no apology
for returning to it here and examining it in the light of various
afterthoughts and with fresh suggestions.

I first broached this idea in a book called "Anticipations," wherein I
described a possible development of thought and concerted action which
I called the New Republicanism, and afterwards I redrew the thing
rather more elaborately in my "Modern Utopia." I had been struck by the
apparently chaotic and wasteful character of most contemporary reform
movements, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that those who aimed at
organizing society and replacing chaos and waste by wise arrangements,
might very well begin by producing a more effective organization
for their own efforts. These complexities of good intention made me
impatient, and I sought industriously in my mind for a short cut
through them. In doing so I think I overlooked altogether too much how
heterogeneous all progressive thought and progressive people must be.

In my "Modern Utopia" I turned this idea of an organized brotherhood
about very thoroughly and looked at it from this point and that; I
let it loose as it were, and gave it its fullest development, and so
produced a sort of secular Order of governing men and women. In a spirit
entirely journalistic I called this the Order of the Samurai, for at the
time I wrote there was much interest in Bushido because of the capacity
for hardship and self-sacrifice this chivalrous culture appears to
have developed in the Japanese. These Samurai of mine were a sort of
voluntary nobility who supplied the administrative and organizing forces
that held my Utopian world together. They were the "New Republicans"
of my "Anticipations" and "Mankind in the Making," much developed and
supposed triumphant and ruling the world.

I sought of course to set out these ideas as attractively as possible in
my books, and they have as a matter of fact proved very attractive to a
certain number of people. Quite a number have wanted to go on with them.
Several little organizations of Utopians and Samurai and the like have
sprung up and informed me of themselves, and some survive; and young men
do still at times drop into my world "personally or by letter" declaring
themselves New Republicans.

All this has been very helpful and at times a little embarrassing to
me. It has given me an opportunity of seeing the ideals I flung into
the distance beyond Sirius and among the mountain snows coming home
partially incarnate in