But it may be objected that public sentiment in a democracy will not support high salaries even for the most important public services, that democracies notoriously remunerate their higher officials very much less adequately than monarchies. The time is ripe, however, for challenging this attitude. As long as government work is looked upon as a dull, soulless, and not extremely useful routine, popular opposition to high salaries is not only comprehensible but praiseworthy. Once convinced of the value of certain services, however (and there is plentiful opportunity to do this), it is doubtful if self-governing peoples will show themselves less intelligent than kings. Even now engineers directing great and unusual public undertakings are frequently paid larger salaries than high officers of government charged with the execution of ordinary functions. Recognition of the importance of the work of the specialist is much more common now than formerly. The development of science and large scale industry is daily enforcing this lesson. As regards the unwillingness of democracy to pay well, a change that has recently come over the policy of certain labour unions is worth noting. Instead of ordering strikes they have on occasion taken a lesson from the procedure of their employers, and resorted to the courts for the redress of grievances. And in doing so they have called in the very ablest lawyers they could find, paying the latter out of the funds of the union fees as large as they could have earned on the opposing side. A similar illustration is afforded by the policy of the Social-democratic party in Germany which for a considerable period has recognised and met the necessity of remunerating its leaders in editorial, parliamentary, and propagandist work at professional rates far higher than the average wages received by the party rank and file.[59] Demos may despise aristocracy of birth but he is perhaps not so incapable of comprehending the aristocracy of service as many of his critics suppose. * * * * *