Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/30

18 national base or incidentally to a successful national resistance to foreign invasion.

The great organiser is the great realist. Not that he lacks imagination—very far from that; but his imagination turns to 'ways and means,' and not to elusive ends. His is the mind of Martha and not of Mary. If he be a Captain of Industry the counters of his thought are labour and capital; if he be a General of Armies they are units and supplies. His organising is aimed at intermediate ends—money if he be an industrial, and victory if he be a soldier. But money and victory are merely the keys to ulterior ends, and those ulterior ends remain elusive for him throughout. He dies still making money, or, if he be a victorious soldier, weeps like Alexander because there are no more worlds to conquer. His one care is that the business or the army which he has organised shall be efficiently administered; he is hard on his administrators. Above all, he values the habit of discipline; his machine must answer promptly to the lever.

The organiser inevitably comes to look upon men as his tools. His is the inverse of the mind of the idealist, for he would move men in brigades and must therefore have regard to material limitations, whereas the idealist