One certain improvement on the old-timers is the diminished significance attributed to race. There is much to admire about the old guys, but not that. However, there was very much to admire in the people of that age, and too little is known about, and what little is known is often wrong, about the Victorian and Edwardian era. Bluntly, in most ways, the best of them they were smarter, tougher-minded, better read, more truly cosmopolitan, braver and generally better men than the people who hold the reigns of power and strut the public stage in our own era. The more I read about those times, the more clear this is. Was it really World War I, with its slaughter of the sons of the elite, that caused the decay? It is hard to say what happened.