principles of the majority of his contemporaries you must discredit in
his eyes the authoritative voice of his own soul. He may be a docile
citizen; he will never be a man." And Bernard Shaw was not far out
when, in the Introduction to _Man and Super-Man_, he pointed out
what amiable honest gentlemen the free-booters who built the Rhine
castles were compared with your modern millionaires, newspaper-owners,
and political bosses. The robber-baron risked his neck. The
robber-baron played a game. The robber-baron mostly warred on his own
mates who were also playing the game. But the robber-baron of today
would enslave the souls of men because he has forgotten how else to
enjoy himself.

The net result then is that we are fast abandoning any attempt to
think for ourselves. Not merely is any attempt at original thought or
action cleverly stifled with pillows much as the princes were
smothered in the Tower, but the censors of our freedom shout so loudly
and supply us with mental goods so cheaply that in the end we have no
real mental power of choice left. A million advertisements tell me
that all decent people shave with Apple-Blossom soap, and with
Apple-Blossom soap I shave. A score of papers tell me Germany is
undertaxed and can pay Reparations, and I sit quiet while France
occupies the Ruhr. Or vice-versa, as the case or another may be. Every
child goes to school and every school is under Government control and
every Government teaches that it is good for you to be governed and
for the world that it should govern. A few years ago we were told that
we had to be organised and schooled and managed because the nation was
at war, but the thing is fast becoming a habit, and we have now to be
managed and schooled and organised because the nation is at peace.

It is indeed just here that censorship has gone mad. It must have been