“To rise in the social scale, even in calm and normal times, the prime requisite, beyond any question, is a capacity for hard work, but the requisite next in importance is ambition, a firm resolve to get on in the world, to outstrip one’s fellows. Now those traits hardly go with extreme sensitiveness or, to be quite frank, with ‘goodness’ either. For ‘goodness’ cannot remain indifferent to the hurts of those who must be thrust behind if one is to step ahead of them.…
