employers cannot be inspired or rested and strong, we cannot expect
their overworked workmen to be. There is no hope for us but to write
our books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the world
in the hands of the Strong, and to help keep its institutions and
customs out of the hands of the overworked. Overworked mechanical
employers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problem
of the overworked, except in a small, tired, mean, resentful, temporary
way.

And so, as I look about me and watch the machines and the men who are
working with the machines, or owning them, it is on this principle that
I find myself taking sides. I will not live, if I can help it, in a
world that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworked
and mechanical men. Have I not seen tired, mechanical men, whole
generations of them, vast mobs of them, the men who have let the
machines mow down their souls? The first thing I have come to ask of a
man, if he is to be at the head of a machine--whether it is a machine
called a factory, or a machine called a Government or a city, or a
machine called a nation--is, _Is he tired?_ I have cast my lot once for
all--and as it seems to me, too, the lot of the world--with those men
who are rested, with the surplus men, the men who want to work more not
less, who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts, steady in
their imaginations, great men--men who are not driven to being
self-centred or driven to being class-centred, who can be world-centred
and inspired.

* * * * *

When one has made this decision, that one will work for a world in
control of men who are strong, one suddenly is brought face to face with