It has plucked the first-born from families and sent them to camp and battle, with no draft riots nor considerable opposition. It has made housewives skimp and save. It has made offices cold and theatres dark one day in the week. It has touched us all, with its Ithuriel wand, and we have risen up, no more quarreling competitors, but knightly companions in the service of the Common Good.

Ideals

This war is bringing to clearer light the necessity of Ideals. For, after all, it is a war of Ideals, and that side whose Ideals are truer, sounder, and more in line with eternal truth will conquer. In the end Truth always is victorious "the eternal years of God are hers."

For it is not true, what that chief scoundrel and cad of Europe, Frederick the Great, said that God is on the side of the heaviest battalions. Rather He is on the side of the truest Ideals.

Ideals are all we are fighting for in this war. We want no territory, no indemnity, no military glory, no prestige, no vengeance. All we want is Justice. We mean that peace, law, and order shall be established in the ends of the earth.

That is the reason we are preparing so thoroughly. We are raising armies and building navies, not for this war alone but for all time if necessary. We shall not quit nor sign a peace treaty until our Ideals are realized.

Humanity

This is the first war in history where Humanity, the world as a whole, has been sensed. The very greatness of the German threat has roused the world to an appreciation of the oneness of its interests.

In a world governed by separate nations, each rivaling the other in armament, war comes naturally; just as it would come in the United States between New York and Pennsylvania, if there were no central government. And just as the United States Government keeps war out of the states, so only a World Government, of some kind, will keep war out of the world.

This war is moving us rapidly toward that very goal. Never before were so many nations allied in a single purpose. When the Union composed of Great Britain, France, Italy, Portugal, Japan, China and the United States wins this struggle, the world will find itself already almost a United States of the World. When the representatives of these nations meet in council to arrange the treaty of peace, it will be not far from the Parliament of Man.

This is what, at bottom, we are all fighting for. President Wilson has declared over and

1

over again that somehow there must come as a result of this conflict an agreement among nations that shall forever preclude such an outburst of lawless savagery as Prussian Militarism has made. The same sentiment has been expressed repeatedly by British and French statesmen. Even the German Chancellor has stated that such a consummation is to be wished, although he considers it impossible of realization.

This, to my mind, is the most tremendous gain that shall come from this war. We are realizing the solidarity of humanity. We are developing the Human Nerve. We are coming to World Consciousness. Never more can any nation live unto itself.

Out of this great war we shall come, realizing at last the truth of that saying of Elihu Burritt:

"Above all nations is humanity."

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

We have heard a deal about Democracy of late. According to President Wilson, the war was fought “to make the world safe for Democracy," å statement that has been pretty generally accepted. And surely if the world has spent some two hundred billion dollars and slaughtered some ten million people for a thing, we ought to know what the thing is.

Some of us are like Governor Yates, War Gov. ernor of Illinois at the outbreak of the rebellion. His wife said to him one day:

"Richard, what is Democracy? You are always making speeches about it. What is it, any.

way?!

"Why," he replied, "don't you know what Democracy is?”

"Well, I have a sort of an idea. But just exactly what is it?"

"Why, anybody knows what it is. Democracy is that is a um-ha- - Why, confound it, madam, Democracy is Democracy !"

Let us see if we cannot answer Mrs. Yates's question a little more satisfactorily.

Democracy is a Force, of Feeling and Opinion, working within humanity, impelling the people of a given neighborhood to get what they want, that is, what the majority of them want, by means of organization, and to make this secure by laws which are just and equal.

The excellence of a definition consists in telling what it is not. To define an idea is to build a fence around it that will keep out every other idea. In this definition-fence of ours we will use ten planks.

The First Plank

Democracy is a Force. That is to say, we cannot tell its essence, but only the way it works. "Thou hearest the sound thereof but cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth.” It is like Gravitation, Electricity, Love or Conscience. Nobody knows what these strange powers are, yet they are the most undeniable things in the world, and we use them every day.

Democracy is therefore not Socialism, Bolshevism or any other ism. It is a Cracy, which means it is a power. (Cracy comes from a Greek word signifying strength.) Socialism is an Ism, which is to say it is a system or plan or scheme.

Socialism may be good. It proclaims desirable aims. Its end in view is a perfect government.