ders of co-operative organizations will very much resemble a
landowning class. Its traditional experience and the ties that bind it
to the soil make it a closed and well-defined body, self-conscious and
masterful through the importance of its calling, its indispensability
and its individualism. It suffers no dictation as regards its manner
of life. Here we shall see the conservative traditions of the country
strongly mustered for defence, incapable of being eliminated as a
political force, and forming a counterpoise to the radical democracy
of the towns.

Everywhere we find a state of strain and of cleavage. The
single-stratum condition of society cannot be reached without a
profound inward change; politics are still stirred and shaken by
conflicts, and society by the strife of classes. A very different
picture from the promised Utopian Paradise of a common feeding-ground
for lions and sheep!

We are all aggrieved by the illegal opulence of the profiteers, but we
are all liable to the infection. The feudalistic Fronde awaits its
opportunity. The aristocracy of office endeavours to monopolize the
State-machine. The _emigres_ of culture find themselves looked askance
at, on suspicion of intellectual arrogance, and they insist that the
country cannot get on without them. The agriculturalists are feared,
when they show a tendency to revolt against the towns. The ruling
class, that is to say the more or less educated masses of the
city-democracy, looks in impatient discontent for the state of general
well-being which refuses to be realized, lays the blame alternately on
the four powerful strata and on the profiteers, and fights now this
group now that, for better conditions of living.

But the conditions of living do not improve--they get worse. The level
of the nation's output has been sinking from the first day of the
Revolution onwards. The absolute productivity of work, the relative
efficacy and the quality of the product, have all deteriorated. With a
smaller turnover we have witnessed a falling-off in the excellence of
the goods, in research-work, and in finish. Industrial plant has been
worked to death and has not yet recovered. Auxiliary industries,
accessories and raw materials have fallen back. High-quality
workmanship has suffered from defective schooling, youthful
indiscipline and the loss of manual dexterity. The new social order
has lost a generation of leaders in technique, scholarship and
economics. Unive