Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/270

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DEMOCRATIC IDEALS AND REALITY

Institute which collects the statistics of the world harvests, and seeks to steady markets and prices by timely warnings; it has rendered considerable service to the Allies during this War.

I have no doubt that I shall be told by practical men that the ideal of complete and balanced economic growth in each locality is contrary to the whole tendency of the age, and is, in fact, archaic. I shall be told that you can only get a great and cheap production by the method of world-organisation and local specialisation. I admit that such is the present tendency, and that it may give you maximum material results for a while. But if you breed animals, does there not come a time when you have gone as far as you can with inbreeding, and must you not then resort again to cross-breeding?

Athens and Florence were great because they saw life whole. If you pursue relentlessly the idols of efficiency and cheapness, you will give us a world in which the young will never see life but only an aspect of life; national and international organisers will alone hold the keys admitting to the Observatory of the complete view. Is it in that way that you will get a continuous supply of fruitful brains, and happy, because intellectually