Men like Winwood Reade thought that the New World would be indeed a new world. They idealised its apparent emancipations. But as the more successful of the toiling farmers and traders of republican America rose one by one to affluence, leisure, and freedom, it was far more easy for them to adopt the polished and prepared social patterns and usages of Europe than to work out a complete new civilisation in accordance with their equalitarian professions. Yet there remains a gap in their adapted “Society.” Henry James, that acute observer of subtle social flavours, has pointed out the peculiar _headlessness_ of social life in America because of the absence of court functions to “go on” to and justify the assembling and dressing. The social life has intimated the preparation for the Court without any political justification. In Europe the assimilation of the wealthy European industrialist and financier by the old order has been parallel and naturally more logically complete. He really does find a court to “go on” to. His social scheme is still undecapitated. In this way the complex of classes vitally involved in the old militant nationalist order is mightily reinforced by much larger masses of imitative and annexed and more or less assimilated rich and active people. The great industrialist marries the daughter of the marquis and has a couple of sons in the Guards and a daughter who is a princess. The money of the American Leeds, fleeing from the social futility of its land of origin, helps bolster up a mischievous monarchy in Greece. The functional and private life of the new men are thus at war with one another. The real interests of the great industrialist or financier lie in cosmopolitan organisation and the material development of the world commonweal, but his womenfolk pin flags all over him and his sons are prepared to sacrifice themselves and all his business creations, for the sake of trite splendours and Ruritanian romance. But just so far as the great business organiser is capable and creative, so far is he likely to realise and resent the price in frustration that the old order obliges him to pay for amusement, social interest and domestic peace and comfort. The Open Conspiracy threatens him with no effacement; it may even appear with an air of release. If he had women who were interested in his business affairs instead of women who had to be amused, and if he realised in time the practical, intellectual and moral kidnapping of his sons and daughters by the old order that goes on, he might pass quite easily from acquiescence to antagonism. But in this respect he cannot act single-handed. This is a social and not an individual operation. The Open Conspiracy, it is clear, must include in its activities a great fight for the souls of economically functional people. It must carve out a Society of its own from Society. Only by the creation of a new and better social life can it resist the many advantages and attractions of the old.