for hardship and self-sacrifice this chivalrous culture appears to have
developed in the Japanese. These Samurai of mine were a sort of
voluntary nobility who supplied the administrative and organizing forces
that held my Utopian world together. They were the "New Republicans" of
my "Anticipations" and "Mankind in the Making," much developed and
supposed triumphant and ruling the world.

I sought of course to set out these ideas as attractively as possible in
my books, and they have as a matter of fact proved very attractive to a
certain number of people. Quite a number have wanted to go on with them.
Several little organizations of Utopians and Samurai and the like have
sprung up and informed me of themselves, and some survive; and young men
do still at times drop into my world "personally or by letter" declaring
themselves New Republicans.

All this has been very helpful and at times a little embarrassing to me.
It has given me an opportunity of seeing the ideals I flung into the
distance beyond Sirius and among the mountain snows coming home
partially incarnate in girls and young men. It has made me look into
individualized human aspirations, human impatience, human vanity and a
certain human need of fellowship, at close quarters. It has illuminated
subtle and fine traits; it has displayed nobilities, and it has brought
out aspects of human absurdity to which only the pencil of Mr. George
Morrow could do adequate justice. The thing I have had to explain most
generally is that my New Republicans and Samurai are but figures of
suggestion, figures to think over and use in planning disciplines, but
by no means copies to follow. I have had to go over again, as though it
had never been raised before in any previous writings, the difference
between the spirit and the letter.