can prevent this sort of thing. No one believes these excellent
gentlemen hold these positions by merit or capacity, and no one
believes that from them we are getting anything like the best
imaginable services in these positions. These positions are held by the
mere accident of birth, and it is by the mere accident of birth the
great mass of Englishmen are shut out from the remotest hope of serving
their country in such positions.

And this evil of reserved places is not restricted by any means to
public control. You cannot both have a system and not have a system,
and the British have a system of hereditary aristocracy that infects
the whole atmosphere of English thought with the persuasion that what a
man may attempt is determined by his caste. It is here, and nowhere
else, that the clue to so much inefficiency as one finds it in
contemporary British activity lies. The officers of the British Army
instead of being sedulously picked from the whole population are drawn
from a really quite small group of families, and, except for those who
are called "gentleman rankers," to enlist is the very last way in the
world to become a British officer. As a very natural corollary only
broken men and unambitious men of the lowest class will consent to
become ordinary private soldiers, except during periods of extreme
patriotic excitement. The men who enter the Civil Service also, know
perfectly well that though they may possess the most brilliant
administrative powers and develop and use themselves with relentless
energy, they will never win for themselves or their wives one tithe of
the public honour that comes by right to the heir to a dukedom. A
dockyard hand who uses his brains and makes a suggestion that may save
the country thousands of pounds will get--a gratuity.

Throughout all English affairs the suggestion of this political system