nder all its mask of machinery and instruction, the German
regimentation of the poor was the relapse of barbarians into slavery. I
can see no escape from it for ourselves in the ruts of our present
reforms, but only by doing what the mediaevals did after the other
barbarian defeat: beginning, by guilds and small independent groups,
gradually to restore the personal property of the poor and the personal
freedom of the family. If the English really attempt that, the English
have at least shown in the war, to any one who doubted it, that they
have not lost the courage and capacity of their fathers, and can carry
it through if they will. If they do not do so, if they continue to move
only with the dead momentum of the social discipline which we learnt
from Germany, there is nothing before us but what Mr. Belloc, the
discoverer of this great sociological drift, has called the Servile
State. And there are moods in which a man, considering that conclusion
of our story, is half inclined to wish that the wave of Teutonic
barbarism had washed out us and our armies together; and that the world
should never know anything more of the last of the English, except that
they died for liberty.

THE END

PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.

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