ation.

So also, men find an invidious distinction in such matters of physical
magnitude as their country's area, the number of its population, the
size of its cities, the extent of its natural resources, its aggregate
wealth and its wealth per capita, its merchant marine and its foreign
trade. As a ground of invidious complacency these phenomena of physical
magnitude and pecuniary traffic are no better and no worse than such
immaterial assets as the majesty of the sovereign or the perfections of
the language. They are matters in which the common man is concerned
only by the accident of domicile, and his only connection with these
things is an imaginary joint interest in their impressiveness. To these
things he has contributed substantially nothing, and from them he
derives no other merit or advantage than a patriotic inflation. He takes
pride in these things in an invidious way, and there is no good reason
why he should not; just as there is also no good reason why he should,
apart from the fact that the common man is so constituted that he,
mysteriously, takes pride in these things that concern him not.

* * * * *

Of the several groups or classes of persons within the political
frontiers, whose particular interests run systematically at cross
purposes with those of the community at large under modern conditions,
the class of masters, rulers, authorities,--or whatever term may seem
most suitable to designate that category of persons whose characteristic
occupation is to give orders and command deference,--of the several
orders and conditions of men these are, in point of substantial motive
and interest, most patently at variance with all the rest, or with the
fortunes of the common man. The class will include civil and military
authorities and whatever nobility there is of a prescriptive and
privileged kind. The substantial interest of these classes in the common
welfare is of the same kind as the interest which a parasite has in the
well-being of his host; a sufficiently substantial interest, no doubt,
but there is in this relation nothing like a community of interest. Any
gain on the part of the community at large will materially serve the
needs of this group of personages, only in so far as it may afford them
a larger volume or a wider scope for what has in latterday colloquial
phrase been called "graft." These personages are, of course, not to be
spoken of with disrespect or with t