ge, a
greater fitness for the highest work than would be shown by many of
those who had entered by the more advanced examination.

But however able our officials are, and however varied their origin, the
danger of the narrowness and rigidity which has hitherto so generally
resulted from official life would still remain, and must be guarded
against by every kind of encouragement to free intellectual
development. The German Emperor did good service the other day when he
claimed (in a semi-official communication on the Tweedmouth letter) that
the persons who are Kings and Ministers in their official capacity have
as Fachmaenner (experts) other and wider rights in the republic of
thought. One only wishes that he would allow his own officials after
their day's work to regroup themselves, in the healthy London fashion,
with labour leaders, and colonels, and schoolmasters, and court ladies,
and members of parliament, as individualists or socialists, or
protectors of African aborigines, or theosophists, or advocates of a
free stage or a free ritual.

The intellectual life of the government official is indeed becoming part
of a problem which every year touches us all more closely. In literature
and science as well as in commerce and industry the independent producer
is dying out and the official is taking his place. We are nearly all of
us officials now, bound during our working days, whether we write on a
newspaper, or teach in a university, or keep accounts in a bank, by
restrictions on our personal freedom in the interest of a larger
organisation. We are little influenced by that direct and obvious
economic motive which drives a small shopkeeper or farmer or country
solicitor to a desperate intensity of scheming how to outstrip his
rivals or make more profit out of his employees. If we merely desire to
do as little work and enjoy as much leisure as possible in our lives, we
all find that it pays us to adopt that steady unanxious 'stroke' which
neither advances nor retards promotion.

The indirect stimulus, therefore, of interest and variety, of public
spirit and the craftsman's delight in his skill, is becoming more
important to us as a motive for the higher forms of mental effort, and
threats and promises of decrease or increase of salary less important.
And because those higher efforts are needed not only for the advantage
of the community but for the good of our own souls we are all of us
concerned in teaching those dis