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APPENDIX 4 democracy, which has been attained gradually and by a series of successful compromises. While on the Continent the aristocracy ceased in 1789 to be the leading political force, and the political sphere was more or less put on the same level as the industrial system, the English ruling class allowed itself continually to be regenerated from below.
It is an aristocracy of achievement, and entry to this class is theoretically attainable by social effort. If we succeed — and this war affords us every opportunity of doing so— in overcoming the complex structure of aristocratic privilege — to name only one example, the public schools — then it will be possible to regenerate the existing aristocracy with new blood from the working class and the new middle classes which have hitherto been held down. When this takes place all classes in English society will gain responsibility for the government of their country. The process has already started, and will be accelerated by the war. After the war it will continue as a permanent evolutionary process.
There are other tendencies which also point to the strengthening of common rather than sectional interests — the exchange between town and country, which, as a result of aerial bombardment, has affected millions of people and the common destiny of English towns. These things have brought together all sections of the English people in a way which could not have occurred in any other circumstances.
The interpretation of these common responsibilities and experiences in new institutional forms, not only through the reshaping of the English educational system, but also through the extension of the social services, measures for farmers, employees, and workers, communal feeding and later new town planning, etc., will guarantee that England will preserve a political elite, open to all social groups, which is controlled by a formally and democratically elected parliament.
Only where there is unity of political responsibility can the danger of tyranny by a Fascist minority be avoided. This holds good not only for the British Isles, but equally for the Empire, whose political spirit has been characterised by Burke in the following unforgettable words :
'Do not dream that your letters of office and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, are the things that hold together the great contexture of this mysterious whole. These things do not make your government. Dead instruments, passive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English communion that gives all their
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