The Soul of Democracy | Page 4

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 of the universe--one range of moral as of physical law. For instance, the law of gravitation--simplest of physical principles--holds the last star in the abyss of space, rounds the dew-drop on the petal of a spring violet and determines the symmetry of living organisms; but it is one and unchanging, a fundamental