has spread. The employer is of a different caste from his workmen, the
captain is of a different caste from his crew, even the Teachers'
Register is specially classified to prevent "young gentlemen" being
taught by the only men who, as a class, know how to teach in England,
namely, the elementary teachers; everywhere the same thing is to be
found. And while it is, it is absurd to expect a few platitudes about
Freedom, and snobbishness, and a few pious hopes about efficiency, to
counteract the system's universal, incessant teaching, its lesson of
limited effort within defined possibilities. Only under one condition
may such a system rise towards anything that may be called national
vigour, and that is when there exists a vigorous Court which sets the
fashion of hard work. A keen King, indifferent to feminine influence,
may, for a time, make a keen nation, but that is an exceptional state
of affairs, and the whole shape of the fabric gravitates towards
relapse. Even under such an influence the social stratification will
still, in the majority of cases, prevent powers and posts falling to
the best possible man. In the majority of cases the best that can be
hoped for, even then, will be to see the best man in the class
privileged in relation to any particular service, discharging that
service. The most efficient nation in the world to-day is believed to
be Germany, which is--roughly speaking--an aristocratic monarchy, it is
dominated by a man of most unkingly force of character, and by a noble
tradition of educational thoroughness that arose out of the shames of
utter defeat, and, as a consequence, a great number of people contrive
to forget that the most dazzling display of national efficiency the
world has ever seen followed the sloughing of hereditary institutions
by France. One credits Napoleon too often with the vigour of his
opportunity, with the force and strength it was his privilege to
misdirect and destroy. And one forgets that this present German
efficiency was paralleled in the eighteenth century by Prussia, whose