The war turned Sanderson from a successful schoolmaster into an amateur statesman. Life had become intolerable for him unless he could interpret all its present disorders¹ as the wreckage² and confusion of the house-breakers preparing the site for a far nobler and better building. He shows himself at times by no means certain that[Pg 106] this would ever prove to be the case, but he had the brave man's assurance that with luck and courage there was nothing impossible in the hope that a more splendid human order might be built at last upon this troubled and distressful³ planet. But for that to happen every possible soul must be stirred, no latent will for order but must be roused and brought into active service. He had no belief in hopeless and irremediable vulgarity. People are mean, base, narrow, implacable, unforgiving, contentious⁴, selfish, competitive, because they have still to see the creative light. Let that but shine upon them and seize them and they would come into their places in that creative treatment of life which ennobles the servant and enriches the giver, which is the true salvation⁵ of souls.  
He became a propagandist. He felt he had now made good sufficiently⁶ in his school. He had established a claim as an able and successful man to go out to able men, to business men, to influential⁷ men of all sorts, and tell them the significance of this school of his, this hand-specimen, this assay⁸ sample, of what could be done with the world. He went to Chambers⁹ of Commerce, to[Pg 107] Rotary¹⁰ Clubs, to Civic¹¹ Assemblies, to Luncheon¹² gatherings¹³ of business men, to tell them of this idea of organisation¹⁴ for service, instead of for profit and possession. He tried to find industrial magnates who would take up the methods of Oundle in productive organisation. He corresponded extensively with such men as, for example, Lord Weir¹⁵ and Sir Alfred Yarrow and Lord Bledisloe. He wanted to see them doing for industrial and agricultural production what he had done for education, reconstructing it upon a basis of corporate¹⁶ service, aiming primarily at creative achievement, setting aside altogether competitive success or the amassing¹⁷ of private wealth as the ends of human activity. Surely they would see how much finer this new objective was, how much fuller and richer it must make their own lives!
 
When I tell of this search for a kindred spirit among ironmasters and great landlords and the like I am reminded of Confucius and his search for a duke in China, or of Plato or Machiavelli looking for a prince. There is the same belief in the power of a leader and the need of a personal will; the same utter scepticism in any [Pg 108]automatic or crowd achievement of good order; once again the schoolmaster sets out to conquer the world. Perhaps some day that perennial¹⁸ attempt will come to fruition, and the schoolmaster will then indeed conquer the world. Perhaps the seeds that Sanderson has sown will presently be germinating¹⁹ in a crop of masterful business men of a new creative type. Perhaps there are Sandersons yet to come, men of energy; each with his individual differen............