POSTSCRIPT

Written in the spring of the year 1918, as it was, “The Nemesis of Mediocrity” may very well have become superannuated as to its estimates of world-leaders by the time it was published, for events moved as the avalanche and years were compressed into days. I have been asked if I should write differently now, and criticized for ignoring some unquestionable leaders whose glory has filled the consciousness of men since that mysterious twenty-fifth of August, 1918, when, in an hour, it would seem, overwhelming German victory turned into inevitable and crushing defeat, a defeat eternally recorded in history ten weeks later on that epic Eleventh of November.

Yes, in one respect a different estimate would be set down, but its nature makes only more salient the lack of real leadership in the categories of civil life and thought. Leadership in religion and philosophy is perhaps a degree less evident than it was nine months ago and the achievement of “victory without peace” instead of instigating constructive activity along these lines seems rather to have acted as a further deterrent. Lenine and Trotsky are more to the front with a certain leadership that is at least striking, if one is disposed to accept what they offer as constituting the sort of thing one has in mind when thinking of the great leaders of the past. So it may be admitted were Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg until their summary taking-off. In politics and statecraft the world on the one hand has lost a real leader in Roosevelt, while on the other a sort of merger has been effected whereby—for the moment at least—all issues have been pooled in one extraordinary Personality who has become a kind of super-leader, universal dictator, Manager of the World—the adequate phrase does not suggest itself. That here is leadership of Brobdignagian degree no one could deny, but in a way this supersession of the many by the one would seem to argue in favour of the original hypothesis that leadership, as a working fact in society as a whole, has ceased. Never before, except perhaps in the case of the Dark Ages, when Charlemagne stood as the one lone personality in the midst of blank incompetence, has a phenomenon such as this presented itself. Of the ultimate result for the world it is still too early to venture a forecast. On the historians of the far future must fall the burden of estimate.

At the present writing this singularity of leadership would appear to be threatened by M. Clemenceau who in the first edition of this book was carelessly referred to as “the superannuated.” Again the word was hardly descriptive, but it was used at a time when the once redoubtable “Tiger” had just made his sensational re-entry on the scene where he was, it appears, destined to play a part (at present unfinished) that at the time was hardly subject to anticipation. The word is hereby withdrawn with sincere apologies: “superannuated” he conspicuously is not. Whether his astute direction of baffling affairs is, or may become, great constructive leadership is another matter not yet determined. By the time this “Postscript” is published not his alone, but other salient claims to man-mastership, may have been decided either in the negative or the affirmative.

There is one field however in which real leadership has appeared, manifesting itself very largely since this book was written: the field of action. If it had not been so there would have been no editions of this book subsequent to the first, nor of any other for that matter. Barring this miraculous emergence of great captains, we should by now have become a series of conquered peoples in vassalage to Imperial Teutonism.

To have omitted the name of King Albert of Belgium was a blunder, but it was of carelessness rather than of false measure. A great captain he is, of an army and of a people, in the sense of all historical greatness; and the name of Marshal Joffre should also have been set down in reverence and gratitude. Since the great Eighteenth of July, men of action have leaped to the front with a swiftness that is matched only by quality. Set first the immortal name of Marshal Foch, the Great Captain of the Great War, and then Field Marshal Haig, Generals Pershing, Petain, Allenby, Castelnau, Diaz; Admirals Jellicoe, Beatty, Sims and, thank God, many others. In six months the lack of four years was supplied, and had the war gone on another three months to the final annihilation of the enemy in the field, who can doubt that the list would have run to four times its present length? The quality of the men in the trenches was a glory and an amazement; on land and sea and in the air young officers were finding themselves and revealing both mettle and character as never could have been during peace. What was is earnest of what might have been—of what may be, and here lies the great hope in a time of great doubt.

In the field of action leadership at last has shown itself. What democracy and universal education and wealth and science and industrialism had failed to make manifest was hammered out on its hard anvils. Can this tempered steel be turned from its original destiny; can the fine swords of the new men of action be beaten into pruning hooks to gather the ripe harvest of mingled wheat and tares, and into ploughshares for the ploughing of the war-fields in preparation for the greater harvest that is to come? It is the fateful question on whose answer hangs all the future.

The peril of war has given place (at least for the moment) to the far greater peril of an untimely “peace” wherein the masters of our destiny flounder as in the first years of conflict. Paris at the present moment, or Europe for that matter, can hardly be called a centre and source of serene confidence. “Secret diplomacy” has yielded to a confusion of words which are again being employed with notable success for the concealing of thoughts. Russia and Germany are midnight mysteries with no Sherlock Holmes to probe their sinister depths. No one really knows anything about anything, and he is told less—so far as the real things are concerned. Meanwhile the old influences become operative again; the old two alternatives, conservatism and radicalism, or under the new nomenclature, reactionism and Bolshevism, offer themselves as the only choice, while the third alternative (which always exists and is always right, and is never recognized or victorious) finds neither leaders nor adherents, although the Great Alternatives represent only a mean minority on either hand. Legislation grows more leaderless and imbecile; ridiculous individuals are increasingly chosen for important executive and diplomatic positions; organized religion is either silent on the one hand or on the other offers as its great solution the raising of some hundreds of millions for the purpose of bringing the blessings of Methodism or Puritanism to the benighted peoples of the Catholic countries; philosophy is merged in the sentimental pacifism or the parlour Bolshevism of the weekly press; art and letters wander in the “vast inane” and the feeble gleams of an old liberty are extinguished in the water-floods of doctrinaire legislation.

One is impelled to pray for the quick return of all the men of all the armies, for in them alone seems the possibility of salvation through leadership, if (and this is fundamental) they bring back with them, operative and undiminished, the vision and the idea of justice and the good sense the war has revealed in them, and to them, when all else has failed. Bring them back and offer them in strong support. Without this, the future is not entirely clear.

R. A. C.

Boston, 12th February, 1919.