But is democracy worth preserving? How fares that intangible something which was the inspiration of this man’s living? Democracy, the right of people to govern themselves, as opposed to their control by a self-appointed few is it a failure or a success? Has it proved itself worth the dedication of this soldier spirit?

The French, for themselves, have answered the question at the Battle of the Marne and at Verdun. But how about America? Has the great American democracy proved a success, as compared with government by autocracy for example, as compared with the government of Germany by the Prussian military autocracy, headed by the House of Hohenzollern?

More than a century has passed since the surrender of Cornwallis. Since then in physical growth and material success the democracy of the United States has more than fulfilled the highest hopes. At that time these United States were only a strip along the eastern seaboard, bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on the west by an unexplored wilderness; thirteen sparsely settled states, the settlements widely separated from each other, with a population of less than four million persons. Now the wilderness is overcome. By the Louisiana Purchase we acquired the Great Southwest. For a pittance we bought the wastes of Alaska and then found them to be the gold fields of the world. The Philippines, with an area of one hundred and fifteen thousand square miles, and the Hawaiian Islands mark the extension of our western boundaries. Cuba is under our immediate protection. Porto Rico is part of us, and likewise the Danish West Indies. In Central America we have built the Panama Canal. By the Monroe Doctrine we are the protectors from foreign interference of all of Central and South America. Our population has grown to more than one hundred million souls. Our material wealth is the greatest of any single nation in the world.

Does this constitute success? Look on the other side of the picture. Our form of national government has been notoriously inefficient taking Germany as the standard. Our state governments at their best are mediocre, while at their worst they stand pitifully paralyzed before mob law. Our unpunished lynchings of coloured people, innocent as well as guilty, make us contemptible in the eyes of the civilized world. No other government on earth remains silent and helpless while its citizens assemble as for a holiday and burn a criminal at the stake. Our municipalities are largely rotten with graft, and the graft is accompanied by its inevitable handmaids, extravagance and inefficiency. Enormous wealth, in the hands of a few, dwells side by side with extreme poverty. Our cities are overcrowded, and the country of Whittier, where

“Shut in from all the world without
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,”

is handed over to the huts and shanties of immigrants. Capital fights labour and labour fights capital. Politics are such that most men avoid them. The standard of work is not how well you can do your job, but how much you can make out of it. Is this democracy a success?

In answer to this, however, does not an inner consciousness in each of us, perhaps the spirit of Lafayette and perhaps our own, perhaps the whispering of an unseen, great, and infinite power, tell us that the really relevant question is not whether we have yet achieved success, but whether a successful democracy is worth striving for? If, however, I should be obliged to answer the question by “Yes” or “No” I would say, “Yes, it is a success!”

The best route for the development of any man lies along the hard and thorny road of self-development. In the end, self-development, by dint of hard work and mistakes, produces the best man, provided he has the courage to “see it through.” Nations are merely big collections of individuals. In the end this self-development produces the best nation. The road is filled with difficulties, but so are most roads to goals that are worth reaching.

Our national government may have been inefficient in its details, but taken as a whole it has created a country which for generations has been a haven for the oppressed of the world. How many hundred thousand Germans have immigrated to America? How many Americans have ever emigrated to Germany? We have lynchings in the South, but no other country was ever left a more hideous problem of slavery, and in 1861 when the supreme test came the government rose to it; no one but a visionary can expect an immediate Utopian readjustment. Our municipalities abound in graft, but what country before ours ever faced the problem of absorbing annually the enormous flood of unlettered immigrants that is unceasingly poured upon us by the Old World. The wonder is not that we have graft, but that we have not more graft. We have great wealth and extreme poverty, but they are due to unusual economic causes, namely: great national resources on the one hand, and ceaseless immigration on the other. Our cities are overcrowded and our standards of work are superficial, but would this be cured by a despotism?

And always we have the hope that goes with liberty, the undying strength that accompanies the knowledge that you are master of your own soul. A good despot at the head of a military autocracy may for the time being make the most efficient government in the world; certainly a bad despot at the head of a military autocracy makes the worst government. But I will never believe that the total surrender of the individual to the guiding hand of a despotic autocracy makes in the end for the progress of the whole. History shows it to be untrue; the never-ceasing efforts of democracy, as endless as the waves of the sea, show that despotic autocracy cannot last; and the hell let loose upon earth by Prussian autocracy, its modern exponent, clinches the falsity of its creed for all but the intoxicated or maniacs.