The most important, though by no means the most expensive, item in the court budget charged against the public, is the Lord Great Chamberlain who conducts the court and executes, either directly or indirectly, all that pertains to the social side of life at the White House. He is always an officer of engineers. He must be a person of knowledge, of tact, of good appearance. Lord Great Chamberlain has ever been a distinguished office. It was never so distinguished as now. And, unless there is some sort of extraordinary convulsion and revulsion, it is destined to become almost eminent. For the White House has entered a new and dazzling period of social splendor which may presently make it as little different from the residence of a monarch as is the Elysée Palace, where lives the President of France’s imperial Democracy. The newly evolved notion of the Presidential office is that it is the centre of political, intellectual and sociological authority and also of social honor. Not only must the democratic--or plutocratic--overlord, anointed with the new kind of divine oil, be the embodiment and exponent of the popular will; he must also be the source of honor, the recognizer of merit. Does one sing well? Does one paint well? Does one write well? Does one lead in education or literature or law or sociology or finance or commerce or trade--or fashion? Is one in the forefront in any line of activity not definitely declared criminal? Then the President of the American people must entertain him, must take his hand in that hand which is a sort of composite of eighty million right hands of fellowship. The approving accents of that voice which is now conceived to be the composite of eighty million approving voices must tickle his ravished ears; he must, at the Presidential board, eat and drink the composite hospitalities of the eighty millions’ dinner or luncheon tables. In a real plain-as-an-old-coat Democracy the President would be a business person only, keeping his official life and his social life separate and distinct. The one would be public, the other private. He would have no more to do privately with those with whom he is officially brought into contact than would the head of a big business with his assistants, employés and customers. Social life is in a democratic society altogether of and by the family; and theoretically the President’s wife and children, the wives and children of the other public officials, are left in private life when the man of the family takes office. Practically, however, they are all elected, and if the written law provides no honors for wife and children and other relatives of the successful candidate, unwritten law must be created to repair the grave, the intolerable omission.