And as a last example of the present hysterical disposition to scrap things before they have been fairly tried is the outcry against examinations, which has done so much to take the keenness off the edge of school work in the last few years.  Because a great number of examiners chosen haphazard turned out to be negligent and incompetent as examiners, because their incapacity created a cynical trade in cramming, a great number of people have come to the conclusion, just as examinations are being improved into efficiency, that all examinations are bad.  In particular that excellent method of bringing new blood and new energy into the public services and breaking up official gangs and cliques, the competitive examination system, has been discredited, and the wire-puller and the influential person are back again tampering with a steadily increasing proportion of appointments....

But I have written enough of this impatience, which is, as it were, merely the passion for reconstruction losing its head and defeating its own ends.  There is no hope for us outside ourselves.  No violent changes, no Napoleonic saviours can carry on the task of building the Great State, the civilised State that rises out of our disorders That is for us to do, all of us and each one of us.  We have to think clearly, and study and consider and reconsider our ideas about public things to the very utmost of our possibilities.  We have to clarify our views and express them and do all we can to stir up thinking and effort in those about us.

I know it would be more agreeable for all of us if we could have some small pill-like remedy for all the troubles of the State, and take it and go on just as we are going now.  But, indeed, to say a word for that idea would be a treason.  We are the State, and there is no other way to make it better than to give it the service of our lives.  Just in the measure of the aggregate of our devotions and the elaborated and criticised sanity of our public proceedings will the world mend.

I gather from a valuable publication called “Secret Remedies,” which analyses many popular cures, that this hasty passion for simplicity, for just one thing that will settle the whole trouble, can carry people to a level beyond an undivided trust in something warranted in a bottle.  They are ready to put their faith in what amounts to practically nothing in a bottle.  And just at present, while a number of excellent people of the middle class think that only a “man” is wanted and all will be well with us, there is a considerable wave of hopefulness among the working class in favour of a weak solution of nothing, which is offered under the attractive label of Syndicalism.  So far I have been able to discuss the present labour situation without any use of this empty word, but when one finds it cropping up in every other article on the subject, it becomes advisable to point out what Syndicalism is not.  And incidentally it may enable me to make clear what Socialism in the broader sense, constructive Socialism, that is to say, is.