Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/47

Rh engineered, but then progress there has meant merely increase of efficiency.

To save democracy, however, in its recent jeopardy we suspended the very safeguards of democracy, and allowed our governments to organise us not merely for defence but for offence. Had the War been short, this would have been a mere parenthesis in history. But it has been long, and social structures have wasted in part, and in part have been diverted to new uses, so that habits and vested interests have dissolved, and all society is as clay in our hands, if only we have the cunning to mould it while it is still yielding. But the art of the clay-moulder, as of the worker in hot metal, lies not merely in knowing what he would make, but also in allowing for the properties of the material in which he is working. He must not only have artistic aims, but also technical knowledge; his human initiative must reckon with reality; he must cultivate his 'ways and means' mind, while he tries to retain his ideals of form.

As the artist endeavours to his dying day to learn ever more about the medium in which he works—and not merely more in a scientific