America. The Great Fear has produced a great courage and a great sense of duty and of solidarity in America.

The issue of the League of Nations and the attitude of its selfish opponents have created a strong body of liberal opinion in America such as America never before has known. This body of opinion recognizes that America can no longer live the closeted life. It recognizes that America has come out of the cloister and been drawn into the great currents that are carrying civilization forward and that America must not only move, but must lead.

A conservative is said to be one who worships a dead radical when he has been dead long enough! A radical is one who wants something until he gets it; then he begins to suspect it. A liberal is one who is free, free from birth and from tradition, who wears no yoke and owes no allegiance, except to humanity; who does not overturn, but remolds; who sees what is good in the old order while he reaches out for what is best in the

new.

The greatest service American women may do society to-day is to foster and lead this new body of American liberalism. It is the one hope, not only of checking reaction, but also of directing the forces of revolution that are everywhere threatening the world. Women are not only to end war, but they have it in their power to end civil war —

world revolution. The League of Nations and the social influence and strength of women are both challenged by the manner in which women will face and help solve this most acute of social questions.

CHAPTER IX.

WOMEN AND REVOLUTION.

"The peoples are in the saddle, and they are going to see to it that if the present governments do not do their will some other government shall." President Wilson, Boston Speech, February 24th, 1919.

S9

OCIAL peace is an integral part of world peace, but even an inveterate optimist must fail to find any stable social peace on the world horizon to-day. Instead, there is everywhere strife and travail from which either an inspiring new era or an abortion of civilization will be born.

Since this book was begun, in the fall of 1918, events have moved with a terrifying swirl. The war ended prior to the expectation of military experts. Germany surrendered unconditionally. President Wilson's famous Fourteen Points were accepted as the basis of an Allied Settlement, and the idea of a democratic league of nations as the foundation of a new peace spread over a war-sick world as no idea has spread since Christianity became infused into a pagan universe. All that seemed necessary to insure a machinery of permanent world peace was a strong public opinion in favor of a league founded upon new ideals of world justice.

Then something happened. The joy of the conqueror was short-lived. For, although the Allies had gained a great military victory over Germany, nowhere were the fruits of victory visible. Instead, chaos reigned. Famine and anarchy stalked the land. From war we had stepped to social revolt; from anxiety to terror. We had but exchanged anguishes and there was no peace in the hearts of men.

What had darkened the horizon? It would seem as if the war, waged and won in the name of democracy, was determined to result in the establishment of democracy. It would seem that the hero of the war-democracy - had assumed leadership, and was taking the road that governments did not intend it should take the road not of political democracy but of industrial democracy. Democracy was in the saddle, forging ahead and claiming every inch of ground as its

own.

In consequence, the League of Nations has had to face, not only the prejudiced opposition that would meet its appearance at any period, but also the most acute social crisis known in history. We call it industrial revolution, and in fact such it is. But it implies something deeper and more organic. Something is happening to the tissue of society — something sensed, but not yet understood. It is not merely that civilization is discarding its old shell, the crust of the ages, to put on a new shell, a

softened replica of the old. It is far deeper than any external change. Something is happening to the bones and sinews of the social organism, from the inside out, from the bottom up. Society is changing its very structure. In consequence, civilization itself is being born again. And this babe of the new era is found, struggling, primarily, in the cradle of new liberties that are emerging from the old autocracies of Europe and trying to form themselves into modern industrial states.

Women must face this fact of social revolution squarely, for it is the heart of the organic world change that when absolutism was overthrown in the three great Empires of Europe, there was no hesitation as to the ideal the new states should follow. Instinctively, Russia, Germany, Austria moved toward the organization of society upon a more just industrial basis. The old political state meant little to these newly liberated peoples because they had not been a part of it. The significance of the new states, whose future will determine whether the world shall have war or peace, is that the people have determined to establish a direct relationship between the state and the workers and to govern their own destinies from the vantagepoint of their economic well-being.

This is the crisis that I believe women must help meet the crisis of assisting in a structural change in society before there can be any stable world peace. Understanding alone can meet this transi