To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, greyheaded, self-important, little discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a reception of his fellow-men, or to read the anguish of Nature at the “neglect of science” when the angel of the birthday honours passes the Royal Society by, or to listen to one indefatigable lichenologist commenting on the work of another indefatigable lichenologist, such things force one to realise the unfaltering littleness of men.

It leads to the assumption that, unable to resolve many social and economic problems affecting today's America, the administration in Washington has in fact clutched at the recommendations of the zeroists.

The brown burnt earth, / Of fruits and flowers and every verdure spoiled; / Barren and bare, a gayless, dreary waste, …

In China, where a subcolonial state had resulted from a series of unequal treaties imposed upon her, the Russian Communists found fertile soil for the reception of their ideas, and thus prepared the way for their subversive infiltration.