For those who can go with me so far, the question will arise:  How then are we so to reorganize society that we may gain the end in view?  It is a question not easy of solution.  Granted the fact of social differentiation and the necessity of its recognition, how are we to break down the wholly wrong system that now obtains and substitute another in its place?  It would be simple enough if within the period allowed us by safety (apparently not any too extended at the present moment) a working majority of men could achieve, in the old and exact phraseology, that change of heart, that spiritual conversion, that would bring back into permanent authority the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and that sense of right values in life, which together make almost indifferent the nature of the formal devices man creates for the organization of society.  Certainly this is possible; greater miracles have happened in history but, failing this, what?

One turns of course by instinct to old models, but in this is the danger of an attempt at an archaeological restoration, a futile effort at reviving dead forms that have had their day.  In principle, and in the working as well, the old orders of chivalry or knighthood strongly commend themselves, for here there was, in principle, both the maintenance of high ideals of honour courtesy and noblesse oblige, and the rendering of chivalrous service.  Chesterton has put it well in the phrase “the giving things which cannot be demanded, the avoiding things which cannot be punished.”  Moreover, admission to the orders of knighthood was free to all provided there were that cause which came from personal character alone.  Knighthood was the crown of knightly service and it was forfeited for recreancy.  Is there not in this some suggestion of what may again be established as an incentive and a reward, and as well, as a vital agency for the reorganization of society?

Knighthood is personal, and is for the lifetime of the recipient.  Is there any value in an estate where status is heritable?  If there is any validity in the theory of varying and persistent race-values, it would seem so, yet the idea of recognizing this excellence of certain families and the reasonable probability of their maintaining the established standard unimpaired, and so giving them a formal status, would no doubt be repugnant to the vast majority of men in the United States.  I think this aversion is based on prejudice, natural but ill-founded.  We resent the idea of privilege without responsibility, as we should, but this, while it was the condition of those aristocracies which were operative at the time of the founding of the Republic, was opposed to the Mediaeval, or true idea, which linked responsibility with privilege.  The old privilege is gone and cannot be restored, but already we have a new privilege which is being claimed and enforced by proletarian groups, and the legislative representatives of the