and almost
impossible things. It is these two spirits that are fighting for the
possession and control of our machine civilization. I watch the machines
and the men beside them and see which side they are on. The labourer who
is doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist who
is giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the one
side (the vast, lazy, mean majority of employers and employees), and
there may be seen standing on the other side against them, battling for
our world, another small but mighty group made up of the labourer who
loves his work more than his wages, and the capitalist who loves the
thing he makes more than the profit. In other words, the fate of our
modern civilization, with all its marvellous machines on it, its art
galleries and its churches, is all hanging to-day on the battle between
the spirit of achievement, the spirit of creating things, and the spirit
of weariness or the spirit of thinking of ways of getting out of things.

It does not take very long to see which one prefers when one considers
the problem of living in one world or the other. If we are to take our
choice between living in a world run by tired men and a world run by
inspired ones, most of us will have little difficulty in deciding which
we would prefer, and which one we are bound to have. I have been moved
to come forward with the idea of inspired employers--or, as I have
called it, "Inspired Millionaires"--because it would seem to me inspired
employers are the very least we can ask for; for certainly if even our
employers cannot be inspired or rested and strong, we cannot expect
their overworked workmen to be. There is no hope for us but to write
our books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the world
in the hands of the Strong, and to help keep its institutions and
customs out of the hands of the overworked. Overworked mechanical
employers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problem
of the overworked, except in a small, tired, mean, resentful, temporary
way.

And so, as I look about me and watch the machines and the men who are
working with the machines, or owning them, it is on this principle that
I find myself taking sides. I will not live, if I can help it, in a
world that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworked
and mechanical men. Have I not seen tired, mechanical men, whole
generations of them, vast mobs of them, the men who