"It's like this," I said slowly, "you really cannot compare a duck with
a rabbit. You can't say that Shakespeare is greater than Napoleon or
Burns than Titian. Balfour is a good man in his own line, and--"
"And you?"
"I sometimes think of great things," I replied modestly. "Balfour has an
ideal; he believes, as Lord Roberts believed, in the Public Schools, in
Oxford and Cambridge, in the type of Englishman who becomes an
Imperialist Cromer. He believes in the aristocracy, in land, in heredity
of succession. His ideal, so far as I can make out, is to have an
aristocracy that behaves kindly and charitably to a deserving
working-class--which, after all, is Nietzsche's ideal.
I believe in few of these things. I detest charity of that kind; I hate
the type of youth that our Public Schools and Oxfords turn out. I want
to see the land belong to the people, I want to see every unit of the
State working for the delight that work, as opposed to toil, can bring.
The aristocracy has merits that I appreciate. Along with the poor they
cheerfully die for their country ... it is the profiteering class with
its "Business as Usual" cant that I want to slay. I want to see all the
excellent material that exists in our aristocracy turned to nobler uses
than bossing niggers in India so that millionaires at home may be
multi-millionaires, than wasting time and wealth in the social rounds of
London."
"Are you a greater thinker than Balfour?"