COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY All rights reserved YOUNG'S NORTH DAKOTA E. P. 2 Trair 36 Po, Lunec MADE IN U. S. A. PREFACE We hold our citizenship too lightly. True, the process of governing is in the hands of our representatives, but they are representatives of our own choosing. If we are to have wisdom and justice in the council chamber these virtues must find their beginning in the electorate. Contrary to much loose talk of our day, our government is not a democracy; it is a republic. But the republic was organized upon the theory that the supreme power rests in the people. They are the final authority in everything. The government, national or state, is their agent, having only such powers as they have delegated to it. If our political institutions, therefore, are to be stable and permanent, it is vital that the citizens of our country understand the fundamental principles upon which these institutions rest and the nature of the responsibility which each individual must share. When the World War was upon us the thoughtful were amazed to find that among the millions of our people who had come to us from foreign shores there were many who had assumed American citizenship with no thought that henceforth their loyalty must be shifted, with no knowledge or appreciation of our form of government, and with no sense of the solemn responsibilities membership in it implies. And daily it is brought home to us that in spite of our vaunted school system pupils by the thousand are going out to become makers of government with not the slightest conception of the real meaning of 'liberty" and "rights," and with little, if any, sense of national traditions. To such, each "right" means absence of limi |