To a believer in the advantages of the Great State,
it is illuminating to observe that this Industrial
War is crushing out that wasteful competition which
the collectivist reformers have long condemned.
The smaller men, even the smaller states, are being
eliminated by the Pierpont Morgans, the Speyers,
the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Harrimans, the
Beits. It begins to appear that one of these days,
if the present process continues without a change
of direction, we may get the Great State, indeed;'
but it will be tmder the autocratic control of the
final survivors of this terrific industrial struggle.
It is possible, by a happy chance, that these victors
might be benevolent despots, who would provide
for all their subjects a sufficiently generous living.
But such a state as this would be incompatible with
the possession of that individual liberty which is
• See Wells's When the Sleeper Wakes for an anticipation of this.
279



THE GREAT STATE

one of the fundamental desires of the healthy and
well-developed mind. It is, on the whole, only the
cramped mind that can submit to domination or
can look forward with pleasure to a plutocrat-ap-
pointed bureaucracy, however benevolent.
