And sundry other members of the Committee are not much better than the ignoble three. Indeed, your faith in Committees is practically destroyed. You say to yourself, with your blunt, vigorous common sense: ‘If only the Committee would adjourn and leave the whole matter to me, I am sure I could manage it much better than they are doing.’ You consider that a Committee is a device for wasting time and for flattering the conceit of opinionated fools.... Then Mr. Y becomes absolutely impossible. You feel that you are prepared to stand a lot, but that there is a limit and that Mr. Y has gone beyond it. You are ready to work, and to work hard, but you cannot be expected to work with people who are impossible. You decide to send in your resignation to the Chairman at once. I hope you will not send it in. For at least half the Committee are thinking just as you are thinking. And one or two of them are thinking these things, not apropos of Miss X, Mr. Y, or Mrs. Z, but apropos of you! And if you are startled at the spectacle of people persisting in being just themselves in war-work, then the fault is yours, and you should be gently ashamed. You ought to have known that people are never more themselves than in a great crisis, especially when the crisis is prolonged. You ought to be thankful that the Committee has unscaled your eyes to so fundamental a truth. You have realised that we are at war,--you ought also to realise that it takes all sorts to make a world, even a world at war. You ought to imagine what would happen if every member of the Committee, like you, resigned because Mr. Y was impossible, and thus left the impossible Mr. Y in possession of the table and the secretary. Axiom: The most valorous and morally valuable war-work is the work of working with impossible people. And may I warn you that you will later on, if you succeed as a war-worker, encounter more terrible phenomena than Mr. Y, who at the worst can always be out-voted? You will encounter, for example, the famous and fashionable lady who, justifiably relying on human nature’s profound and incurable snobbishness, will give all the hard work to you and those like you, while appropriating all the glory and advertisement for herself. And, more terrible even than the famous and fashionable lady, you will run up against the Official Mind. The Official Mind is the worst of all obstacles to getting things done. And the gravest danger of the war-worker, particularly if he attains high rank on Committees, is the danger of becoming official-minded himself. V