"When the present war broke out was there a firmer loyalty or a more patriotic response to the call to arms among your people or among mine? Will your people fight and suffer more gladly for their 'democratic' ideals than mine will for their Kaiser and Fatherland? ... Surely, upon your own principles no comparison should be possible between the warmth of your devotion and the tepidity of ours. "Is our system really so reactionary and mechanical as you imagine? In an age which has learned {151} as its special lesson the advantages, in ordinary business affairs of life, of organisation, thoroughness, long views, reticence, and combined effort, guided by a strong central control, is it reaction, or is it progress, to aim at applying the same principles to the greatest, most complex, and infinitely most important of all businesses--that of government itself? Can a nation hope to survive which refuses, in the name of freedom, to submit to control in these respects, if it should be faced by competition with another, which has been wise enough to employ quiet experts instead of loquacious amateurs--any more than a cotton mill could escape bankruptcy were it managed on a system of party government? "Our civil service, which you are pleased to describe as a Bureaucracy, is distinguished among all others existing at the present time, by the calibre of its members, by its efficiency and honesty, by its poverty, and not less by the honour in which it is held notwithstanding its poverty. You laugh at our love for calling men, and also their wives, by the titles of their various offices--Herr this and Frau that, from the humblest inspector of drains to the Imperial Chancellor himself! And no doubt there is a ludicrous side to this practice. But it marks at least one important thing--that membership of our civil service is regarded as conferring honour. So far, we have succeeded in maintaining public officials of all grades in higher popular respect than men who devote their lives to building up private fortunes, and also to those others who delight and excel in interminable debate.