enterprises; their territorial titles are a mask and a lie. They hamper
the development of the new order, but they cannot altogether prevent
the emergence of new men. The new men come up to power one by one, from
different enterprises, with various traditions, and one by one, before
they can develop a sense of class distinction and collective
responsibility, the old system with its organized "Society" captures
them. If it finds the man obdurate, it takes his wife and daughters,
and it waylays his sons. [Footnote: It is not only British subjects
that are assimilated in this way, the infection of the British system,
the annexation of certain social strata in the Republic by the British
crown, is a question for every thoughtful American. America is less and
less separate from Europe, and the social development of the United
States cannot be a distinct process--it is inevitably bound up in the
general social development of the English-speaking community. The taint
has touched the American Navy, for example, and there are those who
discourage promotion from the ranks--the essential virtue of the
democratic state--because men so promoted would be at a disadvantage
when they met the officers of foreign navies, who were by birth and
training "gentlemen." When they met them socially no doubt was meant;
in war the disadvantage might prove the other way about.] Because the
hereditary kingdom and aristocracy of Great Britain is less and less
representative of economic reality, more and more false to the real
needs of the world, it does not follow that it will disappear, any more
than malarial fever will disappear from a man's blood because it is
irrelevant to the general purpose of his being. These things will only
go when a sufficient number of sufficiently capable and powerful people
are determined they shall go. Until that time they will remain with us,
influencing things about them for evil, as it lies in their nature to
do.