He
pointed out the endless advantages of such an arrangement; the stimulus
of emulation, the promotion of intimate fraternal feeling between the
peoples of the two countries. "At present," he said, "no Frenchman ever
sees an Englishman except at Amiens or on the Somme. Many of them still
have no idea of what the English are doing...."
"Have I ever told you the story of compulsory Greek at Oxford and
Cambridge?" I asked abruptly.
"What has that to do with it?"
"Or how two undistinguished civil service commissioners can hold up the
scientific education of our entire administrative class?"
M. Reinach protested further.
"Because you are proposing to loosen the grip of a certain narrow and
limited class upon British affairs, and you propose it as though it were
a job as easy as rearranging railway fares or sending a van to Calais.
That is the problem that every decent Englishman is trying to solve
to-day, every man of that Greater Britain which has supplied these five
million volunteers, these magnificent temporary officers and all this
wealth of munitions. And the oligarchy is so invincibly fortified! Do
you think it will let in Frenchmen to share its controls? It will
not even let in Englishmen. It holds the class schools; the class
universities; the examinations for our public services are its class
shibboleths; it is the church, the squirearchy, the permanent army
class, permanent officialdom; it makes every appointment, it is the
fountain of honour; what it does not know is not knowledge, what it
cannot do must not be done.
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