“It will be a very bad day for England when that time comes,” the financier said.  “If only the people could study evolution and the meaning of things there would not be any of this nonsensical class hatred.  The immutable law is that no one long retains any position unless he, or she, is suitable for it.  Nothing endures that is not harmonious.  It is because England is now out of harmony, that this seething is going on.  You and your race have been fitted for what you have held for hundreds of years; that is why you have stayed:  and your influence, and such as you, have made England great.”

“Then how do you account for the whole thing being now out of joint?” Lady Ethelrida asked.  “As my father and I and, as far as I know, numbers of us have remained just the same, and have tried as well as we can to do our duty to every one.”

“Have you ever studied the Laws of Lycurgus, Lady Ethelrida?” he asked.  And she shook her sleek, fine head.  “Well, they are worth glancing at, when you have time,” he went on.  “An immense value was placed upon discipline, and as long as it lasted in its iron simplicity the Spartans were the wonder of the then known world.  But after their conquest of Athens, when luxury poured in and every general wanted something for himself and forgot the good of the state, then their discipline went to pieces, and, so—­the whole thing.  And that, applied in a modern way, is what is happening to England.  All classes are forgetting their discipline, and, without fitting themselves for what they aspire to, they are trying to snatch from some other class.  And the whole thing is rotten with mawkish sentimentality, and false prudery, and abeyance of common sense.”

“Yes,” said Lady Ethelrida, much interested.

“Lycurgus went to the root of things,” the financier continued, “and made the people morally and physically healthy, and ruthlessly expunged the unfit—­not like our modern nonsense, which encourages science to keep, among the prospective parents for the future generation, all the most diseased.  Moral and physical balance and proportion were the ideas of the Spartans.  They would not have even been allowed to compete in the games, if they were misshapen.  And the analogy is, no one unfitted for a part ought to aspire to it, for the public good.  Any one has a right to scream, if he does not obtain it when he is fitted for it.”

“Yes, I see,” said Lady Ethelrida.  “Then what do you mean when you say every class is trying to snatch something from some other class?  Do you mean from the class above it?  Or what?  Because unless we, for instance—­technically speaking—­snatched from the King from whom could we snatch?”

The financier smiled.