POSTSCRIPT OF 1919

theoretically, the suspicion that the methods by which they are chosen and promoted, while they obviously in no way favour fitness, may actually tend to favour unfitness. Of the hereditary class it may at any rate be said that while it does not in any special degree include the fit, its composition is random and in no way tainted by popular standards of suitability or by the prejudices and conventions of the examination room. It would seem, then, that none of the methods by which society appoints its directors shows any promise of working towards the effective intervention of the intellect in social affairs. In reaching this conclusion we have perhaps passed too lightly over the claims of the trained official as a possible nucleus of an ultimate scientific statecraft. The present-day controversies as to the nationalization of various industries give an especial interest to this very problem, and illustrate how unpromising a source of knowledge is political discussion. One group of advocates points to the obvious economies of conducting industry on the great scale and without the destructive effects of competition; the other group points to the infirmities which always have infected officially conducted enterprises. Both sides would seem to be perfectly right so far and both to be wrong when {258} the first goes on to affirm that governments as they now are can and do conduct industrial affairs quite satisfactorily, and the second goes on to affirm that the only mechanism by which society can get its work effectively done is commercial competition, and that the only adequate motive is greed. It seems to have escaped the notice of both parties to the controversy that no civilized country has evolved, or begun to evolve, or thought of evolving a method of selecting and training its public servants that bears any rational relation to their fitness for the art of government. It is not here denied that selection and training are both of them severe in many countries. Mere severity, however, as long as it is quite without relevance, is manifestly worthless. We are forced to the conclusion, therefore, that to expect an effective statecraft to be evolved from the official, whether of the Chinese, the Prussian, or any other type, is a mere dream. To encourage such a hope