But to-day, just when we must have the leading of moral, judicious, and well-informed minds, or perish, we have only our statesmen. It never occurs to the crowd that its business would be more successfully transacted by a chance group, say of headmasters of elementary schools, than by the statesmen who, at Versailles recently, dared not face the shocking realities because these could not be squared with a Treaty which had to frame the figments of the hustings. The trouble with our statesmen is that they have been concerned hitherto merely to attend to the machinery, running freely and with little friction, of industrial society. They did not create that machinery. They but took it over. They knew nothing of the principles which motived it. Our statesmen were only practical politicians and business men. They held in contempt the fine abstract theories of physics, mechanics, and dynamics. It was safe for them to do so. The machinery went on running, apparently of its own volition. All went well until the War. Now the propeller-shaft of industrial society is fractured, our ship is wallowing in the trough of the seas, and the men who should put things right for us do not even know that it is the main shaft on which they should concentrate. They are irritating the passengers by changing the cabins, confiscating luggage, insisting on higher fares, cutting down the rations, and instructing the sailors in the goose-step; but the ship has no way on her, and the sound of breakers grows louder from a sombre, precipitous, and unknown coast. XXVI. Joy