The net outcome of the latter-day return to warlike enterpriae is, no doubt, Becurely to be rated as fostering a reveraion to national ideals of servile status and to institutions of a despotic character. On the whole and for the present, it makes for conservatism, ultimately for reveraion.
IThe quest of profits leads to a predatory u^* tional policy. The resulting large fortunes call for a massive government apparatus to secure the accumulations, on the one hand, and for large and conspicuous opportunities to spend the resultr ing income, on the other hand ; which means a militant, coercive home administration and something in the way of an imperial court life — a dynastic fountain of honor and a courtly bureau of ceremonial amenities. Such an ideal is not simply a moralist's day-dream ; it is a sound business proposition, in that it lies on the line of policy along which the business interests are moving in their own behalf. If national {that is to say dynastic) ambitions and warlike aims, achievements, spectacles, and discipline be given a large place in the community's life, together with the concomitant coercive police surveillance, then tliere is a fair hope that the
by the paths of distaae and depravity. Nor are the nccumulaled vices to be lightly condemned, Hince their weight alBo falls on the conserrv tive Bide ; being archaic and authGnticated, their cnltural bearing la, on the whole, ulutary.
NATURAL DECAY OF BUSINESS ENTERI'BISE 399
disintegrating trend of the machine dinciplino may be corrected. The regime of statuH, fealty, prerogative, and arbitrary command would