al mind. It gives offence here,
it perplexes and bores there; no more than the boss politician can the
paper of great circulation afford to work consistently for any ulterior
aim.

This is the limit of the power of the modern newspaper of large
circulation, the newspaper that appeals to the grey element, to the
average democratic man, the newspaper of the deliquescence, and if our
previous conclusion that human society has ceased to be homogeneous and
will presently display new masses segregating from a great confusion,
holds good, that will be the limit of its power in the future. It may
undergo many remarkable developments and modifications,[35] but none of
these tend to give it any greater political importance than it has now.
And so, after all, our considerations of the probable developments of
the party machine give us only negative results, so long as the grey
social confusion continues. Subject to that continuance the party
machine will probably continue as it is at present, and Democratic
States and governments follow the lines upon which they run at the
present time.

Now, how will the emergent class of capable men presently begin to
modify the existing form of government in the ostensibly democratic
countries and democratic monarchies? There will be very many variations
and modifications of the methods of this arrival, an infinite
complication of detailed incidents, but a general proposition will be
found to hold good. The suppression of the party machine in the purely
democratic countries and of the official choice of the rich and
privileged rulers in the more monarchical ones, by capable operative and
administrative men inspired by the belief in a common theory of social
order, will come about--peacefully and gradually as a process of change,
or violently as a revolution--but inevitably as the outcome either of
the imminence or else of the disasters of war.

That all these governments of confusion will drift towards war, with a
spacious impulse and a final vehemence quite out of comparison greater
than the warlike impulses of former times, is a remarkable but by no
means inexplicable thing. A tone of public expression, jealous and
patriotic to the danger-point, is an unavoidable condition under which
democratic governments exist. To be patriotically quarrelsome is
imperative upon the party machines that will come to dominate the
democratic countries. They will not possess detailed and definite
policies a