THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

2

The faults of the Imperialist movement were obvious enough. The

conception of the Boer War had been clumsy and puerile, the costly

errors of that struggle appalling, and the subsequent campaign of

Mr. Chamberlain for Tariff Reform seemed calculated to combine the

financial adventurers of the Empire in one vast conspiracy against

the consumer. The cant of Imperialism was easy to learn and use; it

was speedily adopted by all sorts of base enterprises and turned to

all sorts of base ends. But a big child is permitted big mischief,

and my mind was now continually returning to the persuasion that

after all in some development of the idea of Imperial patriotism

might be found that wide, rough, politically acceptable expression

of a constructive dream capable of sustaining a great educational

and philosophical movement such as no formula of Liberalism

supplied. The fact that it readily took vulgar forms only witnessed

to its strong popular appeal. Mixed in with the noisiness and

humbug of the movement there appeared a real regard for social

efficiency, a realspirit of animation and enterprise. There

suddenly appeared in my world-I saw them first, I think, in 1908-a

new sort of little boy, a most agreeable development of the

slouching, cunning, cigarette-smoking, town-bred youngster, a small

boy in a khaki hat, and with bare knees and athletic bearing,

earnestly engaged in wholesome and invigorating games up to and

occasionally a little beyond his strength-the Boy Scout. I liked

the Boy Scout, and I find it difficult to express how much it

mattered to me, with my growing bias in favour of deliberate

national training, that Liberalism hadn't been able to produce, and

had indeed never attempted to produce, anything of this kind.