political bosses in the United States, thrives and rules in essentially the same way-by sticking together and knowing just what it wants and how to get it in the absence of a community of vigorous sentiments and ideas on the part of the masses. In a final analysis political democracy means simply the conduct of the public activities of society that are necessary to the furtherance of the common weal through the resultant of the composition of forces operative in a genuine and general "public opinion." The possibility of a lively, healthy and intelligent public opinion is just the possibility of getting the average individual to think hard and to feel keenly in regard to public questions. This is clearly a problem of education. The individual who has not been stimulated and informed in the consideration of public questions before the age of twenty-one will probably always remain an inert lump in the body politic. (One of the shrewdest bits of jesuitical pedagogy that I have ever met was the new Vereinsgesetz proposed in Prussia while I was in Berlin, forbidding any person to take part in political associations before the age of twenty-one.) The permanence of democracy, and the possibility of permanent peace, depend on whether the average individual can be induced to think rationally and, hence, to feel justly and act intelligently on public questions. If he can not, democracy is a vain and foolish dream.

It is from this standpoint that I am about to discuss preparedness of national spirit. I recognize that, until there is radical alteration in the international world, better industrial, commercial and military preparedness are necessary for a nation-state that is determined to maintain its own integrity. Our defenses must be as strong as the strongest until there are cogent reasons for reducing them. Probably, until the new international order has been in successful operation for some time, we should have universal compulsory training for national defense as a permanent policy. Our future national policy on this matter should be guided by the political state of the world after the terms of peace shall have been signed. "Safety first" should be our motto.

Probably, universal compulsory training would better inculcate needed habits of obedience and discipline and markedly conduce to the development of a keener sense of national and civic obligation, a more general consciousness on the part of the citizenry of their indebtedness to the institutions which protect their lives, properties and families and secure to them the opportunities to enjoy the benefits of a humane civilization; though I confess to some doubts as to whether six months or

even eleven months military training would regenerate a slacker or give public spirit to a social parasite. It would probably do something for him and it would surely develop a stronger sense of national solidarity. The schools and the universal training have been the chief agencies in the psychical unification of Germany.

I am not ready to speak confidently of the social implications and consequences of the various schemes of universal and obligatory military training, when proposed as permanent policies. If the present war does not issue in the triumph of democracy, which is, I think, in principle non-imperialistic and anti-militaristic, if the war does not result in the establishment of "A League of Peaceful Nations," too powerful to be attacked by any combination of outsiders, then the United States must put and keep its whole man-power in a permanent state of training and organization for the defense of democracy. But I fear that universal military, and even industrial, preparedness as permanent war measures may prove blind and dangerous activities, inimical to national peace and world-peace, unless our entire citizenry are more effectively instructed in right conceptions of citizenship, so that they are able to form just and intelligent views in regard to national ends and international relationships. We must be careful that physical preparedness does not engender a bellicose and arrogant attitude towards other nations. We must beware lest military preparedness become a tempting weapon of aggressive nationalism, as it has proved in Germany. The crown of all our preparedness in other lines must be an intelligent moral or spiritual preparedness. Our citizenry must be trained to exercise an enlightened national patriotism as an element in world patriotism. We need a more efficient, humanitarian and farseeing educational preparedness.

Germany offers a striking example of what can be achieved, in the way of fashioning the thoughts, sentiments and purposes of a people, by a carefully planned and conscientiously executed system of nationalistic education and training, and an equally striking warning of the dangerous results in arrogant nationalism and overweening imperialism, which follow upon a one-sided emphasis placed upon exclusively nationalistic and imperialistic aims.

The Prussianization of Germany, and the organization of its total resources, achievements and trained energies to the ends of Germanic expansion and world domination, have been accomplished through a careful and elaborate system of social

organization and an equally thorough system of educational nurture. What we, in the United States, need to emulate is, not German arrogance and imperialism, but German efficiency in organization and training to achieve the ends which are aimed at. Our national ends should and will be different, and therefore the means will not be the same. But we can learn much from the Germans. The English can learn still more. German military efficiency has a deeper basis than the system of universal military service. Both the latter and the thorough social organization which feeds and supports it have their roots in, and draw their nourishment from, the German school system. The German educational system has developed a new imperial consciousness, a new national unity of thought and feeling, of purpose and will. The German schoolmaster has been the universal and efficient instrument of national preparedness. In him and the system which he has served so faithfully have the Entente powers met their most redoubtable foe.

The new German Empire, founded in 1871, was an aggregate of separate states, without community of sentiment and tradition, without community of political organization or ideas, without unity of thought and purpose. Between some of its chief constituent states there was much inherited mistrust, even ill will. The Bavarian and the Württemberger disliked the Prussian, while the Prussian had contempt for them. Sectional social, religious and political differences of long standing made the Empire seem but a loose aggregate, held together by a combination of pressure from without and Prussian energy and masterfulness within. In a trifle longer time than a generation there has been welded together, out of these heterogeneous and even hostile traditions and interests, one great people organized and directed by trained intelligence to achieve stupendous social, industrial and political ends.

Of the industrial and commercial progress made in this short period by Germany it is now superfluous to speak. Every intelligent person knows about it. Of the organization of the industrial, economic and social life for the furtherance of the common weal-of old-age pensions and accident insurance, of state-operated railroad, telegraph and telephone services, of well-planned and well-managed municipalities, of municipal gardens, theaters, music and art galleries-it is unnecessary to speak at length.

On the present direction of this highly organized, vigorous and intelligent national life towards an aggressive and ruthless policy of national expansion one need not comment. It is the

other side of the picture. A magnificent system of cultural and social organization has been prostituted to these ends, because the control of the whole system has been in the hands of a bureaucracy dominated by militaristic and imperialistic ideas and led by an arch-imperialistic autocrat.

It is a much easier task to direct a people bred to political docility, habituated in submission to direction from above, than it is to direct a democracy. Moreover, the rulers in bureaucratically governed countries have the great advantage of being able to get together and agree on the aims which they shall pursue, unhampered by the democratic babel. Both educational and social organization can be carried out more smoothly and efficiently in a nation of the German type than in a democracy. Thus the splendid development of German cultural organization has become the ready tool for a deliberate attempt at world-mastery. Though we may reprobate some of the ends sought and the means employed, Germany's example is none the less thought-compelling.

A new world-situation will ensue upon the cessation of this war, and, if Western civilization is not to expire, strangled in the Nessus shirt of its conflicting nationalistic imperialisms, a new world-organization must be built up. In that new world an American may believe and should resolve that democracy will occupy the place of leadership. If we Americans respond to the duty laid upon us by the insistent hour, world leadership should, in large measure, fall to the United States. We owe it to the world's future, as well as to our own future, to prepare to execute our stewardship.

The impending future of the world calls in clamant and urgent tones for a new international political system. The time is now near at hand for the liberally-minded nations to organize for the maintenance of permanent peace, by the formation of some sort of international agreement, and the establishment of some sort of tribunal with power to settle international disputes and to make war both difficult and dangerous to enter upon. The organization must be based upon the democratic principles of equality and justice among nations. It can come into being and continue in being only if democratic principles prevail more and more effectively in national governments all over the earth. These principles will prevail only if the leading democratic states develop greater clearness of conception, firmness of conviction, and effective cooperation with respect to the rules of conduct for states as members of the international order. The very foundations of an international

order are yet to be laid. Dynasts, militarists, capitalists and diplomats can not be trusted to lay these foundations. They must be laid in the moral and social intelligence and feeling of the earth's peoples. The extension of democracy and the cultivation of its political intelligence are the only sure roads to lasting peace. The development of sympathy depends upon the development of understanding. To understand is to sympathize. Therefore international sympathy and forbearance, international justice and equity, are predicated upon international understanding; and only through the growth of intelligent democracy is increase of international understanding possible. The will of man is not a separate psychological entity that operates on its own hook. A man's will consists of his interests, organized and directed by intelligence. So with a nation's will. International good will will follow upon an intelligent recognition of community and interdependence of interests among the peoples. This community and this interdependence of interests does not exist among dynastic autocrats, oligarchic governing castes, militarists, money-lenders, and the diplomatic tools of these interlocking directorates of nations. But community and interdependence of interests does exist among all the peoples of this earth, if they can only be brought to see it by the training of their political and social intelligences. When they do see it they will cease to be led by the nose to slaughter at the behests of their rulers.

The fundamental and essential condition for the maintenance and spread of peace, based on a fair and humane international order, is the effective operation of an intelligent and therefore a just humane and peaceful public opinion within the several nations—a public opinion which shall exercise control over the nation's policies in both national and international concerns. The time has arrived when the voter, who may have to do the fighting, must learn to think clearly and act vigorously in terms of the nation's moral relations to other nations, in terms of the nation's duties and responsibilities, no less than of its rights and privileges, in the comity of nations.

The United States is a great world-state. It must prepare to function more intelligently and vigorously as a leader among states. It must assume its part in the pains and efforts of the world to bring to birth and fruition a new moral world-order. The American must acquire the habit of thinking in international terms. He must learn to consider his domestic social and political problems, the organization of industry and commerce, the production and distribution of wealth, protection