r-owned paper, like that of hourly papers,
and that wonderfully powerful cosmic newspaper syndicate, is simply
another instance of prophesying based only on a present trend, an
expansion of the obvious, instead of an analysis of determining forces.

[36] One striking illustration of the distinctive possibilities of
democratic government came to light during the last term of office of
the present patriotic British Government. As a demonstration of
patriotism large sums of money were voted annually for the purpose of
building warships, and the patriotic common man paid the taxes gladly
with a dream of irresistible naval predominance to sweeten the payment.
But the money was not spent on warships; only a portion of it was spent,
and the rest remained to make a surplus and warm the heart of the common
man in his tax-paying capacity. This artful dodge was repeated for
several years; the artful dodger is now a peer, no doubt abjectly
respected, and nobody in the most patriotic party so far evolved is a
bit the worse for it. In the organizing expedients of all popular
governments, as in the prospectuses of unsound companies, the
disposition is to exaggerate the nominal capital at the expense of the
working efficiency. Democratic armies and navies are always short, and
probably will always be short, of ammunition, paint, training and
reserve stores; battalions and ships, since they count as units, are
over-numerous and go short-handed, and democratic army reform almost
invariably works out to some device for multiplying units by fission,
and counting men three times instead of twice in some ingenious and
plausible way. And this must be so, because the sort of men who come
inevitably to power under democratic conditions are men trained by all
the conditions of their lives to so set appearances before realities as
at last to become utterly incapable of realities.

VI

WAR

In shaping anticipations of the future of war there arises a certain
difficulty about the point of departure. One may either begin upon such
broad issues as the preceding forecasts have opened, and having
determined now something of the nature of the coming State and the force
of its warlike inclination, proceed to speculate how this vast
ill-organized fourfold organism will fight; or one may set all that
matter aside for a space, and having regard chiefly to the continually
more potent appliances physical science offers the soldier, we may try
to