religious by the same means. All that law can do is to endeavor to place a man in such an environment that his moral or religious nature may be aroused and that his desire or ambition be encouraged. It was the inability to understand and realize this fact that caused the religious persecutions of past centuries when Catholics persecuted Protestants and Protestants persecuted Catholics, and both persecuted the Jews, and everybody thought that it was possible to legislate a man's belief and enforce it by the sanction of the law. Happiness, like religion, must have its impulse from within.

Furthermore, it is along this identical line of reasoning that Socialism is essentially un-American. The primary object of the government of the United States, the whole theory upon which our nation was formed, is not to give happiness to the individual. The Fathers of our country were too wise to attempt any such ridiculous undertaking. The ideal or object of the United States is to give equality of opportunity for each individual to work out his or her own salvation in a political, a moral or an economic sense. In other words, to give equality of opportunity for each individual to work out or achieve his or her own happiness. That is the only possible way in which happiness can be gained. For this reason the American people believe in public schools and child labor laws and other forms of social, not Socialistic, legislation, in order to help less fortunate individuals to help themselves, and not to help them in spite of themselves. The former plan is in accordance with the needs of human nature and with American ideas and ideals; the latter is the essential basis of Socialism and inevitably pauperizes and atrophies human character.

There is as much difference between social legislation and Socialism as there is between the common-sense advancement of the ideas of peace and the selfish or cowardly brand of treason that is known as pacifism. In both Socialism and pacifism the essential idea is that the individual should mentally "lie down" and "let George do it." In contrast with this, the common sense way to gain peace is actively to restrain wrong in order that right may triumph. The United States recently has been engaged in just this kind of an undertaking. Also, man is a social animal as well as an individual being, so social consciousness or social responsibility consists in the common responsibility of society to see that each individual gets a "square deal" in the form of equal opportunity for advancement by self effort.

In fact, the American ideal is to restrain human initiative only to the extent that is necessary to give equality of opportunity to all, and that the government should act only on the principle of the greatest good of the greatest number. Hence Americans believe that Rousseau was right when he said that the individual gives up a small part of his personal liberty, or license, in order to receive back full civil liberty, which is much greater because it has a wider outlook and possibilities and is guaranteed through the support of society. Furthermore, they believe that real liberty is freedom of individual action within the law as the expressed will of the people.

But everything depends upon the fact that the impulse to use this liberty must come from within, and not be commanded by a government from without. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, Americans believe "that all men are ... endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit [not the gift] of happiness." On this basis alone was this nation founded and has it prospered.

FOOTNOTES:

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II

ToC

WHY IT APPEALS TO OUR FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION

It is often remarked that a reading of the names of the members of the present Socialist party, or of those who advocate Socialism in the United States to-day, will disclose the fact that most of these names denote foreign or Continental European, as contrasted with American or British, origin. This can readily be understood when it is remembered that the governments of Continental Europe are theoretically on a different basis and of different origin from those of the United States and Great Britain or of those countries where the English Common Law prevails.

Whether in democratic France, Italy, Belgium or Norway, or in autocratic Germany or Austria-Hungary, the government is considered as in a sense coming down from above. It is believed, and taught, that government exists by divine right and that it has per se its own position and rightful place of domination. That it exists for itself, and not as a means to an end. But in Great Britain, the United States, and also in the British self-governing colonies, as compared with this, the whole order of things is upside down, so to speak. We believe that all governments arise from the people, that they should derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that they are merely an instrumentality to help the people to help themselves—to protect them in their inherent, inborn right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Also the government should act upon the principle of the greatest good of the greatest number as a test when there is any conflict between individual and social rights.

Of course it is now popularly understood that an autocracy like that of Germany until recently, was built up on the theory of the divine right of governments and of the princes who administered them. The constitutions of the German states and especially of the Empire of Germany, were the gift or gifts of the German princes to the people and not the expression of the will of the people, as in the United States, or of the people as represented in Parliament, as in Great Britain. Thus the King of Prussia, who was also Emperor of Germany, was God's representative on earth and responsible to God alone for the administration of his office. He, as well as the various princes in their respective states, were above all earthly law, were laws unto themselves, and they and their serving (or servile) officials were to be obeyed without question. Disobedience to the "princes'" laws was not only treasonable but sacrilegious as well. This fact goes far to explain the atrocities committed with the consent of German public opinion. William the Damned and his bureaucracy were believed to be above all moral or human law, and from the earthly standpoint were infallible and irresponsible. Their orders must be obeyed without question.

As already stated, few people realize that while even the European democracies do not accept the bald theory of the divine right of kings but believe in the divine right of the people, yet somehow or other these divine rights come down to the people by the gift of the government, and are not inherent or