rms. In a vast amount of the public discussion of these
States, the postulates of Democracy are clearly implicit. Quite as much
in reality as the democratic republics of America, are they based not on
classes but upon a confusion; they are, in their various degrees and
with their various individual differences, just as truly governments of
the grey.

It has been argued that the grey is illusory and must sooner or later
pass, and that the colour that will emerge to predominance will take its
shape as a scientifically trained middle-class of an unprecedented
sort, not arising out of the older middle-classes, but replacing them.
This class will become, I believe, at last consciously _the_ State,
controlling and restricting very greatly the three non-functional masses
with which it is as yet almost indistinguishably mingled. The general
nature of its formation within the existing confusion and its emergence
may, I think, with a certain degree of confidence, be already forecast,
albeit at present its beginnings are singularly unpromising and faint.
At present the class of specially trained and capable people--doctors,
engineers, scientific men of all sorts--is quite disproportionally
absent from political life, it does not exist as a factor in that life,
it is growing up outside that life, and has still to develop, much more
to display, a collective intention to come specifically in. But the
forces are in active operation to drag it into the centre of the stage
for all that.

The modern democracy or democratic quasi-monarchy conducts its affairs
as though there was no such thing as special knowledge or practical
education. The utmost recognition it affords to the man who has taken
the pains to know, and specifically to do, is occasionally to consult
him upon specific points and override his counsels in its ampler wisdom,
or to entrust to him some otherwise impossible duty under circumstances
of extreme limitation. The man of special equipment is treated always as
if he were some sort of curious performing animal. The gunnery
specialist, for example, may move and let off guns, but he may not say
where they are to be let off--some one a little ignorant of range and
trajectory does that; the engineer may move the ship and fire the
battery, but only with some man, who does not perfectly understand,
shouting instructions down a tube at him. If the cycle is to be adapted
to military requirements, the thing is entrusted to Lieuten