I HAVE been asked by the author of this book to write some words by way of an introduction. The reader who begins the book by reading the preface (as I would advise every reader to do) may very well murmur, as he comes to this introduction, "But what need was there for you?" If such a writ of Certiorari is issued against me, I must at once return an Ignoramus. I really do not know. I will only say that I was asked to write an introduction; and since he who asked me was the son of a colleague at King's College, and had himself at one time been a student of the College, and since, again, this was his first book, and I thought it a live and stimulating book, I consented to do a work of supererogation.

'Three Master Builders and Another." Who is the other? I can only join the reader in trying to guess. Those who see red when they hear or read of anything Red (and I have met such) will at once suggest that he is Lenin. The difficulty is that Lenin after all did build, however grim and even ghastly (as of some edifice in Mars) the beams and pillars of his building may be. Nor has the system which he originally built, even if he himself subsequently altered it in a drastic way, as yet collapsed. Was the other, then, Wilson? After all, he did not build any particularly new structure in his own country; and if he may be said to have sketched a dim adumbration of the League of Nations, he was hardly its "builder." But I should fancy, from my reading of his essay on Wilson, that Mr Box intends to include the President in the circle of the Three, and that he is not meant to be left outside the circumference

Alone and palely loitering

as merely "another." another." For myself, I do not know whether I should really admit Mr Wilson among the elect, or, indeed, whether I should subscribe to the version which Mr Box gives of some portions of his career-as, for example, of his struggles at Princeton, or of the causes which led to his becoming the Governor of New Jersey. There are things in contemporary

history which do not get into books or articles; and what one hears in talk from those who were themselves concerned in events is part of the evidence in the case. All the same, a

man who stamps himself on the hot wax of affairs leaves a pretty clear impression which a student can record and describe; and whatever else Mr Wilson did, he certainly impressed a clear-cut character on everything with which he was concerned.

But who then is "another"? He is not, I should guess, Lenin; he is not, I believe, Mr Wilson. He is neither of the two who are dead; he must be one of the two who are living. He cannot be Venizelos, for he is obviously a master builder after the author's heart. There remains Mussolini. He has built at any rate a new militia; and one sometimes hears of a Fascist organization in England which appears to be a subdued Northern copy of his glowing Roman Legions. He has even sketched plans of a new political and economic organization of Italy; but they appear to remain in the category of sketch plans, which need some definite specifications and elevations before much building can be begun. It would seem that he is the other at any rate for the time being. But he has this advantage over the rest, of whom two have ceased to be, and one has left the practice of politics, that he is still in power, and that he is only forty-one years of age. Time will tell; and office, if it endures, will show the man.

Mr Box has selected the three master builders of his choice. Each has had his programme and his principles: each has wrought greatly, if not always well or wisely, on a great stage. Few of his readers would dispute that Mr Box has hit upon the very figures which general consent would agree to be the most striking of their time in their appeal to popular imagination. There are, of course, others. There is, for example, as Mr Box mentions in his preface, President Masaryk, a thinker, a statesman, the father of his people. There is, again, General Smuts, who must also be counted among the builders of the League of Nations. But we should most of us allow that Mr

Box's choice may stand; and on that basis we may ask, What is a master builder? and, if we are curious enough to ask still another question, which, as we shall see, springs naturally from the answer to the first, we may also ask, Why do the older countries of Western Europe provide no name for inclusion in the list of those who fit the definition?

I take it that a master builder, in the world of politics, is a man who, on a troubled and revolutionary scene, out-tops his fellows, in power of mind or energy of will, or both: a man of ideas—whether they be his own, or, like those of Lenin, borrowed from another-who seeks to bend and hammer into the shape of those ideas the facts of contemporary life when they are heated and made malleable by the fire of turmoil and the glow of his own personality. Of such sort was Napoleon in France, or Bismarck in Germany, or again, if we go far enough back (and it is significant that we have to go so far back), Oliver Cromwell in England. Perhaps the greatest of all was Julius Cæsar perhaps the purest was Abraham Lincoln. Of such we may say, in the words of an old Greek thinker, "One man is to me as ten thousand," or again, in the words of Homer,

οἶος πέπνυται, τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ ἀΐσσουσιν.

"He alone is wise, and they like shadows flit." That is a large thing to say of any man, and a still larger thing for a man to say of himself. Yet some, at any rate, of the men described in this book have had the feeling, "I alone can save this country." A would-be master builder must often have a conceit of his powers, and a power to eliminate others when it comes to the last decision, which are based on a proud and confident self-regard that is never prouder or more confident than when it is a regard for principles which are, perhaps unconsciously, assumed to be enshrined in the self. Lenin and Wilson seem to me to be of this order; with Mussolini there may be more regard for self than for any principles which it enshrines-and yet he too has a principle of ardent nationalism in Venizelos alone I do not see this austere

self-concentration, but more of that power of action by consultation and persuasion of others which is perhaps the highest power of statesmanship.

In what has just been said a reason may already appear for the absence of British names from any list of master builders. We have, perhaps, passed beyond that stage of affairs and that conjunction of events which permit of a master builder. For one thing, such a figure belongs to a time of troubles, when a saviour of society is needed to reconcile or to end grave social conflicts or to achieve an unrealized but ardently desired ideal of national unification. For another thing (and this goes deeper), such a figure belongs to a society which has not yet attained to the stage of organized management of collective thinking. Such organized management of collective thinking is the postulate, as it is the essence, of a safe and sure democracy. It means that every citizen, to the best of his ability, contributes to the common stock of ideas and opinions; it means that by discussion-the sovereign method of collective thought-that common stock is distilled and clarified until there emerges a genuine public opinion and a general will. It means, again, that parties are formed for the conduct of discussion by the formulation of programmes, the defence of programmes by argument, and the realization of programmes (once they are endorsed by public opinion) through the concerted action of their leaders. In a system based on discussion between parties at the bar of public opinion—and that is the system on which we have worked, with an ever-increasing scope of the area of discussion, since the Revolution of 1688-there is little room for any dominant and outstanding master of the event. Collegiate thinking and action takes the place of individual pronunciamentos and coups de main. The highest form of such collegiate thinking and action is a good and harmonious cabinet; and it is a common observation that cabinets are most successful when there is no dominant personality, and a general spirit of loyal team-work is the driving force. The conduct of affairs on this basis means a greyer and less strongly coloured record in the pages of history. Events which are

dominated by a great personality glow with a dramatic vigour ; and indeed there is always a passion among men to personalize politics and to find "the man who did it." But the greatest things are perhaps those which are done by no single man; and the most successful college or school, just as much as the most successful State, may owe its success to the collective thinking of all the best members of its governing body. There is a charm and a drive in the single human personality; there is a wisdom and a sanity in a group of persons resolved to act loyally together. When once a community is prepared for collegiate guidance, it is a mistake for any person to draw affairs exclusively into the orbit of his own personality. It was this mistake which led to the eventual shipwreck of Mr Wilson, for all his high thinking and all the earnestness of his moral purpose.

There is a passage in Mr Box's essay on Mussolini (pp. 159-160) which states admirably the argument for a sound democracy soundly based on collective thought. I will end by quoting some sentences from that passage. "Leadership is required, but leadership is not, as some imagine, incompatible with truly representative government. The leader to be efficient should not be elevated so far above criticism that he hears it merely as 'the winding of a shell on the far-off sea-shore.' Rather his place is in the thick of the wordy battle from which emerge measures of national policy tested by criticism." These are good and true sayings.

ERNEST BARKER

November 17, 1924