democracy."^[5] The people must decide questions for themselves and make their common will known through the representative organs of a government which is after all only the instrument intended to produce the best expression and administration of this public will.

FOOTNOTES:

[5]

III

ToC

ITS CONFLICT WITH THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION

In the course of a conversation during the past winter one of the members of the present city government of New York remarked that although he was not a Socialist, yet he failed to see how the election of Morris Hillquit on his un-American platform to be Mayor of New York would have had any result except as regards the national safety and the immediate influence upon our international relations. He added that the life of the city would have gone on just the same for a time at least; hence why the great fear of Socialism? What this man failed to see was that in fact the life of the city would go on for a time without change only on account of the impetus the former democratic government had given. That the policy of individual responsibility and judgment, which had always been the professed aim of American government in the past, had produced leadership and popular experience by the process of natural selection, and that this leadership would last only until the time that the deadening influence of Socialism had its true effect.

Let us consider for a moment the result of Socialism as a permanent policy. It means the substitution, as already shown, of government or official judgment and initiative for that of the individual. The whole process would be one to deaden and atrophy the powers of the people in general, with the result that there would follow a leveling down to a plane of mediocrity rather than a leveling up according to individual capacities and ambitions, exercised through equality of opportunity.

It should not be forgotten that the varying degrees of success in the different walks of life finally have caused so-called social differences. These differences result from the attempt on the part of mankind to meet "the inequality of men in their capacity for the work with which they are confronted in this life," said the New York Journal of Commerce, with great acuteness, in a recent editorial discussion of the phase of the question.^[6] It continued by saying,—

"What we must strive for is intelligent understanding and sound reasoning on the question of rights, and a just application of principles for the common benefit. Everything should be done to develop and train intelligence and increase the capacity of the people for their various tasks and duties, and they should be stimulated by the rewards to which they are fairly entitled in the results; but that cannot be made to mean that they are all equal in contributing to results and entitled to equality in the returns. Nothing could be more inconsistent with a sound democracy than the distribution of the material results of productive activity applied to the resources of nature, regardless of the merits or just claims of those engaged in the work. To apply that so-called principle of equality of rights without regard to the part taken in producing results, would deaden the energies applied in achieving them, and greatly reduce the product. It would prevent material prosperity and defeat national progress."

In a Socialistic State, inevitably there would be formed a bureaucracy of selfish office holders. Although, owing to the impetus of our previous free Democracy, the first Socialist officials might be men of ability who had gained their places through successful experience, yet a close corporation of officials would follow them and retain the exercise of power. The people gradually would sink to a level of servile conformity.

We have a perfect illustration of this in the Germany of the past forty years. There is a good reason for the fact that Germany, in the hands of a selfish and conscienceless autocracy, made more successful use of practical Socialism than any other nation in history and even carried efficiency itself to a point of great success. Her close corporation of bureaucratic officials, playing upon the remains of feudal and aristocratic loyalty among the people that have survived the darkness of past centuries as nowhere else among civilized nations, successfully carried through Socialism in many practical ways, just as Morris Hillquit and his un-American followers probably would have succeeded in doing in New York for a short time. But the inevitable followed. The German people have been reduced to a very low level of political ability.

The German is one of the poorest politicians in the world, as every student of political science knows. His lack of ability to run a government on constitutional principles has been found in the inane vaporings and factional maneuvering of the Reichstag, the supposedly "popular" House of the Parliament, which was merely a machine to register the will of the aristocratic autocracy. The individual citizen is the most servile and unthinking person in any civilized country of the world to-day. He has been trained to political incapacity.

What has the success of German Socialism amounted to? We find that Germany, from the political standpoint, is nothing but an organized machine without soul. Professor Ely, in taking the Moral side of the matter into consideration, well says that "it may be added that truth, an attribute of the gentleman, is less valued in Germany than in English speaking countries. As long ago as 1874 Professor James Morgan Hart in his book German Universities called attention to this weakness in the German character. A German mother will say to her child, 'O, you little liar,' and does not imply serious reprobation thereby, and Professor Hart said that if you called a German student a liar, he might take it calmly, but if you called him a blockhead, he would challenge you to fight a duel. All this has been amply exemplified during the present war. It was the German socialist Lassalle who said of the lie that it was one of the great European Powers! It was natural enough that he should have said it."