erests of sons and daughters and launch them on the same path. From
these, and from the first stratum, the representatives of Germany in
foreign lands are chosen, and in this way a certain familiarity with
international life and society will be maintained. They will have the
provision necessary for their position abroad, and will also find
ways and means to keep up a higher standard of life at home. Persons
in possession of irregular means of well-being will offer a great deal
to establish connexions with these circles, which control so many
levers in the machine of State.

The third group consists of the descendants of what was once the
leading class in culture and in economics. Here we find a spirit
similar to that of the refugees, _emigres_ and Huguenots of the past.
The lower they sink in external power, the more tenaciously they hold
to their memories. Every family knows every other and cherishes the
lustre of its name, a lustre augmented by legendary recollections, all
the more when the achievements of their class are ostentatiously
ignored in the new social order. People spare and save to the last
extremity in order to preserve and hand down some heirloom--a musical
instrument, a library, a manuscript, a picture or two. A puritanical
thrift is exercised in order, as far as possible, to maintain
education, culture and intellectuality on the old level; to this class
culture, refinement of life as an end in itself, the practice of
religion, classical music, and artistic feeling will fly for refuge.
No other class understands this one; it holds itself aloof, it looks
different from the rest in its occupations, its habits, its garb and
its forms of life. It supplies the new order with its scholars, its
clergy, its higher teaching power, its representatives of the most
disinterested and intellectual callings. Like the monasteries of the
Middle Ages, it forms an island of the past. Its influence rises and
falls periodically, according to the current ideas of the time, but
its position is assured by its voluntary sacrifices, by its knowledge
and by the purity of its motives.

A fourth inexpugnable and influential stratum will in all probability
be formed by the middle-class landowners and the substantial peasants.
Even though the socialization of the land should be radically carried
through--which is not likely to be the case--it will remain on paper.
A class of what may be called State-tenants, estate-managers, or
lea