And yet behind all this public
blundering and misconduct and futile mischief, the effective
England was carrying on with the most formidable capacity and
activity. The ostensible England was making the empire sick with
its incontinences, its ignorances, its ferocities, its panics,
and its endless and intolerable blarings of Allied national
anthems in season and out. The esoteric England was proceeding
irresistibly to the conquest of Europe.
The Practical Business Men
>From the beginning the useless people set up a shriek for
"practical business men." By this they meant men who had become
rich by placing their personal interests before those of the
country, and measuring the success of every activity by the
pecuniary profit it brought to them and to those on whom they
depended for their supplies of capital. The pitiable failure of
some conspicuous samples from the first batch we tried of these
poor devils helped to give the whole public side of the war an
air of monstrous and hopeless farce. They proved not only that
they were useless for public work, but that in a well-ordered
nation they would never have been allowed to control private
enterprise.
How the Fools shouted the Wise Men down
Thus, like a fertile country flooded with mud, England showed no
sign of her greatness in the days when she was putting forth all
her strength to save herself from the worst consequences of her
littleness.
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