"MONSTERS" 
443 
corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals 
composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men 
of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices 
pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power 
of numbers is bound to bestow. 
It is peculiarly noticeable that when a class is a ruling 
minority, it acquires a detestation as well as a contempt for 
the surrounding "mob." In the Northern States of U.S.A., 
where the whites are overwhelming in number, the 'nigger' 
can be more or less a "regular fellow"; in the South, where 
fear is a factor , Lynch Law prevails. (Should it? The reason 
for 'no' is that it is a confession of weakness.) But in the 
North , there is very strong feeling about certain other classes: 
the Irish, the Italians , the Jews. Why? Fear again; the Irish in 
politics, the Italians in crime, the Jews in finance . But none 
of these phobias prevent friendship between individuals of 
hostile classes. 
I think that perhaps I have already written enough-at least 
enough to start you thinking on the right lines. And mark 
well this! The submergence of the individual in his class 
means the end of all true human relations between men. 
Socialism means war. When the class moves as a class, there 
can be no exceptions . 
This is no original thought of mine ; Stalin and Hitler both 
saw it crystal-clear ; both , the one adroitly, 
the other 
clumsily, but with equally consummate hypocrisy , acted it 
out. They picked individuals to rule under their autocracy , 
killed off those that wouldn't fit, destroyed the power of the 
Trades Unions or Soviets while pretending to make them 
powerful and prosperous , and settled down to the serious 
business of preparing for the war which both knew to be 
inevitable. 
It is this fundamental 
fact which ensures that every 
democracy shall end with an upstart autocrat; the stability of 
peace depends upon the original idea which aggrandized 
America in a century from four millions to a hundred: 
extreme individualism with opportunity . Our own longest