manifestations in France. The German idea has sufficient power to unite
the free minds of half the world against it. But is it not already
invading, and Will it not still more invade, the minds of rulers? All
Governments are august kinsmen of each other, and discreetly imitate
each other in policy where it may conduce to power or efficiency.
The efficiency of the highly organized State as a vehicle for the
manifestation of power must today be sinking into the minds of those who
guide the destinies of races. The State in these islands, before a
year of war has passed, has already assumed control over myriads of
industrial enterprises. The back-wash of great wars, their reaction
within the national being after prolonged effort, is social disturbance;
and it seems that the State will be unable easily, after this war,
to relax its autocratic power. There may come a time when it would be
possible for it to do so; but the habit of overlordship will have grown,
there will be many who will wish it to grow still more, and a thousand
reasons can be found why the mastery over national organizations should
be relaxed but little. The recoil on society after the war will be
almost as powerful as the energy expended in conflict; and our political
engineers will have to provide for the recoil. By the analogy of the
French Revolution, by what we see taking place today, it seems safe to
prophesy that the State will become more dominant over the lives of men
than ever before.

In a quarter of a century there will hardly be anybody so obscure, so
isolated in his employment, that he will not, by the development of the
organized State, be turned round to face it and to recognize it as the
most potent factor in his life. From that it follows of necessity that
literature will be concerned more and more with the shaping of the
character of this Great Being. In free democracies, where the State
interferes little with the lives of men, the mood in literature tends
to become personal and subjective; the poets sing a solitary song about
nature, love, twilight, and the stars; the novelists deal with the
lives of private persons, enlarging individual liberties of action and
thought. Few concern themselves with the character of the State. But
when it strides in, an omnipresent overlord, organizing and directing
life and industry, then the individual imagination must be directed to
that collective life and power. For one writer today concerned with hi