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SUPERIOR PERSONS.

When long ago Disraeli called Mr. Horsman "a superior person" because he was a high priest of the Obvious, the new phrase was perhaps prophetic. Disraeli marked the old sort of set superiority on the wane, and he seems to have described the rise of a new description-of the inferior-superior, the superior man who is far indeed from being a "superman." From 1870 onwards, Disraeli never wearied of insisting that the destinies of Great Britain should never be committed to a clique of "prigs and pedants," to mediocrity in excelsis. We have marched since then; we are in the grip or shall we say the embrace?-of what Dr. Johnson once styled the "bottomless prig," and of what we may be pardoned for terming the topless pedant. We have fanatic Socialists, too, and apostles of envy, who regard themselves as divine, and would have us believe that, like the image of Diana at Ephesus, they have dropped down straight from Heaven. Moreover, in the general scramble for titles, there are also those "superiors" of whom it might be said that they would not sell us, dear, so much loved they not honors more. The whole theme will form a memorable chapter in that great Book of Bores, which still remains to be written.

The old-fashioned sort of superior person was, roughly, of three typesthe patrician, the don (abbreviated, said Philistines, from donkey), and those ubiquitous nobodies somehow licensed to seem somebodies. The "superior" Peer dates from our glorious Revolution. He belonged to a close oligarchy of domineerers by appointment. And, in politics, by a strange irony, he became associated with those popular causes which no caucus had yet exploited. That association, howLIVING AGE, VOL. VIII, No. 416.

ever, was not uniform, and when Lord Monmouth told Coningsby that he was to vote with his party, like a gentleman, and not from conviction, like any common adventurer, he proved quite as "superior" on the other side. None the less, intellectually, the type was Whig. Lord John Russell was par excellence this kind of superior person. He patronized democracy without the least doubt as to who must be master. And, as one of his own family assured us, he played with those democratic fires under the impression that they were fireworks which could never kindle a conflagration. By the same token he once wrote a bad play, but, of course, since he wrote it, it was superior also. Socially, again, there used to be the nobleman who regarded the Continent as a conquered country. In its turn the Continent used to parody him at a provincial inn, after the upset of the coach conveying his wife and daughters. When a messenger announced that the wife lay senseless and the family fractured, he only stood by the warm stove and whistled. Such men, however, had some real warrant for hauteur. They sprang from a class traditionally trained to govern, and in proportion to size it contained fewer unworthy and more responsible members than most of the rest. They seemed to be contemplating continually statues of themselves raised by public subscription.

The superior don was a parvenu in comparison, for the masterful eighteenth century would not suffer swelled head in academicians. There used to be a peculiarly provoking specimen, not unknown to Oxford in days before little Balliol and little Bethel had struck up an alliance. He expressed his superiority (with faintly-knitted

or

brows) by a perplexed and questioning and perforating silence. His face was a perpetual mark of interrogation. There was about him a kind of conceited modesty without warmth light or wit or sparkle. Wishing to seem Socratic, he wanted you to think that he knew all in appearing to know nothing. He seemed certain of nothing save perhaps his own indefinite indispensability. One blatant word would have been a relief, for he left you with the idea-one of the few words he dealt in was "idea"-that you had met a mist. "Madam," exclaims Heine, "have you the ghost of an idea what an idea is?" We are sure that our don never had, but he was so fuddled with polyglot philosophies, so vainly philosophic and philosophically vain, so condescendingly puzzle-headed that folks took him for a metaphysician. Needless to add that he rose superior to costume. By a sort of inverted dandyism he was aggressively illdressed-it was the only pronounced thing about him. Clothes were just an idea, and his tailor, an abstraction. We ought to have said "abstractly" ill-clad instead of "aggressively."

Since then we have seen the university man succeeding in life simply by looking solemn and through some elusive magic of vague impressiveness. His gait and gestures help, but the secret lies in his high forehead. For he belongs to the noble army of forehead-traders. That many confuse solemnity with profundity is an old story. But Burleigh's grave headshake, Thurlow's beetling brows, Harley's feeble-forcibleness, pale before a super-vacancy so majestic. It is a great gift this faculty of looking so wise that you carve a career, and meaning so little that you seldom risk a reputation. Heaven knows whence it springs, though we suppose there must be something in it. Our friend has the official manner-discreet platitude,

learned facility, a behind-the-scenes absence of mind. He is gently affable in his attitude, but you never forget that he is the "man-mountain," whatever mice it may bring forth. For him everyone who is lively is unsound; anything that it is inconvenient to discuss is a matter of "high policy." He is an intellectual Joseph who never yields to originality of thought or action. At a nation's crisis he will settle things by telling you what Goschen always advised, or well remembering that Lord Salisbury was never in a hurry. Other men far cleverer, just as persistent, fail; you can count them by twenties. But they lack the spells of that humorless smile and that infinite forehead. He is, of course, at the top of the tree, but many subsuperiors with fronts nigh as expansive are swarming up the lower branches, crunching the decorations as they rise. One certain sign of them is that they never tackle things as they are, but only as their office, or the patron to whose coat-tails they cling, regards them. "In the beginning God created the Treasury and the Foreign Office”— that is their version of Genesis, and there is no flaming sword that can expel such a fine fatuity from

Eden.

It is odd, too, how thoroughly good fellows will suddenly blossom into superior persons if summoned to a new sphere. We remember the instance of a brilliant and genial man transferred at a stroke from high office to the receipt of Custom. He became awfully, rudely superior. The man who had never given offense offended everyone. Was it from shyness, or was it from a lack of imagination that a being so able and amiable was transformed into a bear? Who shall decide? No doubt he thought that a great business manner was required, or perhaps he may have been bewildered by the quickness and haste of his

environment. But there it was. Nobody would have known him, and the superior air, that gets men on when it is ponderously silent, failed completely when it sought refuge in brusqueness. We recollect another instance of superiority arising from an exchange of careers. A distinguished man of letters was once called into the Cabinet. Instantly he became superior. He lectured the world, and has been lecturing it ever since. He had no sense of humor.

If

The Fabian is terribly superior. you will not concede that exceptions make the rule, and that topsy-turvydom is the true order of reason, you are a fool, and he tells you so to your face. We speak as a fool, it is true; but this kind of omniscience is intolerable. Whatever you say, if you do not agree, you are bourgeoiswhich he is wont to pronounce “bourgewar." One of them assured us that Heine already quoted-was an anarchist. We mildly retorted that Heine once said that democrats loved the people so much that with it they The Saturday Review.

were ready to share its last crust. Omniscience is not always omniscient.

Then there is another sort of superiority-the superiority to polish or information. We know of a clever editor, a caterer for the million, who will print nothing that lacks the qualities of the cinema. Everything else is only fit for cultivated old maids or those precieuses ridicules, the ladies superior. So be it. You cannot have an uproarious circulation without calculated uproar. Matthew Arnoldthe fine flower of superiority-made one of his best characters murmur when the word "delicacy" was dropped casually in a railway carriage, "Surely I have heard that word before. Yes, before I knew Sala, before I wrote for that infernal paper, before I called Dixon's style 'lithe and sinewy.'"

After all, everyone is a bore to somebody. If the superior person bores us, it should follow that we inferiors bore the superior person. But not a bit of it that is his proud peculiarity. No bores him-not even himself. His self-complacency is invincible.

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sum of 68. 11⁄2d. in respect of the journey in question.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
H. W. Hutchinson.

"This," I said, as I finished reading the letter, "comes from the Great North-Southern Railway, and is addressed to me. What do you think of it?"

"The miserable man," said Francesca, "has split an infinitive, but he probably did it under the orders of the Railway Executive."

"I don't mind," I said, "about his treatment of infinitives. He may split them all to smithereens if he likes. It's the monstrous nature of his demand that vexes me."

"What can you expect of a Railway Company?" said Francesca. "Surely you didn't suppose a company would display any of the finer feelings?"

"Francesca," I said, "this is a serious matter. If you are not going to sympathize with me, say so at once, and I shall know what to do."

"Well, what will you do?"

"I shall plough my lonely furrowI mean, I shall write my lonely letter all by myself, and you shan't help me to make up any of the stingers that I'm going to put into it."

"Oh, my dear," she said, "what is the use of writing stingers to a railway? You might as well smack the engine because the guard trod on your foot." "Well, but, Francesca, I'm boiling over with indignation."

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letter for the use of season-ticket holders who have mislaid their tickets. We'll pack it full of sarcasm and irony. We will make an appeal to the nobler sentiments of the Board of Directors. We will remind them that they too are subject to human frailty, and

-we will not send the letter, but will put it away until we've finished our boiling-over and have simmered down."

"Francesca," I said, "am I not going to be allowed to communicate to this so-called railway company my opinion of its conduct? Are all the pearls of sarcasm with which my mind is teeming to be thrown away?"

"Well," she said, "it would be useless to cast them before the Railway Executive."

"Mayn't I hint a hope that the penny-halfpenny will come in useful in a time of financial stress?"

"No," she said decisively, "you are to do none of these things. Of course they've behaved in a mean and shabby way, but they've got you fixed, and the best thing you can do is to get a postal order and send it off to Mr. Hutchinson."

"Mayn't I”

"No, certainly not. Write a short and formal note and enclose the P.O.; and next time don't forget your ticket."

"If you'll tell me how to make sure of that," I said, "I'll vote for having a statue of you put up."

"Does everybody," she said, "forget his season ticket?"

"Yes," I said, "everybody, at least once a year."

R. C. Lehmann.

RUSSIA AND RETRIBUTION.

Revolution is rarely national; and, as with the revolution of a wheel, it is the small cranks that set the mechan

ism in motion. First of all comes the theft of power by a local and unrepresentative group of semi-intellectuals, who

play upon discontents often mongrel and usually sporadic. Unable to support that power-for they are weaklings of words-they are soon ousted by rabid anarchists intent on plunder, and rife with experiments against nature. For a time these simulate union by combining all the demolishers of the Decalogue, and bribing the rest with promises of partition. Deep, too, calls to deep, and perhaps extremists yet madder, revolts more revolting, add the brotherhood of Cain to the degradation of "equality" and "Liberty's" despotisms. But inevitably a stern dictator arises and puts an end to the Witches' Sabbath.

It is difficult to define the real causes of revolutions, which are frequently due quite as much to Rousseauism or Marxism-to sentimental or economical theories-as to past wrongs that offer them opportunities when they come home to roost. Moreover, the men who contrive upheavals are in a very true sense their immediate cause. Without them Revolution would rest satisfied with reform, and with them the shape that Revolution assumes is constantly the shape of these pioneers and not that which fits the maladies of the body politic. Indeed, the remedies of the nostrummongers generally aggravate the symptoms. Revolutions are retributions, it is true, but they tend to be retributions for what their leaders have missed rather than for what the people has suffered. Hysteria is no salve for inflammation.

The root of the Russian trouble is exceptional, and it has escaped the wiseacres and idealogues who prattle of "democracy" and predict the golden age. The cause of the Russian unrest cannot be said to be Czarism, for the nation at large-above all its peasants --all are monarchical to the core. The nation may have been fooled into believing that the Court was especially

pro-German, but pro-Germanism is not the cause, for Russia has been riddled with pro-Germans during almost two centuries, and the present propagandists are largely cosmopolitans who are playing the German game. Once more, the gross corruptions of officialism are not the true cause, since nothing can exceed the corruption of the Revolutionists themselves. For what then is this hybrid Revolution retributive? Mainly for the ruthless persecution of the Jews in a semioriental and still mediæval country which has persisted in "pogroms" repugnant to civilized Europe. Men of Jewish and often of German-Jewish origin have been in the forefront of the ferment, and are still convulsing all orders and every kind of order. The Soviet is largely thus leavened. Kerenski and the so-called Lenin, if we mistake not, are partially so derived.

This is a very remarkable fact, for the Jews are not revolutionary by instinct, and only become so through systematic oppression. Nor is internationalism their affinity, for where true statesmanship welcomes them they are always among the most publicspirited of patriots. "Every nation gets the Jews it deserves" is a trite but true saying, and Russia has got hers with a vengeance. Yet it would be as unjust as untrue to suggest that the Jews have undone Russia. It is international Socialism that has betrayed her, the cabals of Geneva and Stockholm. We might as well say that Russia has been betrayed by Mr. Ramsay Macdonald. A nation is a union of races, in ideal association. The Jews are a race not a nation, as Napoleon well recognized, and when they are well treated they grow to the soil. When they are not, they are driven into revolutions which they head, through their ability.

"The Jews," wrote Disraeli, in that fine twenty-fourth chapter of his

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