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Politicians and statesmen, being the last people in the world to notice what is going on in it, are making no attempt whatever to readapt this hugely growing floating population of delocalised people to the public service. As Mr. Marriott puts it in his novel, “Now,” they “drop out” from politics as we understand politics at present. Local administration falls almost entirely—and the decision of Imperial affairs tends more and more to fall—into the hands of that dwindling and adventurous moiety which sits tight in one place from the cradle to the grave. No one has yet invented any method for the political expression and collective direction of a migratory population, and nobody is attempting to do so. It is a new problem....

Here, then, is a curious prospect, the prospect of a new kind of people, a floating population going about the world, uprooted, delocalised, and even, it may be, denationalised, with wide interests and wide views, developing, no doubt, customs and habits of its own, a morality of its own, a philosophy of its own, and yet, from the point of view of current politics and legislation, unorganised and ineffective.