lunch with them next day, and then it was we went into things. A woman
Factory Inspector and the Educational Minister for New Banksland and his
wife were also there, but I don't remember they made any contribution
to the conversation. The Baileys saw to that. They kept on at me in an
urgent litigious way.

"We have read your book," each began--as though it had been a joint
function. "And we consider--"

"Yes," I protested, "I think--"

That was a secondary matter.

"They did not consider," said Altiora, raising her voice and going right
over me, "that I had allowed sufficiently for the inevitable development
of an official administrative class in the modern state."

"Nor of its importance," echoed Oscar.

That, they explained in a sort of chorus, was the cardinal idea of their
lives, what they were up to, what they stood for. "We want to suggest to
you," they said--and I found this was a stock opening of theirs--"that
from the mere necessities of convenience elected bodies MUST avail
themselves more and more of the services of expert officials. We have
that very much in mind. The more complicated and technical affairs
become, the less confidence will the elected official have in himself.
We want to suggest that these expert officials must necessarily develop
into a new class and a very powerful class in the community. We want to
organise that. It may be THE power of the future. They will necessarily
have to have very much of a common training. We consider ourselves as
amateur unpaid precursors of such a class."...

The vision they displayed for my consideration as the aim of
public-spirited endeavour, seemed like a harder, narrower, more
specialised version of the idea of a trained and disciplined state that
Willersley and I had worked out in the Alps. They wanted things more
organised, more correlated with government and a collective purpose,
just as we did, but they saw it not in terms of a growing collective
understanding, but in terms of functionaries, legislative change, and
methods of administration....

It wasn't clear at first how we differed. The Baileys were very anxious
to win me to co-operation, and I was quite prepared at first to identify
their distinctive expressions with phrases of my own, and so we came
very readily into an alliance that was to last some years, and break at
last very painfully. Altiora manifestly liked me, I was soon discussing
with her the perplexity I found in placing myse