of sunlit buildings dominating the country side; of large fine rooms full of handsome, easy-mannered people. As a sort of representative picture to set off against those other pictures of Liberals and of Socialists I have given, I recall one of those huge assemblies the Duchess of Clynes inaugurated at Stamfor

d to be capable of everything, and we watched the crowd--uniforms and splendours were streaming in from a State ball--and exchanged information. I told her about the politicians and intellectuals, and sh

e lot, even when they were not subtly individualised. "They look so well nurtured," I said, "well

she said, "like big, rather carefully trained, rather

t. That's why I couldn't stand the Roosevelt REGIME in America. One's chief surprise when one comes across these big people for the first time is their admirable easiness

hey have

r they'd be the finest sor

thing?" sh

zling my wits to know. They'

nterrupted, "whose leg was brok

ess, on the sword. When I was a little boy I wanted to wear clothes like that. And the stars! He's g

enough," sh

d. "Not quite enough--not

d at me. "You'd like

ha

ar

u'll go on if you

e so pleasan

't be rather hard trained, and yet kindly. I'm not convinced that the resources of

do it?" asked M

with"--I held up my fingers and ticked the items off--"the public schools, the private tutors, the army

ndson. "We can't begin again

d at the assembly in ge

osity.... "You want," she said, "to say to the aristocracy, 'Be aristocrats. NOBLESS

d, "I want an

odsmen are off the stage. These are the brilliant ones--the

arless about their bearing that I liked extremely. The women particularly were wide-reading, fine-thinking. Mrs. Redmondson talked as fully and widely and boldly as a man, and with those flashes of intuition, those startling,

to the development of a type and culture o

res and chins and chins and chins, disposed in a big cane chair with wraps and cushions upon the great terrace of Champneys. Her eye was blue and hard, and her accent and intonation were exactly what you would expect from a rather commonplace dressmaker pretending to be aristocratic. I was, I am afraid, posing a little as the intel

oretical aristocrat I

," she repeated

the aristocratic theory currently working as dis

"You get loafers and scamps everywhere, but you'll get a lot of men who'll

an ideal a

g better," said

used emphatically to believe in e

air of the magazine, had clambered to an amazing wealth up a piled heap of energetically pushed penny and halfpenny magazines, and a

"but none of us have ever had

"We English," she said, "are a pra

se, they don't

don't giv

earn to

n. Sometimes better than others, but they go on--somehow. It

et a secure twenty thousand a year by at l

he good of 'um," said Lady

ond, third, fourth, and fifth cousins, who didn't talk, who shone tall, and bearing themselves finely, against

kness--and I tormented my brain to get to the bottom of him. For a long time he was the most powerful man in England under the throne; he had the Lords in his hand, and a great majority in the Commons, and the discontents and intrigues that are the concomitants of an overwhelming party advantage broke against him as wav

que clay, but about Evesham I had a sense of things hidden as it were by depth and mists, because he was so big and atmospheric a personality. No other contemporary has had that effect upon me. I've sat beside him at dinners, stayed in houses with him--he was in the big house party at Champneys--talked to him, sounded him, watching him as I sat beside him. I could talk to him with extr

HE think we were doing with Mank

so tremendously floriferous and equipped that we were almost forced int

y towns. There's a sort of extending common policy that goes on under every government, because on the whole it's the right thing

anced e

, "from the rel

the religiou

ncertainty. "Directly you get a thing established, so that people can say, 'Now this is Right,' with the same conviction t

anely tolerant, posing as the minister of a steadily dev

his hand upon it, or swaying forward with a grip upon his coat lapel, fighting with a diabolical skill to preserve what are in effect religious tests, tests he must have k

es and watch him, and listen to his urbane voice, fascinated by him. Did he really care? Did anything matter to him? And if it really mattered nothing, why did he trouble to s

glimpse of thought, of imagination, like the sight of a soaring eagle through a staircase skylight. Oh, beyond question he was great! No other contemporary politician had his quality. In no man have I perceived so sympathetically the great contrast between warm, personal things and the white dream of statecraft. Except that he had it see

ealise that, I could have done no more than follow him blindly. But neither he nor I embodied that, and there lies the gist of my story. And when it came to a study of others among the leading Tories and Imperialists the doubt increased, until with some at las

understand raw men, ill-trained men, uncertain minds, and intelligent women; and these are the things that matter in England.... There were also the great business adventurers, from Cranber to Cossington (who was now Lord Paddockhurst). My mind remained unsettled, and went up and down the scale between a belief in their far-sighted purpose and the perception of crude vanities, coarse ambitions, vulgar competitiveness, and a mere habitual persistence in the pursuit of gain. For a time I saw a good deal of Cossington--I wish I had kept a diary of his talk and gestures, to mark how he could vary from day to day between a POSEUR, a smart tradesman, and a very bold and wide-thi

leant across him for the little silver

n-faced stuff they were, but impervious to ideas outside the range of their activities, more ignorant of science than their chauffeurs, and of the quality of English people than welt-politicians; contemptuous of school and university by reason of the Gateses and Flacks and Codgers who had come their way, witty, light-hearted, patriotic at the Kipling level, with a certain aptitude for bullying. They varied in insensible gradations between the noble sportsmen on the one hand,

ything whatever except excesses in population, regretted he could not censor picture galleries and circulating libraries, and declared that dissenters were people who pretended to take theology seriously with the express purpose of upsetting the entirely satisfactory compromise of the Established Church. "No sensible people, with anything to gain or lose, argue about religion," he said. "They mean mischief." Having delivered his soul upon these points, and silenced the little conversation to the left of him from which they had arisen, he became, after an appreciative encounter with a sanguinary woodcock, more amia

ven occur to me then to wake him up and

we had before I came over to the Conservative side. It was at Champneys, and I think during the same visit that witnessed my exploration of Lady Forthundred. It arose indirectly, I think, out of some comments of mine upon our fellow-guests, but it is one of those memories of which the scene and quality remain more vivid than the things s

sense that in some way too feminine for me to understand our hostess had aggrieved her. S

t these pe

uperficial, s

ople I had ever met. "And are they really so extravagant?" I asked, and put it

" Margaret parried. "It's the

nical," said Margaret, staring

ltiora who'd given her a horror of Lord Carnaby, who was also with us. "You know his reputation," said Margaret. "That Normandy girl. Every on

sive t

worse, I think. It shows he might have helped--all that happened. I do all I can to mak

imagine something mi

st it," sa

y," I s

that sort of

eating with publicans and

minance, their class conspiracy against the mass of people," said Margaret. "When I sit at dinner in that splendid room, with its glitter and white reflections and candlelight,

he was not altogether inno

g our best to give

s and rich people are to blame for social injustice as we have it to-day? Do you reall

know," sa

aw Toryism as the diabolical element in affairs. The thing showed in its hopeless untruth all the clearer for the fine, clean emotion with which she gave it out to me. My sleeping peer in the library at Stamford Court and Evesham talking luminously behind the Hartstein flowers embodied the devil, and my replete citizen sucking at h

s you do," I said. "I don't

" said Margaret, go

ef through well-intentioned benevolence than all the selfishness

. "How can you say t

efforts to prevent people drinking what they liked

and I could see she thought I

s it,"

e people drink wha

t have I to dictate t

k of the

children. If drunkenness is an offence, punish it, but don't punish a man for selling honest drink that perhaps after all won't make any one drunk at all. Don't intensify the viciousness of the public-house by assuming the place isn't fit for women and children. That's either spite or folly. Make the public-house FIT for women and child

csimile of one in Verona, amidst trim-cut borderings of yew. Beyond, and se

Margaret behind me, "is

rage; why cast them for the villains of the piece? The real villain in the piece--in the whole human drama--is the muddle-headedness, and it matters very little if it's virtuous-minded or wicked. I want to get at muddle-he

had run aw

e profoundest distress. "I can't understand ho

life which plague us all so relentlessly nowadays are supposed to be silenced. He lifts his chin and pursues his Aim explicitly in the sight of all men. Those who have no real political experience can scarcely imagine the immense mental and moral strain there is between one's everyday acts and utterances on the one hand and the

elements of the problem I struggled with, but I can give no record of the subtle details; I can tell nothing of the long

sound if your thinking is to remain vital; to choose an aim and pursue it in despite of all subsequent questionings is to bury the talent of your mind. It is no use dealing with the intricate as though it were simple, to leap haphazard at the first course of action that prese

ae and sentimental aspirations exasperated me; her want of sympathetic apprehension made my few efforts to indicate my changing attitudes distressing and futile. It wasn't that I was always thinking right, and that she was always saying wrong. It was that I was struggling to get hold of a difficult thing that was, at any rate, half true, I could not gauge how true, and that Margaret's habitual phrasing ignored these elusive elements of truth, and without premeditation fitted into the weaknesses of my new intimation

h of us. Except for that Pentagram evening, a series of talks with Isabel Rivers, who was now becoming more and more important in my intellectual life, a