movement in our politics was striking at the theory of crass individualism, and after the unbalanced fashion of social reform was moving toward pure democracy of State socialism in the interest of communal welfare. Our old, original, intense American individualism, shamed by its ill-governed cities and lack of concern for popular welfare, had passed forever. Socialism, considered as a paternal form of government, exercising strict regulation over men's lives and destroying individual energy and initiative, was still feared and resisted; but the social goal of democracy was becoming even by the most conservative, to be considered the advancement and improvement of society by a protection of life and health, by a reformation of educational methods and by a large amount of governmental control of fundamentals for the common good. A multitude of laws, ranging from laws governing milk for babies, to public parks and free dispensaries and vast corporations, attested the vigor of this new attitude. And strange to say this new spirit was not wholly self-begotten. Plutocracy, with its common sense, its economies and hatred of waste, its organization and its energy, had taught us much. We, too, had caught a spirit from what we used to call effete Europe. Australia taught us how to vote; Belgium, Germany, and England that there was a democracy adapted to city and factory as well as to the farm and country-side.

The forces of education were pleading the cause of team work in modern life, scientifically directed, not by amateurs and demagogues, but by experts and scientists, whether in city government or public hygiene or scientific land culture, while seriousness and self-restraint were everywhere the themes of public teachers, pleading for order and organization as an ideal of public welfare, nearly as vital as liberty and self-direction. And then, without warning, fell out this great upheaval of the world, so vast, so fundamental, despite

its sordid and stupid beginnings, that the dullest among us must dimly realize that a new epoch has registered itself in human affairs. War is a great pitiless flame. It sweeps its fiery torch along the ways of men, destroying but renovating, killing but quickening, and even amid its horrors of corruption and death leaving white ashes cleanly and fertile. War is also a ghastly mirror in which actualities and ideals and tendencies reflect themselves in awful vividness. Who caused this war, who will be aggrandized by this war - its triumphs and humiliations — are important and moving, but not vital questions. The fundamental question is what effect will its reactions have upon that movement of the human spirit called democracy, begun so simply, advanced so steadfastly, yesterday acclaimed as the highest development of human polity, but to-day already being sneered at and snarled at by a host of enemies. Will war, the harshest of human facts, destroy, weaken, modify, or strengthen essential democracy? It is my conviction that the Allies in this struggle are fighting for democracy at least for the brand of democracy with which my spirit is familiar and which my soul has learned to love. Once more in the great human story, the choice is being made between contrasting civilizations, between ideals and institutions, between liberty and the lesser life. Every drop of my blood leaps to sympathy with those peoples who, heedless of inexorable efficiency, dream a mightier dream of an order directed by justice, invigorated by freedom, instinct with the higher happiness of individual liberty, self-directed to reason and coöperation. "For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life if freedom fail?" The very weaknesses of democratic government under the crucial test of war appeal to me. The tutelage of democracy breeds love of justice, the methods of persuasion and debate, and a conception of life which makes it sweet to live and in a way destroys the temperament for war, until horror and

wrong and reversion to type create anew the savage impulse. Whatever way victory falls, democracy is destined to stand its trial, and to be submitted to a merciless crossexamination by the mind and spirit of man. It may and will yield up some of its aspirations; it will seize and adapt some of the weapons of its foes; it may relinquish some of its ancient theories and methods; it will shed some of its hampering weaknesses; but it will still remain democracy, and it is the king, the autocrat, and the mechanical State which will suffer in the end rather than the common man who, in sublime loyalty to race and flag, is now reddening the soil of Europe with his blood, or the great principle which has fascinated every generous thinking soul since freedom became the heritage of man.

The Germans are a mighty race, fecund in physical force and organizing genius. Like the French of 1789, they are now more possessed with a group of passionate creative impulses than any other nation. This grandiose idealism, for such it is, seems to me reactionary, but it is held with a sort of thrilling devotion and executed with undoubted genius. Nineteen hundred and fourteen is for the Prussians a sort of Prussian Elizabethan age, in which vast dreams and ideas glow in the hearts and minds of Teutonic Raleighs, Drakes, and Grenvilles, ready to die for them. The ideal of organization, the thought of a great whole uniting its members for effective work in building a powerful State, and the welding of a monstrous federal union of nations akin in interests and civilizations possess the Germanic mind. For the German the individual exists for the State, and his concept of the State is far more beautiful and spiritual than we Americans generally imagine. The State is to be the resultant of the best thought and efforts of all its units. They have a glorious concept of communal welfare, but to them parliamentarism is frankly a disease and suffrage a menace. To them, and

I am quoting a notable German scholar, "democracy is a thing, infirm of purpose, jealous, timid, changeable, unthorough, without foresight, blundering along in an age of lucidity guided by confused instincts." On the whole Germany is probably better governed in external forms than the United States or England. The material conditions of her people are better, her cities cleaner, her economies finer, her social life better administered, and her power to achieve amazing results under the fiercest of tests nearly marvelous. The world cannot and probably will not reject as vile all this German scholarship, concentration, and scientific power. The world may either slavishly imitate Germany, or wisely modify or set up a contrary system overtopping the German ideal in definite accomplishment, according to the inclination of the scales of victory. The fatality of the German Nation is that it does not behold the world as it is. It beholds its ideals and is logic-driven to their achievement. It has gone from the sand wastes of Brandenburg to world-power by force and the will to do, and by force and will it seeks its will and hacks its way through. It is enslaved by the majesty of plan and precision - the power of concert. Napoleon, "that ablest of historic men," as Lord Acton called him, tried all this once and failed. But here it all is again, with its weapons of flame and force. Germany, apparently, does not understand the fair doctrine of live and let live. Pride sustains its soul, and ambition directs its energy. In spite of all these concrete achievements Germany does not seem to me a progressive nation, but rather a Giant of Reaction-a sort of mixture, as some one has called it, of Ancient Sparta and Modern Science. And it is well to hold in mind that this mass-efficiency is brought to pass by subjecting even in the minutest particulars the individual to the supreme authority of the State. This subjection is scientific, well-meant, but very minute.

The flaw of democracy is that it does understand and sympathize with the soul of man, but is so sympathetic with his yearning for free self-government and self-direction, so opposed to force as a moulding agent, so jealous of initiative, that it has not yet found the binding thread of social organization by which self-government and good government become one and the same thing. Let us confess that "Les mœurs de la liberté" cannot be the manners of absolutism. Debate, political agitation, bold, popular expression, are not the methods of smooth precision and relentless order. Napoleon revealed to the world the democratic passion and passed off the stage. Perhaps it is the destiny of the Prussian to teach us administration and order and to put us in the way of finding and achieving it without sacrificing our liberties, and then he, too, will pass.

To work out a free democratic, socialized life, wherein the individual is not lost in a metaphysical super-State, nor sunk in inaction and selfishness, by inducing desire for such life, by applying trained intelligence to its achievement, and by subjecting ourselves to the tests and disciplines that will bring it to pass — that is the task of American democracy and indeed of a fuller, deeper world-wide democracy. The center of gravity of the autocratic State is in the State itself, and in such ideals as self-anointed leaders suggest. The effect of the democracy has been to shift the center of gravity too much to the individual self and his immediate welfare.

There must be a golden mean somewhere and we must find it. When the great readjustment dawns, when the gaping wounds of war have healed, all the world will be seeking this golden mean. The social democrat of Germany, who is silent now in his splendid National devotion, will be seeking it; the Russian peasant, inarticulate, mystic, reflective; the Frenchman with his clear brain and forward