“That sounds a very comfortable doctrine for those who happen to wield the power,” I said. “It leaves no room for any ‘opposition.’”
“The Super-State would not be the Super-State if it contained within it any opposition,” he replied. “You ought to read the speech of Prince Mechow on the Super-State as the final expression of the Meccanian spirit,” he went on. “Foreigners are apt to confuse the Super-State with an Autocracy. It is essentially different. In an autocracy of the crude, old-fashioned type, an exterior power is visible, and your talk of ruling classes would be appropriate there. In the Super-State all the functions are so organised that the whole body politic acts as one man. We educate the will of the component units in such a way that all conflicting impulses are eradicated. After all, that was the ideal of the Catholic Church. Prince Mechow applied the same principle when he reformed our Educational system. A good Meccanian would no more seek to violate the obligations laid upon him by the Super-State than a good Catholic would seek to commit deadly sin.”
“Then there is no room for a Free Press in the Super-State,” I remarked.
He saw my point and replied, “A ‘Free Press,’ as you call it, would be an anachronism. What necessity is there for it? Its function has disappeared. It only existed during a brief historical phase in the earlier development of the modern State. Our great Prince Bludiron was the first to perceive its inconsistency with the line of true development. Prince Mechow absorbed all the functions of the independent professions, and among them those of the journalists, who were always an element of weakness in the State.”
“But what, then, is the object of this complete Unity which, as far as I can make out, the Super-State seems always to be aiming at?” I asked.
“The object?” he replied, almost bored by my pertinacity. “Unity is the law of all organic life. We are simply more advanced in our development than other States, that is all.”
“Then it is not true that all this super-organisation is for the purpose of fostering national power?” I said.
“That is the old argument of the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the ignorant against the educated. Every healthy person is a strong person; the rich man is stronger than the poor man; the educated man is stronger than the ignorant. The modern State, even among our neighbours, is infinitely ‘stronger’ than the incoherent political organisms of earlier times. It cannot help itself. Its resources are enormously greater. How can the Super-State help being strong? No State deliberately seeks to weaken itself, or deprive itself of its natural force.” Then, as if tired of the discussion into which our conversation had led us, he said, “But these are all matters about which you will learn much more from my friend the Professor of State Science. I am afraid I have been dishing up one of his old lectures. You will find this liqueur quite palatable.”
We then drifted on to more trivial topics. He said I had spent too long among the petty officials, grubbing about with my Tour No. 4. I ought to see something of better society. Unfortunately it was the dead season just then, and I might have to wait a little time, but there were still some dinners at the University. Some of the professors never went out of Mecco and would be glad to entertain me.
We parted on very good terms. His manner had been friendly, and if he had done little besides expound Meccanian principles he had at any rate not been dictatorial. I wondered whether he really believed in his own plausible theories or whether he had been simply instructing the Foreign Observer.