mes. Instead of the sturdy establishment in prejudice
of Bert's grandfather, to whom the word "Frenchified" was the ultimate
term of contempt, there flowed through Bert's brain a squittering
succession of thinly violent ideas about German competition, about
the Yellow Danger, about the Black Peril, about the White Man's
Burthen--that is to say, Bert's preposterous right to muddle further the
naturally very muddled politics of the entirely similar little cads to
himself (except for a smear of brown) who smoked cigarettes and rode
bicycles in Buluwayo, Kingston (Jamaica), or Bombay. These were Bert's
"Subject Races," and he was ready to die--by proxy in the person of any
one who cared to enlist--to maintain his hold upon that right. It kept
him awake at nights to think that he might lose it.

The essential fact of the politics of the age in which Bert Smallways
lived--the age that blundered at last into the catastrophe of the War in
the Air--was a very simple one, if only people had had the intelligence
to be simple about it. The development of Science had altered the scale
of human affairs. By means of rapid mechanical traction, it had brought
men nearer together, so much nearer socially, economically, physically,
that the old separations into nations and kingdoms were no longer
possible, a newer, wider synthesis was not only needed, but imperatively
demanded. Just as the once independent dukedoms of France had to fuse
into a nation, so now the nations had to adapt themselves to a wider
coalescence, they had to keep what was precious and possible, and
concede what was obsolete and dangerous. A saner world would have
perceived this patent need for a reasonable synthesis, would have
discussed it temperately, achieved and gone on to organise the great
civilisation that was manifestly possible to mankind. The world of
Bert Smallways did nothing of the sort. Its national governments, its
national interests, would not hear of anything so obvious; they were
too suspicious of each other, too wanting in generous imaginations. They
began to behave like ill-bred people in a crowded public car, to squeeze
against one another, elbow, thrust, dispute and quarrel. Vain to
point out to them that they had only to rearrange themselves to be
comfortable. Everywhere, all over the world, the historian of the early
twentieth century finds the same thing, the flow and rearrangement
of human affairs inextricably entangled by the old areas, the o