crudest form) "who is to engage in historical
research in the Bodleian, and who is to go out seaward in November and
catch mackerel?" Such "posers"--they have a thousand variants--convey
the spirit of the living resistance to Socialism; they explain why
every rational man is not an enraptured Socialist at the present time.

Throughout the rest of this book I hope that the reader will be able
to see growing together in this aspect and then in that, in this and
that suggestion, the complex solution of this complex system of
difficulties. My object in raising them now is not to dispose of them,
but to give them the fullest recognition--and to ask the student to
read on. In all these matters the world is imperfect now, and it will
still be imperfect under Socialism--though, I firmly believe, with an
infinitely lesser and altogether nobler imperfection.

But I do want to point out here that though these are reasonable and,
to all undogmatic men, most helpful criticisms of the Socialist
design, they are no sort of justification for things as they are. All
the difficulties that the ordinary exposition of Socialism seems to
leave unsolved are at least equally not solved now. Only rarely does
the right man seem to struggle to his place of adequate opportunity.
Men and women get their chance in various ways; some of implacable
temper and versatile gifts thrust themselves to the position they need
for the exercise of their powers; others display an astonishing
facility in securing honours and occasions they can then only waste;
others, outside their specific gift, are the creatures of luck or the
victims of modesty, tactlessness or incapacity. Most of the large
businesses of the world now are in the hands of private proprietors
and managed either directly by an owner or by directors or managers
acting for directors. The quality of promotion or the recognition of
capacity varies very much in these great concerns, but they are on the
whole probably inferior to the public services. Even where the
administration is keenest it must be remembered it is not seeking the
men who work the machine best, but the men who can work it cheapest
and with the maximum of profit. It is pure romancing to represent the
ordinary business magnate as being in perpetual search for capacity
among the members of his staff. He wants them to get along and not
make trouble.

Among the smaller businesses that still, I suppose, constitute the
bulk of the worl