"Well, sir?"

"Inasmuch as everything has its reasons, be they geographical,
sociological, or otherwise . . ." and he mused again. "Let me tell you
what I think as regards our respective English and Italian points of
view," he said at last. "And to begin with--a few generalities! We may
hold that success in modern life consists in correctly appreciating the
principles which underlie our experiences--in what may be called the
scientific attitude towards things in general. Now, do the English
cultivate this attitude? Not sufficiently. They are in the stage of
those mediaeval scholars who contentedly alleged separate primary causes
for each phenomenon, instead of seeking, by the investigation of
secondary ones, for the inevitable interdependence of the whole. In
other words, they do not subordinate facts; they co-ordinate them. Your
politicians and all your public men are guided by impulse--by
expediency, as they prefer to call it; they are empirical; they never
attempt to codify their conduct; they despise it as theorizing. What
happens? This old-fashioned hand-to-mouth system of theirs invariably
breaks down here and there. And then f Then they trust to some divine
interposition, some accident, to put things to rights again. The success
of the English is largely built up on such accidents--on the mistakes of
other people. Provi dence has favoured them so far, on the whole; but
one day it may leave them in the lurch, as it did the anti-scientific
Russians in their war with the Japanese. One day other people will
forget to make these pleasant mistakes."

He paused, and I forbore to interrupt his eloquence.

"To come now to the practical application--to this particular instance.