To responsible men of affairs the complexity of modern civilization is a daily lesson in the necessity of not pressing any claim too far, of understanding opposing points of view, of seeking to reconcile them, of conducting matters so that there is some kind of harmony in a plural society. This accounts, I think, for the increasing use of political devices which are wholly unknown in simpler societies. There is, for example, the ideal of a civil service. It is wholly modern and it is quite revolutionary. For it assumes that a great deal of the business of the state can and must be carried on by a class of men who have no personal and no party allegiance, who are in fact neutral in politics and concerned only with the execution [p272] of a task. I know how imperfectly the civil service works, but that it should exist at all, and that the ideal it embodies should be generally acknowledged, is profound testimony as to how inherent in the modern situation is the concept of disinterestedness. The theory of an independent judiciary arises out of the same need for disinterested judgment. Even more significant, perhaps, is the use in all political debates of the evidence of technicians, experts, and neutral investigators. The statesman who imagined he had thought up a solution for a social problem while he was in his bath would be a good deal of a joke; even if he had stumbled on a good idea, he would not dare to commit himself to it without elaborate preliminary surveys, investigations, hearings, conferences, and the like. Men occupying responsible posts in the Great Society have become aware, in short, that their guesses and their prejudices are untrustworthy, and that successful decisions can be made only in a neutral spirit by comparing their hypotheses with their understanding of reality. 5. _Government in the People_ It has been the cause of considerable wonder to many persons that the most complex modern communities, where the old loyalties are most completely dissolved, where authority has so little prestige, where moral codes are held in such small esteem, should nevertheless have proved to be far more impervious to the strain of war and revolution than the older and simpler types of civilization. It has been Russia, China, Poland, Italy, Spain, rather than England, Germany, Belgium, and the United States which have been most disorderly in the post-war [p273] period. The contrary might have been expected. It might well have been anticipated that the highly organized, delicately poised social mechanisms would disintegrate the most easily.