o. There is the man who has made money
in business, and late in the day conceives the idea of entering
Parliament--which he sometimes succeeds in doing even when he has been
unable to avoid making an election speech or two. There is the
idealist who takes up political work with the sole object of doing
useful service. There is the well-informed and open-minded student of
public affairs. There is the intellectualist. But the great majority
are as we have described them.

The introduction of a far-reaching system of political education would
have three results, each of which would reinforce the others in putting
an end to the present state of affairs. Make every one a politician,
and "politicians" will become rare. Politics will cease to be an
essentially specialised profession; men will no longer "go into" it as
into a thing apart. Some will administer, guide, and direct; others
will know and criticise. But every one will be politically active; and
instead of the stronghold of politics in a desert of ignorance, there
will be that interplay of political functions, distributed among the
whole body of the people, which is the real meaning of democracy.

And not only will politics cease to be a preserve, kept ready for
spoliation by the clever, the pushing, the rich, and the well-born, but
also the very desire in these men so to misuse their citizenship will
cease altogether to come to birth. For political education, properly
so called, awakens political idealism; it teaches principles, arouses
aspirations after public service. The "politician" is a man who finds
in political intrigue the fruitful source of his own advancement; one
who catches at every breeze to further his personal ends. But if
politics had formed the basis of his education; if, while his idealism
was still untainted, he had been led to consider fundamental
principles, and to examine public affairs in the light of them: then
the potential goodness of his political nature would have been so fully
realised, that no vain or mean thing would disfigure his maturity.
"Ah, but 'potential goodness' and 'while his idealism was still
untainted'; there's the rub," we hear the cynic saying. Such criticism
moves us not at all. We had to do during the course of our experiment
with a great number of boys of many different types; one can recall
hardly a case in which, when vital thought had really been awakened,
often after much sweat and agony, virtue was n