Whichever way to-day one looks, one finds this illusion as to what a public servant really is, for the moment, corrupting our public life.
But Christ did not say, "He that is greatest among you, let him be your valet."
The man who is greatest among us, neither in this age nor in any other, ever will or ever can be a valet. He faces the crowd the way Christ did--with his life, with his soul, with his God.
He will be the Greatest, he will be a Servant.
In the meantime--in the hour of the valets, only the little crowds, speak. The People wait.
The Crowd is dumb, massive, and silent. There seems to be no one in the world to express it, to express its indomitable desire, its prayer, to lay at last its huge, terrible, beautiful will upon the earth.
It is the classes or little crowds--the little pulling and pushing, helpless, lonely, mean, separated crowds--blind, hateful, and afraid, who are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth.
The world, for the moment, is being interpreted, expressed, and managed by People Who Are Afraid.
It is the same in all the nations. In the coal strike in England one finds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secret because they are afraid of one another. One finds the miners' leaders afraid of the men under them and of what they might do, so that they have no policy except to fight. One finds the miners' leaders afraid of the mine-managers and of what they might do, so that they have no policy except to fight. One finds the mine-managers afraid of one another, afraid of their stockholders, afraid of the miners' leaders, and afraid of the newspapers and afraid of the Government.
One finds the Government afraid of everybody.
Everybody fights because everybody is afraid.
And everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowds that are running the world.
There is another reason why everybody is afraid. Everybody is afraid because everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd.
People who are never Outside, who only see a little way out over the edge of the little crowd in which they are penned up, are naturally afraid.
A world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world that is run by People Who Are Afraid.