“If I were to confess this much to an intelligent working man I know that at once he would answer ‘Socialism,’ but Socialism is no more a solution of this problem than eating is a solution when one is lost in the wilderness and hungry.  Of course everybody with any intelligence wants Socialism, everybody, that is to say, wants to see all human efforts directed to the common good and a common end, but brought face to face with practical problems Socialism betrays a vast insufficiency of practical suggestions.  I do not say that Socialism would not work, but I do say that so far Socialists have failed to convince me that they could work it.  The substitution of a stupid official for a greedy proprietor may mean a vanished dividend, a limited output and no other human advantage whatever.  Socialism is in itself a mere eloquent gesture, inspiring, encouraging, perhaps, but beyond that not very helpful, towards the vast problem of moral and material adjustment before the race.  That problem is incurably miscellaneous and intricate, and only by great multitudes of generous workers, one working at this point and one at that, secretly devoted knights of humanity, hidden and dispersed kings, unaware of one another, doubting each his right to count himself among those who do these kingly services, is this elaborate rightening of work and guidance to be done.”

So from these most fundamental social difficulties he came back to his panacea.  All paths and all enquiries led him back to his conception of aristocracy, conscious, self-disciplined, devoted, self-examining yet secret, making no personal nor class pretences, as the supreme need not only of the individual but the world.

10

It was the Labour trouble in the Transvaal which had brought the two schoolfellows together again.  White had been on his way to Zimbabwe.  An emotional disturbance of unusual intensity had driven him to seek consolations in strange scenery and mysterious desolations.  It was as if Zimbabwe called to him.  Benham had come to South Africa to see into the question of Indian immigration, and he was now on his way to meet Amanda in London.  Neither man had given much heed to the gathering social conflict on the Rand until the storm burst about them.  There had been a few paragraphs in the papers about a dispute upon a point of labour etiquette, a question of the recognition of Trade Union officials, a thing that impressed them both as technical, and then suddenly a long incubated quarrel flared out in rioting and violence, the burning of houses and furniture, attacks on mines, attempts to dynamite trains.  White stayed in Johannesburg because he did not want to be stranded up country by the railway strike that was among the possibilities of the situation.  Benham stayed because he was going to London very reluctantly, and he was glad of this justification for a few days’ delay.  The two men found themselves occupying adjacent tables in the Sherborough Hotel, and White was the first to recognize the other.  They came together with a warmth and readiness of intimacy that neither would have displayed in London.