The Soul of Democracy | Page 4

life: let him get a
Ford runabout, and in three months he is exultant in running as close as

possible to every foot traveler and in exceeding the speed limit at any
favorable chance. These are not beautiful expressions of our national
spirit, but they serve to illustrate our instinctive individualism.
Especially are we jealous of highly centralized authority. De
Tocqueville argued that we would never be able to develop a strong
central government, and that our democracy would be menaced with
failure by that lack. That his prophecy has proved false and our federal
government has become so strong is due only to the accidents of our
history and the exigency of the tremendous problems we have had to
solve.
The same individualistic spirit is strong in England. It has been
particularly evident, during the War, in the resentment of military
authority as applied to labor conditions. The artisans and their leaders
dreaded to give up liberties for which they had struggled through
generations, for fear that those rights would not be readily accorded
them again after the War. It must be admitted that this fear is justified.
The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription. This attitude
has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying on the War, as
it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spirit of democracy
in both lands.
In France, the Revolution was at bottom an affirmation of
individualism --of the right of the people, as against classes and kings,
to seek life, liberty and happiness. The great words, _Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity,_ that the French placed upon their public buildings in the
period of the Revolution, are the essential battle-cry of true
democracy,--as it is to be, rather than as it is at present.
Through her peculiar situation, threatened and overshadowed by
potential enemies, France has been forced to a policy of militarism,
with a large subordination of the individual to the state. The
subordination, however, is voluntary. That is touchingly evident in the
beautiful fraternization of French officers and men in the present War.
With our Anglo-Saxon reserve, we smile at the pictures of grave
generals kissing bearded soldiers, in recognition of valor, but it is a
significant expression of the voluntary equality and brotherhood of
Frenchmen in this War. The reason France has risen with such splendid
courage and unity is the consciousness of every Frenchman that
complete defeat in this War would mean that there would be no France

in the future, that Paris would be a larger Strassburg, and France a
greater Alsace-Lorraine. While the subordination has been thus
voluntary, surely the French soldiers, man for man, have proved
themselves the equal of any soldiers on earth.
The anomaly of the first two years of the War was the presence of the
vast Russian autocratic empire on the side of the allied democracies.
For Russia, however, the War was of the people, rather than of the
autocracy at the top, and one saw that Russia would emerge from the
War changed and purified. What one could not foresee was that, under
the awakening of the people, Russia could pass, in a day, through a
Revolution as profound in its character and consequences as the great
explosion in France. It would be almost a miracle if so complete a
Revolution, in such a vast, benighted empire, were not followed by
decades of recurrent chaos and anarchy. If Russia avoids this fate, she
will present a unique experience in history. The tendency to abrogate
all authority, the spectacle of regiments of soldiers becoming debating
societies to discuss whether or not they shall obey orders and fight, are
ominous signs for the next period. Emancipated Russia must learn, if
necessary through bitter suffering, that liberty is not license, that
democracy is not anarchy, but voluntary and intelligent obedience to
just laws and the chosen executors of those laws. Meantime, whatever
her immediate future may be, Russia's transformation has clarified the
issue and justified her place with the allied democracies. However long
and confused her struggle, there can be no return to the past, and, in the
end, her Revolution means democracy.
Thus, in democracy, the State exists for Man. Other forms of society
seek the interest or welfare of an individual, a group or a class,
democracy aims at the welfare, that is, the liberty, happiness, growth,
intelligence, helpfulness of all the people. Under all the welter of this
world struggle, it is therefore these great contrasting ideas that are
being tested out, perhaps for all time. What is their relative value for
efficiency, initiative, invention, endurance, permanence; beneath all,
what is their final value for the happiness and helpfulness of all human
beings?

IV
MORAL STANDARDS AND THE MORAL ORDER

There is only one moral order