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 INTELLIGENCE AM 
 POLITICS
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 FRANK J. KLINGBERG
 
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 INTELLIGENCE | 
 
 AND I 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 in- 
 James T. Shotwell 
 
 Professor of History in Columbia University 
 
 NFAV YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1021 
 
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 INTELLIGENCE 
 
 AND 
 
 POLITICS 
 
 BY 
 
 James T. Shotwell 
 
 . / . . . • 
 
 Professor of History in~^»lutnhia University 
 Member American Delegation to Negotiate Peace, etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE^CENTURY CO. 
 
 -^- 1921
 
 Copyright, 1921, by The Century Co.
 
 Jv 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The phrase "to make the world safe for democracy" has 
 become a by-word for cynics; and for this the optimists are 
 to blame. They failed to appreciate the dimensions of the 
 task. But the task itself is, if anything, more valid than ever, 
 by reason of the added danger of disillusionment; and unless 
 some definite effort is forthcoming to make good the failure, 
 the cynic will be justified by more than an eclipse of ideals. 
 There are large sections of the civilized world threatened with 
 the loss of their heritage of culture, countries where the guar- 
 anty no longer holds that has safeguarded through more his- 
 tories than our own, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 
 Now these are imperilled. The strain upon the fabric of civ- 
 ilization is almost at the breaking point, and the nation that 
 remains complacently indifferent to such conditions but adds 
 to its danger. 
 
 It is, however, less because the problems of democracy 
 are so pressing than because the means for dealing with them 
 are still undeveloped, that the following pages have been writ- 
 ten. They contain no program of anticipatory solutions, but 
 are limited to the suggestion of devices for appreciating ex- 
 perience. It is surely worth while to see if the political ma- 
 chinery already in operation can be adapted to further uses 
 and ultimately be made effective to the point of meeting the 
 great emergency. 
 
 1630,382
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Hesitation in the First Phase of the War 7 
 II. "Patriotism Is Not Enough" 10 
 
 III. Tests 14 
 
 IV. A Nation's Intelligence 21 
 
 V, Applied Political Science 26 
 
 VI. Parties and Prejudices 34 
 
 VII. Parties and Facts 37 
 
 VIII. The Alternatives 42 
 
 IX. Democracy and Public Morality 45
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND 
 POLITICS 
 
 THE HESITATION IN THE FIRST PHASE OF THE 
 
 WAR 
 
 To those in Washington during the Spring and Summer 
 of 1917, who were in a position to watch the United States 
 adjust itself for war, there was presented one of the most 
 sobering experiences ever afforded to the student of history. 
 
 At first, as we all know, there was a strong emotional 
 response to the call to arms. The quarrel that had been 
 thrust upon us had been taken up in a spirit that appealed 
 to the nobler instincts of the nation and the cause was made 
 one with the century-long struggle of democracy for its 
 place in the sun. Of a sudden it was seen that the decision 
 which had been taken, placed before us a task like that at 
 the founding of the nation. Democracy, then established, 
 was now to be safeguarded, not only here, but throughout 
 the world. Although we could but dimly sense the future, 
 the fact that the American flag — with all its associations of 
 republican history — was to be carried to the battle-lines 
 of Europe, stirred within us the inspiration that comes from 
 the consciousness of great responsibility. The names of 
 Washington and Lincoln were evoked to witness the kin- 
 ship of our spirit with that of the heroic past. 
 
 There are no instruments or methods known to the 
 social sciences by which to measure the extent of this emo- 
 tional response to the President's war-message. History
 
 will have to rest satisfied with the casual evidence of a 
 limited number of personal experiences. The nation was 
 probably almost as much startled as it was inspired. But 
 whether it caught its breath from surprise or an awed sense 
 of new duty, there is no doubt but that its first response 
 was one of acceptance. 
 
 Then came a reaction. As the first impulse died away 
 and it became necessary to translate inspiration into action, 
 the country began to show signs of bewilderment and to 
 demand explanations and facts. So serious a change set 
 in during the latter part of April and the entire month of 
 May, that the very fate of the country seemed to hang in 
 the balance. This is fairly well known to every one who 
 reads the newspapers, but to those engaged upon the task 
 of keeping the nation to its purpose the situation devel- 
 oped most compelling duties. 
 
 Thousands of letters poured daily into those offices of 
 the Government upon which devolved the task of setting 
 forth its ideals and purposes. They came from all parts of 
 the country, but more especially from the West and the 
 Middle West, where the European War had not seemed so 
 much a part of our affairs as in the East. They came from 
 all classes of citizens, from young men of military age — 
 wanting to know just why they might be called upon to 
 serve ; from fathers and mothers asking the same question 
 for their sons; insistent, pathetically insistent, upon their 
 need for information as to the issue involved in the war; 
 wanting to know just what would make the world safe for 
 democracy. 
 
 The writers of these letters were asking about things 
 they had never troubled about before. They had suddenly 
 discovered that the horizon of our national life had 
 widened ; and they wanted to know, most of them probably 
 for the first time, what it was now to include. They were 
 not at all sure that these unfamiliar things concerned them. 
 American political life — like that of most other nations, is
 
 still parochial. One's own home is the natural starting 
 point for the interest in the rest of the world, political or 
 physical ; and in America, most of these homes have been 
 made by those who live in them ; our citizens have had a 
 share in a great creative work, building by their own efforts 
 the communities as well as the houses in which they live. 
 They are willing to admit that — as they used to say in the 
 Germany of a kindlier day — "over the hills there are still 
 people" ; but so far the only people about whom they have 
 had to concern themselves have been people of the same 
 kind, intent upon doing a day's work, and minding their 
 own business. Now these people were writing to Wash- 
 ington to find out why the bottom had dropped out of 
 things. They w'ere called upon to join an enterprise which 
 seemed removed as far as possible from their own affairs. 
 There was no lack of good will. From the most remote 
 villages men were ready to offer themselves for the supreme 
 sacrifice on behalf of that mystical sovereign of our whim- 
 sical democracy — Uncle Sam. They would go, if Uncle 
 Sam really needed them. But they asked to be shown how 
 and why he needed them. They wanted facts ; and until they 
 had them they were not sure themselves how far their 
 patriotic duty ran. 
 
 That is the way the war came to the towns and country 
 of America. The evidence of hesitation in the second phase, 
 which became painfully clear to observers in Washington, 
 was borne out by an analysis of the press of the country. 
 In such a condition of doubt it was naturally impossible to 
 feel assured of the readiness of the nation to go on, whole- 
 heartedly and successfully, with the struggle. And, among 
 those responsible for the conduct of affairs, there was some 
 evidence of a pessimism or uncertainty, which in turn re- 
 acted upon the country at large. For a time the situation 
 was such as to cause alarm in the minds of those who had 
 definitely committed themselves to the policy of interven- 
 tion. Fortunately, this pessimism w^as not justified. Faced
 
 with the necessity for action, once the decision had been 
 made, the great mass of the citizens of the United States 
 felt themselves called upon to defend the honor of their 
 country, to "see it through" ; and, while not all sharing the 
 full ardor of conviction, shouldered their burden with but 
 slight complaint. 
 
 In crises like these a nation reveals the elements of its 
 weakness ; but it is a revelation which we tend to overlook 
 because we are so anxiously intent upon finding evidences 
 of its strength and power of achievement. Then, as soon 
 as we begin actually to accomplish anything, we are so busy 
 making good that we have no time to turn back and analyze 
 our failures. Afterwards, we trick ourselves in order to 
 save our self-respect; and allow our historians to arrange 
 the retrospect, so that future generations will not guess 
 how infirm of purpose we were at a vital moment ; how 
 near the nation might have been to moral disaster. It is 
 possible to fool history ; it has been fooled steadily, from 
 the royal annals of the Pharaohs to those of the Hohen- 
 zollerns. Wherever the elements of a great story are woven 
 together by the art of the narrator, the unheroic tends to 
 disappear from the narrative. But the history of the pres- 
 ent war does not yet belong to the realm of art. We can 
 wait awhile for the epic. Fooling history has little bearing 
 upon the present; but fooling ourselves is a different mat- 
 ter. The worst of all blunders is self-delusion. 
 
 "PATRIOTISM IS NOT ENOUGH" 
 
 As a matter of fact we did not solve the problem which 
 the first phase of our war presented — that of securing the 
 direct adherence of a great democracy to a policy which 
 demanded that it make sacrifices for things beyond the clear 
 range of its interest. 
 
 10
 
 In place of a solution, we fell back upon something that 
 did not demand thought, something so primitive and so 
 much a part of our natures as to belong rather to instinct 
 than to ideas — simple, pure loyalty to "Uncle Sam." The 
 rough mountaineering moonshiner who brought along the 
 gun he used to have ready for government revenue officers, 
 because he thought "Uncle Sam might need him," was but 
 a more romantic figure in a nation-wide movement. This 
 ancient loyalty, so far as one can see, saved the day, rather 
 than a clarified idea of the reasons for the war. 
 
 Valuable as such a sentiment may be, it is not as sound 
 an element of national life to rely upon in a crisis as this 
 experience might lead one to suppose. If the loyalty is 
 unquestioning, it may be deceived ; if it questions it may 
 falter. Disaster may front either alternative. Indeed, it 
 is hardly too much to say that the disaster of the world war 
 came through the failure to recognize that patriotism 
 itself is not enough. Patriotism unquestioning confers 
 power with irresponsibility upon Government ; and out of 
 that finest metal of the soul, in which sacrifice tempers 
 courage, the irresponsible State may forge the weapons of 
 conquest and rapine. 
 
 There is little likelihood that we shall follow the ex- 
 ample of Germany, the Germany of 1914, and imperil our 
 liberties by excess of loyalty. We have too much of the 
 spirit of independence for that — an independence bred first 
 of the adventure of the frontier, and then impressed upon 
 our character by the opportunities for individual enterprise 
 which go with the opening up of a continent. It is well, 
 to be sure, to be upon our guard on this point, seeing how 
 incredibly an intelligent people like the Germans have sur- 
 rendered to irresponsible leadership and how careless many 
 of our "best citizens" are of political responsibility. But, 
 in spite of the growth of power in the hands of our execu- 
 tives, state and city as well as federal — a tendency not witli- 
 out its dangers — there remains a healthy attitude of crit 
 
 11
 
 cism toward our officials, which finds sufficient expression 
 to keep the administration continually aware of its proper 
 subordination to the popular will. 
 
 The contrast between the attitude of the country toward 
 the President in the opening months of the war with that 
 toward him after the war was over illustrates this point 
 very well indeed. The country supported Mr. Wilson 
 when he went to war, although it had apparently elected 
 him largely in the belief that he would keep us out of it, 
 because the President made it clear that he was closely 
 observant of popular feeling. No one then thought of 
 evoking the ancient safeguards of our Constitution against 
 the tyranny of government ; for there is underlying the 
 Constitution itself a sort of "social contract" between gov- 
 ernment and the people which keeps even a war-president, 
 with all his power, to some degree, a responsive as well as 
 a responsible head of a nation. But popular feeling in war 
 time is a vastly different thing from popular feeling in time 
 of peace. In war time the current flows one way, and, 
 above all, the call for common action is directed towards 
 another State — the enemy is without. In time of peace, 
 diversity of opinion and of policy makes the problem of 
 responsible Presidential leadership distinctly more different 
 — to the point indeed where one may question if it is 
 possible. Divergent views on the major questions of the 
 day may be sustained as earnestly by sections of the 
 country as the principles for which it engages in war. It 
 is this very complexity of the national life, and the variety 
 of its interests, which furnish the chief security against 
 encroachments of power by an Executive. Criticism de- 
 velops automatically in such a situation, and the American 
 people are nothing, if not critical. 
 
 We are not likely soon to imitate the folly of Germany ; 
 we are too little given to the discipline of obedience to be- 
 come subservient. But the other alternative is a real 
 
 12
 
 danger. It is in the guise of "Liberty" that anarchy mas- 
 querades. Anarchy itself as an article of faith is far 
 removed from the temperament of the people. There is 
 too strong a belief in the efficiency of the Constitution for 
 such a creed to make much headway. But it is not the 
 formal doctrine of anarchy which is mainly to be feared. It 
 is that simple practice of taking the law into one's own 
 hands, which is almost as distinctively an American ele- 
 ment of social practice as bureaucratic regularity is Ger- 
 man. Self-help in the relatively unformed societies of the 
 frontier States — where personalities, rather than institu- 
 tions, embody law and order — was a vastly diiTerent thing 
 from the breakdown of institutions in the mature and im- 
 personal society of the business world which moves today. 
 Behind the frontier practices there lay after all, some 
 appreciation of that subtle bond of mutual trust, that social 
 contract which underlies our whole political structure, for 
 the men to whom fell the responsibility of leadership had 
 been bred in communities w^here the traditions of political 
 life were deeply rooted. On the other hand, the immigrants 
 who have poured in by millions into the country during the 
 last generation have seldom any such background of experi- 
 ence. Their appreciation of liberty is only outwardly the 
 same as that of the older American stock ; and there is 
 nothing more difficult to acquire than the sense of balance 
 between self and society, which is the American idea of a 
 free community. The European war — especially in its 
 earlier stages — revealed how many there were in this 
 country who had not yet grasped it. Students in our uni- 
 versities, whose ancestors had suffered under the Czars, 
 interpreted the troubles of our colonial era as though the 
 subjects of George III had faced circumstances almost as 
 distressful as those of Ivan the Terrible. Others recalled 
 the cowed populace of Austria under Metternich. They 
 had no suspicion of the stern insuppressible spirit of the 
 Puritan, or the unsubdued independence of the frontier. 
 
 13
 
 They did not know what constructive freedom means. For 
 such Americans there is no unwritten Constitution which 
 steadies our loyalty by securing our liberties. 
 
 Loyalty is the emotion of patriotism ; and "patriotism 
 is not enough," The last words of Edith Cavell should 
 ring out as a warning in days like these. 
 
 The country is not safe which relies upon patriotism 
 alone to tide it over its crises — and the crises which the 
 war has brought are by no means over. 
 
 TESTS 
 
 History shows that the trial of war is always a double 
 one; the hardest test is generally in the readjustment after- 
 ward. In the case of most great wars, one can definitely 
 trace this second struggle of society to re-attain the 
 equilibrium of peace. The Hundred Years' War cost 
 France two centuries more of such readjustment. In the 
 thirteenth century French civilization had reached almost 
 the threshold of modern times. It had practically attained 
 the degree of political development which it had three 
 hundred years later when Richelieu organized the admin- 
 istrative structure of today. Between that earlier dawn of 
 politics, that day of Gothic art, when the great medieval 
 cathedrals were building in every busy city, when the Uni- 
 versity of Paris was begun, when the law courts settled in 
 the royal palace, and lawyers began to rule in the name of 
 even such a king as St. Louis — between that day and the 
 time of Richelieu stretches a story of tragic import. It shows 
 the moral as well as the physical and intellectual decline 
 of a nation under the stress or menace of war. There was 
 the devastation by the bandit-soldiery who helped to win 
 the war for the King, but who learned to defy the royal 
 power once it had become dependent. Then the rival 
 houses of Burgundy, and Armagnac, profiteers of anarchy, 
 
 14
 
 terrorized the land by every crime in the calendar. In the 
 following age, even in the name of religion, the Guises and 
 the Bourbons kept the country in anarchy and ruin. In 
 short, for almost three centuries France made little 
 progress, unable to recover from the effects of one war 
 until its evil consequences had bred another. 
 
 German history can offer similar tribute to the blasting 
 after-effects of war. Not to go back to the Middle Ages, 
 so filled with illustrations of the backward, brutalizing 
 nature of the so-called "chivalry", take only the results of 
 the Thirty Years' War, when the strength of Germany was 
 so wasted that it was benumbed for a century, unable to 
 produce a single work of literature worth recording, or at 
 least fit to rank with the great classics in German speech. 
 Whether a nation is bled white or bleeds itself, its loss in 
 vitality is all the same. 
 
 It is unnecessary to follow in detail such instances as 
 these. But it is surely pertinent at the close of this war to 
 recall the dark, stifling years of Europe after Waterloo — 
 the mad revanche on the part of those whom the Revolution 
 and Empire had dispossessed, the suffering of the helpless 
 poor to which Blue Books bear tragic witness, the foolish 
 suppression of thought by governments still feeling them- 
 selves insecure, and the long delay of reform, which the 
 exhausted nations tolerated rather than suffer from another 
 upheaval. History has no surer generalization to offer 
 than that war leaves the gravest issues still to be fought 
 for. 
 
 Of these two tests, moreover, it is the second one, that 
 which comes after the fighting is over, which tries our 
 stamina most severely. It is a test of moral character, after 
 all the enthusiasm has been burned out in the war itself. 
 It leaves us to march to our goal with no bands playing, 
 no flags flying, no inspiriting comradeship keeping step. 
 The orders are by no means clear; we are left to our own 
 devices and the confusion of divided counsels. Tired out 
 
 15
 
 when we begin, from the exhaustion of the war itself, at a 
 moment when we need every ounce of strength for the new 
 demands upon our energy, we face a crisis of the gravest 
 sort. We have not only to safeguard the issues fought for, 
 but to re-adjust ourselves from the fighting; to take up in 
 the post-war period the problems which have accumulated 
 upon our hands during the period when we had no time to 
 consider them. This is the hardest test which can be set 
 before the nation, and history has so far, in every instance, 
 had to record a measure of defeat. It makes little differ- 
 ence whether a nation has been victorious or vanquished; 
 though the failure is of a different kind. In conquered 
 states, as Machievelli pointed out, seditions arise; but the 
 conquerors suffer hardly less in frustrated ambitions and 
 distorted ideals. The case of our own history after the 
 Civil War is to the point. Not only was there the sad 
 blundering of Reconstruction, in which the temperate 
 statesmanship of Lincoln was lost to sight in the ardor of 
 partisanship, but public office became the spoil of placemen. 
 Soldiers, sometimes but poorly qualified to assume the con- 
 trol of the intricate mechanism of civil government, became 
 the administrators of the nation's business. And that busi- 
 ness was at its lowest ebb. 
 
 Among the many misleading things that history has 
 been guilty of, there is perhaps nothing worse than that it 
 should have treated war as a purely military event ; for the 
 displacement which war causes in the process of civilization 
 is an essential part of war history. And, unless the whole 
 period of reconstruction is measured as part of the event 
 of war itself, we shall never come to any clear understand- 
 ing of the catastrophe. So long as the actual fighting is in 
 progress, the stimulation of war activities, regardless of 
 cost, brings out a delusive appearance of prosperity in 
 industry and every phase of national production. The 
 pinch comes only with the close of the war, when the forced 
 
 16
 
 markets no longer buy and the process of deflation sets in 
 with its menace of bankruptcy. This is more than an 
 economic fact, for in the uncertainties of a declining market 
 there is little foothold for altruism and high ideals. With 
 hardship and unemployment brought to one's door, the 
 interests of the world outside grow more and more remote. 
 It is a notable fact that where the sense of insecurity, 
 economic or political, dominates in national outlook, there 
 is little chance for enlightened statesmanship. Insecurity 
 raises at once the question of self-interest and self-interest 
 under such circumstances quickly passes over into pure, 
 unenlightened selfishness. This is a vicious circle, for 
 selfishness almost invariably defeats its own ends. It may 
 be as much an enemy of public welfare in dictating policies 
 of aloofness and protected isolation as in the more obvious 
 and aggressive form of economic imperialism. Indeed it is 
 doubtful whether withdrawal from international co-opera- 
 tion in the avenues of trade at a time when it is most needed 
 is not a greater impediment to recovery than participation 
 prompted by the hope of gain. In any case both policies 
 are likely to unmask the unlovely forms of national greed 
 in the unhealthy atmosphere of post-war days. 
 
 The sense of insecurity is also responsible to some ex- 
 tent for a tendency for one aspect of war itself to be pro- 
 longed after the fighting is over. Militarism has come to 
 the fore for something like a generation after every great 
 war in history. Military heroes tend to monopolize the 
 political scene, often ill-equipped for the problems of the 
 peaceful life. This is not simply due to hero-worship, as 
 has been so lightly assumed. It also springs from a sense 
 of the uncertainties of disturbed international relations and 
 the unsettled state of society at home. Where the ordered 
 processes of civilization seem ineflfective, people turn to 
 those strong and forceful characters who will not hesitate 
 in time of crisis. Militarism (including navalism) is a 
 
 17
 
 short cut to safety. Like selfishness, it is dangerous in pro- 
 portion as it lives upon fear and the sense of insecurity; 
 for, so war tends to perpetuate itself. 
 
 More serious than the growth of militarism, however, is 
 the failure of liberalism, a failure which seems inevitably 
 to follow war. If there ever was a time when forward- 
 looking, constructive liberalism was needed, it is surely in 
 times like these. For liberalism offers a solvent to those 
 problems which arise when new and old forces meet ; it is 
 the mediating force between the conservative appreciation 
 of what society has already achieved and the impatience of 
 radicalism over what is left undone. It registers the con- 
 stant adjustment of the social structure to the play and 
 counterplay of policies or facts. It is a strange paradox 
 that a movement which has this element of compromise in 
 its very make up seems to acquire in time of war the unad- 
 justable character of the doctrinaire, holding to its ideals 
 of progress and reform in spite of impossible conditions, 
 blind to expediency and to the interests of the state. The 
 result has been its own discomfiture and the resultant 
 lessening of the adjustability of society to the needs of the 
 day. 
 
 This eclipse of liberalism is perhaps best seen in the way 
 in which the two ideals of nationalism and liberty have 
 thrown aside the restraints of responsibility and become an 
 explosive force of decentralization and chaos. It is a hard 
 blow to liberals to see the smaller people of mid-Europe, 
 for whose freedom the allies fought, endangering the 
 heritage of a thousand years of European culture by erect- 
 ing impassable frontiers and cherishing behind them more 
 of ancient, tribal hatred than of a sense of that world citi- 
 zenship in whose name their liberties were evoked. Self- 
 determination proved to be a most dangerous shibboleth, 
 and to lend itself in the hands of immature peoples to the 
 most grotesque demands of sovereignty. 
 
 18
 
 Finally, the menace most in evidence, th^ Revolutionary 
 movement of radicalism, is perhaps less menacing by itself 
 than as a result of the others. In the period of deflation 
 there is likely to be more suffering by the working class 
 than protest. Unemployment brings a sense of helpless- 
 ness rather than of belligerency. But, if the situation is 
 not intelligently met and only oppressive measures are 
 taken when protests do arrive, we shall all suffer for it. 
 Whatever happens in America it is well to recognize that 
 Bolshevism is but the extravagant aspect of the most pro- 
 found change that European society has undergone since 
 1789, when France threw off the structure of the Middle 
 Ages. Whatever we may think of it, the proletariat in 
 every country there has been watching with deepest inter- 
 est the spectacle of the docile, ignorant peasantry of Russia 
 arousing itself to what has been hailed as the vastest social- 
 istic experiment ever brought to the verge of reality. Even 
 while discounting the success of that experiment and re- 
 fusing to enlist in the Third International at the behest of 
 Lenine, the leaders of revolution in the western area can 
 still command large forces of their own, and if no outlet is 
 offered through the agencies which the State supplies, they 
 will sooner or latter bring disorders within it. 
 
 The menace in this movement is less in America than 
 in older and more organized societies, for this country is 
 still, upon the whole, the land of opportunity. If, how- 
 ever, opportunity should be unduly curtailed, the tide of 
 revolt piles up behind the impediments and bursts out in 
 strikes, in riots, and in the danger of civil w'ar. That very 
 spirit of independence in our democracy, to which reference 
 has been made, makes ever ready an insubordination and 
 defiance of constituted authority, and lends to our labor 
 troubles a peculiarly sinister aspect. 
 
 So far we have attempted to meet this situation armed 
 with little else than the emotion of patriotism. We have 
 struck instinctively rather than intelligently at radicalism, 
 
 19
 
 failing to see that there must be something more substan- 
 tial in the faith of our democracy than mere reliance upon 
 the old-fashioned loyalty to "Uncle Sam," if it is to be 
 proof against the allurements of the demagogue. For the 
 world has so lost its moorings, that the distant illusive 
 shores of Utopia sometimes seem almost in sight ; and well- 
 meaning, earnest men are ready to risk even ship-wreck to 
 reach them. High aspirations are not infrequently the 
 cause of disaster. And if the breath of the new day, which 
 has given life to aspirations for world democracy, stirs as 
 well the embers of a revolt against the whole social struc- 
 ture, no simple emotions of patriotism will be proof against 
 it as it bursts into flame. There must be something more 
 than loyalty to old traditions in our citizenship. Apart 
 from the fact that great numbers of our citizens have no 
 share in those traditions, the ideal of international solidarity 
 along the lines of economic interest seems, to many, a 
 sounder principle of society than that of the old-fashioned 
 patriotism. 
 
 Socialism cannot be disposed of by emotions. The test 
 of war has shown that some of the constructive features of 
 its program have been adapted to suit the needs of 
 most of the European States. It is no longer a mere 
 philosophy of doctrinaires ; it is one of the real facts of a 
 very real world. National oversight and control of public 
 utilities is a policy with very elastic possibilities of applica- 
 tion. The problem is one to be faced and studied intelli- 
 gently, not left to prejudice and impulse to decide. The 
 extension of Government control over the economic ma- 
 chinery of the modern world is a process so general and so 
 insistently demanded that, whether one names it socialism 
 or not, it is one of the most decisive features of political 
 life today. The more one watches this development, how- 
 ever, the more one sees how poor and frail a thing is mere 
 patriotic emotion to steady our democracy in the face of 
 the experiments which it seems sure to try, and to save it 
 from the folly of extremes. 
 
 20
 
 A NATION'S INTELLIGENCE 
 
 We have talked about preparedness, but the best de- 
 fences are still unprovided. The strongest weapon in a 
 nation's armory is intelligence ; its most formidable force 
 is knowledge under control. If these are not available, we 
 are unprepared for emergencies. The only safety l<jr de- 
 mocracy, faced as it is with sudden crises, is to arm itself 
 with facts as definitely as with navies and armies. Yet this 
 has never been done, in any adequate way. 
 
 The only arming of intelligence with which the nation 
 concerns itself as a whole, is that of little children. At the 
 age of thirteen or fourteen, over eighteen million of the 
 nineteen and a half million children in our schools close 
 their books of history and geography, their readers and 
 grammars and go out to make a living. That is a young 
 nation in itself — more than twice the size of the entire pop- 
 ulation of Ireland and Scotland, almost as large as the mass 
 of nations once under the crown of Hungary, and not much 
 less than all the Prussians in Prussia. And it never gets 
 beyond the elementary grades. 
 
 Out of the nineteen and a half million in the primary 
 schools, a million and a half are privileged to go to high 
 schools and academies ; but our colleges, professional 
 schools and universities, for all that is spent upon them, 
 both by private endowment and large state grants, are 
 attended by only about 275,000 students. By the age of 
 twenty-one, about 95 per cent of our young men and women 
 are through with the process of education. Some 4 per 
 cent (of those of that age) are still — presumably — studying. 
 This is the extent of our formal attempt to prepare the 
 nation's surest defense — its intelligence. 
 
 There is little use, however, in our deploring, such as 
 inadequate return. For no amount of theorizing or benevo- 
 lence will change the facts. They depend upon the inex- 
 orable laws of economics. Most of the boys and girls — the 
 
 21
 
 eighteen millions or so — who leave school between the ages 
 of twelve and fourteen do so because they have to earn 
 money or help others to earn it. The only way to secure a 
 longer and a better chance for our future citizens, is to 
 revise, not the curriculum, but the economic system. And 
 that is a task we are not likely to undertake — in any na- 
 tional way — for the present. 
 
 But given things as they are, taking the country as it is 
 — not a bad starting point, after all — can anything be done 
 to reach the eighty millions of grown up men and women 
 who are the citizens of today? How can we arm their 
 intelligence with facts? This is the most important single 
 question facing the country today. 
 
 The future belongs to the nation that learns to bring 
 its intelligence to the great task of developing rather than 
 destroying natural resources, of maintaining its place in the 
 world without robbing either its own future or the present 
 of others. Waste in production and in war must be 
 eliminated ; otherwise we are within sight of the collapse of 
 civilization. Yet, to judge by the utterances in press and 
 on the platform, we are still content to bring to such prob- 
 lems, not the intelligence and informed constructive minds 
 which might solve them, but emotions, prejudices and 
 ignorance. This is partly the blighting effect of war upon 
 us ; partly the result of never having had to think along 
 these lines, because nature in America has been so prodigal. 
 But the day is at hand when we must measure up with the 
 rest of the world, and either, by reckless competition for 
 new materials and markets, force along once more that 
 process of destructive production which awakens national 
 animosities and kindles war, or by more far-sighted policies 
 conserve the resources and the peace of the world at the 
 same time. It is not easy, in the situation which the war 
 has brought, to preserve the clear vision which the latter 
 policies demand. Thwarted ambition on the part of our 
 late enemies, and pressing need on the part of our friends, 
 
 22
 
 imperil the economic equilibrium of the world. But a 
 deeper reading of history than politicians, or men of affairs 
 seem able to devote to it, will show that whatever flag 
 floats over the strategic highways and markets of the world, 
 the real control will pass to those who bring to Mesopo- 
 tamia or Zanzibar the irresistible power of modern science, 
 backed by capital and supported by intelligence. 
 
 To most people in this country these things seem far 
 removed from American interests. But they are part and 
 parcel of our business world, and hence of our national in- 
 terests. We have already learned that henceforth the seas 
 we sail must be considered as much a concern of our 
 national life as the railroads which cross our plains. We 
 could no more allow the U-boat murderer to remain at large 
 on the sea than the bandit on the township side-road. We 
 have learned this first lesson in world citizenship. But it 
 is a long step from that to a realization that we are inter- 
 ested in the peaceful traffic as well. A southern planter 
 v.ho hardly knows whether Turkestan is in Asia or Africa 
 may find that its irrigated fields some day have displaced 
 his cotton in the markets of Europe. In the past such 
 things have not mattered much to us ; but we are from now 
 on a much more intimate part of the great world organism. 
 In the past we were content to leave such "business" in the 
 hands of an aristocracy of business intelligence. But from 
 now on we need to distinguish between the management 
 of business, which is a matter for technical and specialized 
 business men, and the implications and effect of it upon 
 society, which is a matter of general concern. There must 
 be found a way to interest the general public in its own 
 larger interests. It should be possible just as much for 
 policies of peace as for those of war. Unless we do, our 
 enterprises will be thwarted, their purposes challenged and 
 even the just profits expropriated. The mass of the popu- 
 lation must be shown how its welfare is involved. The 
 stockholders of the great Co-operative Wholesale Stores of 
 
 23
 
 England know that the few shillings or pounds of shares 
 they own, make them partners in the spice islands and dis- 
 tant shipping which that great corporation owns, as well 
 as in the factories and warehouses at home. We may not 
 try any such co-operative experiments, but we must secure 
 a common interest in the enterprise of American business. 
 
 The only way to achieve this result is to educate the 
 eighty million grown-up citizens of this country. The 
 stimulus of war has taught them much — enough, perhaps 
 to meet the war-emergency. But when that stimulus ceases 
 to act, and the slump comes which, as we have seen, has 
 followed every great war known in history, have we any 
 ground for hoping that we shall be able to direct our poli- 
 tics intelligently? Almost nineteen-twentieths of our vast 
 population has had no schooling beyond the age of fourteen. 
 It has forgotten most of the lessons it learned in those days 
 of childhood. It is living in the narrow routine of factory, 
 farm or home work. The tragedy of war demands of it the 
 sacrifice of lives in the fight for great principles which all 
 may understand ; but in time of peace its energies, like its 
 prejudices, are confined to the little world of daily experi- 
 ences. Yet, upon the uniformed judgment of these farmers 
 and villagers, these ignorant workers in our mines and on 
 our railways, rests the responsibility of determining the 
 success of our policies in the most decisive era in the his- 
 tory of the world ! This is not theory, but sober fact. The 
 issues are brought home to us as surely as the German 
 army brought the guns to Rheims. Our complacent isola- 
 tion is shattered for all time. And we are facing this por- 
 tentous fact with the unconcern of ignorance and the chance 
 instruments of the old regime. 
 
 What is to be done about it? Two lines of action nat- 
 urally suggest themselves. On the one hand, to proceed 
 by temporary expedient, on the other to apply some perma- 
 nent, preventive remedy. 
 
 24
 
 In the present war, the nation found itself by the exten- 
 sive use of temporary and specific devices. Newspapers 
 and magazines adjusted themselves to the new demands, 
 and found in the vast tragedy of the war a sufficient sub- 
 stitute for the chronicle of scandal or of amusement. But, 
 invaluable as these proved, they are in their very nature 
 most unreliable guides. Articles were prepared over-night 
 by publicists who turned from describing millionaires' 
 weddings to the work of elucidating German Kultur — a 
 product of centuries and as intricate as the life of a nation. 
 It is true that the newspapers for once tried to secure the 
 help of historians and economists and men familiar with 
 European affairs. But their articles were as like as not to 
 be sandwiched in between irresponsible narratives from the 
 untrained imagination of former city reporters. Yet it 
 must be admitted that our journalists, with all their natural 
 limitations, did exceedingly well in the war, and the country 
 at large learned from them how to make up its mind. 
 
 But even at best, a newspaper is a thing of the passing 
 day. Yesterday's paper is already in the waste-basket. The 
 best of articles by the most competent of men have no 
 permanence in such a medium. This was not of much im- 
 portance in the careless days before the war, when we could 
 pass from one interest to another without troubling our 
 memories unduly over past events. But those careless 
 days were over. In August 1914, and again in April 1917, 
 we entered upon a new era, and developed a new temper. 
 We wanted to keep the best explanations of the best 
 authorities. Numberless scrap-books were begun. Libra- 
 ries enlarged their files. Everyone was conscious of the 
 importance of having the new information for reference, 
 since there was too much for anyone to remember it all. 
 Some newspapers saw in this need a chance to reprint their 
 leading contributions in the form of magazines. The mag- 
 azines, however, were but one degree less fragile than the 
 newspapers, and soon the reader forgot where the articles 
 
 25
 
 were to be found in them, and they too went to the waste- 
 basket. 
 
 In addition to the changed contents of periodicals there 
 was an entirely new output in books. Serious treatises on 
 international law for a brief time, became "best sellers," 
 though what their untrained readers made of some of them 
 it is hard to say. Governments at war published in the 
 guise of information a vast amount of propaganda. Alto- 
 gether the reading world was overwhelmed with a bewild- 
 ering amount of war literature. But once the local situa- 
 tion had changed, these temporary devices for the informa- 
 tion of the masses proved no longer of interest, and since, 
 owing to their form and specific use, they were commonly 
 treated as tools to be applied for a single time, they and 
 their contents were rapidly forgotten, once the situation 
 which called them forth had passed away. 
 
 What was needed was something more permanent : a 
 stimulus toward an attitude of mind upon which one could 
 rely, and a mastery of a body of fact which would not pass 
 away at the first turn of events. In short, democracy needs 
 preventive medicine rather than temporary remedies for 
 crises. 
 
 APPLIED POLITICAL SCIENCE 
 
 The conclusion is clear. There must be economic re- 
 form, adjusting society to its changing environment; there 
 must be reform in education, extending its scope and revis- 
 ing its program of studies. But in addition, building partly 
 upon these, partly independent of them, there must be a 
 new development in the social and political sciences. If 
 there is to be intelligent foresight in national questions, we 
 must get rid of our careless habits of "muddling through" 
 and give up working our governments by rule of thumbs. 
 In short, we must apply scientific methods to the manage- 
 ment of society as we have been learning to apply them 
 in the natural world. 
 
 26
 
 It never seems to occur to one that there is anything 
 strange in the fact that we have better equipment for study- 
 ing electricity than for studying society. But as a matter 
 of fact, our whole attitude changes when we turn from the 
 physical sciences to investigating ourselves. The labora- 
 tories for social measurements have hardly been fitted up. 
 We are in the political sciences where the natural scientists 
 were two hundred years ago. We have no sure way for 
 knowing a fact when we see one; no instruments for deter- 
 mining its force in the great stream of events which make 
 up history. While the physical and chemical sciences have 
 gone ahead and remade our universe and thrown aside the 
 medieval theories which restricted their free investigation 
 of realities, in the fields of the political sciences there have 
 been no such triumphs to record either in creative products 
 or in the mastery over hampering prejudices and precon- 
 ceived opinions. The very word "opinion" can hardly be 
 used in the physical sciences, for it would ill describe the 
 processes of experiment. This is not to imply that the 
 successive statements of results which the sciences issue, 
 and which become the basis of our world-view, are final 
 and absolute truth. There is a temporary element in them 
 all, a guess or hypothesis, as in all human reasoning. 
 But between such statements of the evidences furnished 
 in the laboratory and the casual "opinions" on social and 
 national questions furnished by press, pulpit or platform 
 there is all the difference that lies between a Kelvin or an 
 Einstein, measuring the forces of the universe, and a 
 Babylonian astrologer messing in star-portents and dreams. 
 
 We can see this relative backwardness of the political 
 sciences by a glance at the three major divisions of history, 
 economics and anthropology. 
 
 History, although much improved of late, is still largely 
 a repository of untested data. Not that the things may 
 not have happened which it records, but that their happen- 
 
 17
 
 ing^ was often not an event of the measurement assigned 
 it by a casual, pre-scientific judgment. The accepted per- 
 spectives of the past are largely chance perspectives, or 
 the reflection of uninformed opinions of other times, which 
 have never been questioned critically. Take as a single 
 example the fact that the French Revolution was not really 
 understood by historians for a hundred years after it had 
 happened ; when at last, a concentrated effort of scientific 
 critical minds, re-examining the data, remade the story. 
 Much of what is taught as history is still in the unsifted 
 state that the history of France was in before this re-ap- 
 praisal by critical scholarship. Above all, modern history 
 is but a monastic tale so long as it deals only with the 
 traditional theme of debate in council or the clash of war. 
 The greatest events in modern history are surely those 
 connected with science itself, mastering not only abstruse 
 problems of phenomena, but the very basis of civilization, 
 in the control of time and space and of the productivity of 
 nature. It is surely a fact of history that farming is be- 
 coming applied chemistry, so that the farmer replaces a 
 primitive superstition about the luck of the moon at plant- 
 ing, with an interest in nitrates in the soil, and so escapes 
 the fetters of that immemorial conservatism which has 
 characterized the country people of the past. It is a fact 
 of history that machinery, in supplanting hands, is not only 
 creating cities but dislocating the balance of power between 
 nations far more effectively than the old diplomacy was 
 ever able to do. The whole history of civilization must be 
 re-examined in the light of scientific analysis, to see what 
 data really matter, and to eliminate mere tradition based 
 on chance or nourished by prejudice. 
 
 But, the student of history will at once protest that not 
 too much can be expected from scientific methods in his 
 field, for our view of the past is never more than a reflection 
 of our views of the present. We inject into history the 
 major interests of our own time ; if our interest is theology, 
 
 28
 
 our history will be theological ; if our interest is politics, 
 our history will be political. The relative correctness of 
 our view of the past will therefore depend upon w^hat clarity 
 of vision we may be able to achieve concerning other mat- 
 ters than history. 
 
 This brings us to economics, the science of things as they 
 are supposed to be, in society at large. Now economics has 
 been, like history, more or less of a guess at what things 
 are, or a succession of guesses registered by men of genius of 
 of great learning, but none of them supplied with an ade- 
 (juate apparatus for measuring the larger forces which 
 modify or control society. It is no disparagement to those 
 rare leaders in either economics or history, "the old 
 masters," to whom we ow^e the little insight we possess 
 in such matters, if w^e frankly admit that their speculations 
 are now chiefly of interest to the historian of thought rather 
 than to the investigator of data. New instruments, new 
 methods; and fortunately, new instruments are at hand. 
 
 It is the same with anthropology as with economics. 
 The comparative study of mankind and of the elements of 
 society has only recently passed out of the stage of crude 
 conjecture and haphazard methods. Little enough has 
 yet been done, but already a whole group of scientific allies 
 are growing up to work together upon the tangled problems 
 of social development, sciences of language, philology ; of 
 remains, archaeology ; of religion and magic, comparative 
 religion ; of mental traits and capacity, comparative and 
 social psychology; of social phenomena in higher forms, 
 sociolog\\ The combined attack of these new inquisitors 
 upon the age-long misconceptions as to the fundamentals 
 of the human side of the problem is bound to match the 
 achievements of economics on the more material side. 
 
 Whatever the contribution which these sciences offer, 
 however, we come back to the point that they have done 
 nothing yet comparable with the work of the physical 
 sciences. They are hardly more than a commentary on 
 
 29
 
 matters that lie beyond their power to affect or control. 
 The anthropologist and the historian, for instance, can point 
 out the primitive elements in the emotion of patriotism, of 
 which we have spoken frequently here ; but where is there 
 any evidence of the effect of such clarified thinking upon 
 the emotion itself? Indeed so ineffective, upon the whole, 
 have the political and social sciences remained, that thece 
 is a general skepticism in the sciences themselves as to 
 whether they can ever be anything else but ineffective. 
 But this conclusion rests upon false premises. It takes for 
 granted, though none too clearly, that the social sciences 
 are pure sciences and not applied sciences; that their proper 
 purpose is the search for truth, and that they would be de- 
 flected from their true course if set to work in the play and 
 counterplay of the crude forces of actual society. The 
 dominant school of history for the last generation so prized 
 the objectivity it was able to attain, that it never would 
 risk using it in dangerous places, like the events of one's 
 own time. Economics, the one science that has devoted 
 its attention to more practical tasks, has that much more to 
 its credit. Generally speaking, we do not expect much of 
 the social sciences because we do not believe that it lies within 
 their proper scope to master their phenomena as the applied 
 sciences do. 
 
 Now, this is the crux of the whole matter. What we 
 need is applied social science. We need to have something 
 happen in politics, for instance, comparable to what hap- 
 pened in chemistry when Bessemer set his steel converter 
 to work. We must learn to deal with social facts as Watt 
 dealt with steam. Or to take a more pertinent illustration, 
 we must work at the data of national problems in the same 
 spirit as that which Pasteur applied to the investigations 
 which changed the study of medicine from quackery to 
 science. 
 
 Such an insistence on applied science does not imply 
 
 30
 
 that pure political or social science, the study ot truth for 
 its own sake, would suffer, any more than it has suffered in 
 the physical, chemical or biological field. On the contrary, 
 out of the vast laboratory of experience which such a plan 
 as this involves, would come a truer vision of things as a 
 whole and as they are. Pure science is but the overtone of 
 applied science ; its poetry and its philosophy. 
 
 But just what does this all mean in terms of practice; 
 and, more especially, how does it offer any promise of solv- 
 ing the pressing problem of the development of the nation's 
 intelligence by a growing mastery of fact and a correspond- 
 ing decline in prejudice? 
 
 The promise lies in democracy itself. Nowhere else is 
 there a greater demand for facts, for intelligent mastery of 
 data, than where it is most needed — in those sections of the 
 working classes where the pressure of daily need shows 
 with stern reiteration how much the times are out of joint. 
 This is a patent but strangely ignored characteristic of 
 democracy — its appetite for facts. We are constantly 
 warned of the contrary tendencies ; of the theoretical revo- 
 lutionary, and the fickle whims of the mob. But the hold 
 of the theorist on his audiences is frequently due less to his 
 theories than to his command of facts and his ability to 
 present them so that they reach home in the consciousness 
 of those who face them so closely day by day. And the 
 fickleness of popular opinion is not seldom due to the re- 
 peated discovery that what has been dressed up as fact 
 turns out to be untrue. Radical literature does not win its 
 way, as many conservatives seem to think, by presenting 
 only dreams of a metaphysical economic heaven, where 
 capitalists cease from troubling, and the elect co-operate. 
 Its driving power lies rather less in its imaginative pro- 
 jections of Utopia than in its criticism of things as they 
 are, which everyone can recognize. In short, the moments 
 of thought and opinion, which stir the world of every day, 
 are as dependent upon fact as the policies of state with 
 
 31
 
 which they deal. And there is more sense of reality in 
 them than we can appreciate unless we come upon the facts 
 from the same angle. 
 
 Behind the popular outlook lie two great imperatives: 
 the need for adjustment to changing environment — a bio- 
 logical as well as an economic fact, a law of life itself — and 
 a powerful instinct, curiosity. It was curiosity which sup- 
 plied the impulse for science and produced history by way 
 of gossip. It implants in us all a tendency so strong that 
 we are prepared to run almost any risk and pay almost any 
 l)rice to satisfy it. Here is something to build upon surely. 
 Moreover, it is not to our disadvantage that w^e are most 
 curious about what concerns us most, giving our little home 
 affairs precedence over larger events that happen to others, 
 for, out of this self-interest, intelligence can forge the in- 
 struments for our social preservation. 
 
 Here, then is where the applied sciences of politics and 
 society must be set to work ; not in the isolation of aca- 
 demic life, which may properly remain philosophic rather 
 than practical, and so contribute that influence which pure 
 thought possesses on the actions of men ; but in the very 
 heart of the work-a-day world. Facts must be supplied 
 where the need for them is greatest; and a scientific spirit 
 must be developed where its operation would be mosf 
 effective. How^ can this be done? The full answer can- 
 not be given, for it is the quality of science to belie all 
 forecasts ; but enough of the process is already going in 
 our midst to indicate some, at least, of the possible lines 
 of procedure. 
 
 There exist, chiefly in the w^orld of business, offices de- 
 voted to the investigation of the facts pertinent to the 
 enterprises undertaken. Businesses which depend most 
 upon long foresight, use them most, such as banks or great 
 corporations. During the war, government departments 
 found it necessary to develop them to a large degree; and 
 
 32
 
 the term they became known by there — Intelligence De- 
 partments, aptly characterizes the stimulus they were to 
 supply as well as the scope of their work. Their function 
 is to investigate and report on the data on which policies 
 rest. Their activity depends not less on the use made of 
 their work than on the work itself; for no investigator 
 can keep his heart in this work unless he know's that it is 
 being applied to actual problems. But so far the use has 
 been a narrow one, simply to help offices transact their 
 business. In almost all cases, and even more so, in Govern- 
 ment offices, the information analyzed is for those few who 
 are on the inside ; it becomes a business or a department 
 secret. It would surely be a step towards the science of 
 applied politics if such devices, as they become perfected 
 and test out their capacity for fact-analysis, should also 
 enlarge the scope of their application to include citizens 
 generally. 
 
 At once, however, we come upon two fundamental ob- 
 jections. In the first place, facts are not simple matters 
 of description. They are variable and elusive and very 
 hard to establish, and no two investigators are likely to 
 agree in all details in their reports. In the second place, it 
 would deaden curiosity and not stimulate that criticism 
 which is the first requisite of intelligent citizenship, if a 
 government Intelligence Service were to ofiFer to do a 
 nation's thinking for it ! We do not want a German bu- 
 reaucracy dulling our judgment by its very efficiency. 
 
 The only way to avoid these two obstacles is to chal- 
 lenge authority by as "authoritative" data in the hands of 
 an opposition ; and to profit from controversy about facts 
 to enlarge our notions of them. If, for instance, instead 
 of leaving Intelligence Work for the Government on the 
 one hand, or specific business interests on the other, the 
 Political Parties were themselves to undertake it, and so 
 direct their appeal, not to prejudice and emotion, where 
 they make it now, but to knowledge and insight, it would 
 
 33
 
 contribute enormously to steady and elevate the political 
 outlook of the country. 
 
 PARTIES AND PREJUDICES 
 
 The place "party" occupies in modern politics is a 
 strange one. Although in every country that has developed 
 popular government, that development has been reached by 
 way of parties, they themselves have remained undeveloped, 
 and are perhaps the most primitive elements in our political 
 life. So far as the mass of the nation is concerned they 
 furnish little more than an instrument for intermittent use 
 at elections. Between elections, it is true, they still func- 
 tion through the agencies of representative government ; 
 but to keep them working in any other way seems to most 
 people illegitimate. A tacit social agreement exists for 
 minimizing their action ; and those who use them between 
 elections are labelled as "politicians," — a word of ill-omen. 
 
 This may be partly due to the healthy feeling that party 
 government is something better than its premises ; that 
 those elected as representatives of party, once elected, be- 
 come the representatives of the nation ; and that any 
 attempt to hold them to the narrowing influences of party 
 ties is a sinister movement to void that implied "social con- 
 tract" to which we referred above, which safeguards the 
 rights of the minority in the body politic. With this sense 
 of enlarged responsibility which widens the outlook of legis- 
 lators from politics to statecraft one must, of course, be 
 careful not to interfere. But while the governments 
 founded upon party may profit from an escape from the 
 machinery which secured their election, it is an entirely 
 different question what the electorate should do. For them, 
 released as they are from all responsibility for action, ex- 
 cept at elections, escape from party means generally entire 
 abstention from any further political activity whatever. 
 
 34
 
 Now, it is just this abstention which makes the party 
 such an anomaly. If it touches the electorate only at elec- 
 tion times, it naturally plays upon those more permanent 
 traits of national character upon which it can base some 
 hope of a successful appeal. And these more permanent 
 elements, if the nation is left to itself and faces issues unin- 
 formed, are prejudices and emotions instead of reason. The 
 result is a vicious circle ; an uninformed electorate tends to 
 perpetuate an uninforming political machine. Is there no 
 escape from this dilemma? 
 
 The first condition of success is not to expect too much. 
 There is no use planning a new heaven and a new earth by 
 way of any one line of endeavor ; and what is proposed here, 
 although sufficiently far-reaching in its own field, is after 
 all but a slight affair compared with the stubborn contin- 
 uing realities of national habit and outlook. Most people 
 are either too busy or too indolent to take much consistent 
 interest in problems which do not on the face of them bear 
 directly upon their own lives. A thoroughly alert electorate 
 in immediate touch with scientifically directed political 
 parties is quite as unreal a Utopia as any ever dreamed of. 
 But there is a practical middle course between the crude, 
 almost anarchic conditions which prevail today, and the 
 achievement of ideals. The clue to it has been offered by 
 a singular and wide-spread movement at the present time, 
 which is just beginning to engage the attention of political 
 observers, that w^hich, under one form is known as group- 
 action in politics ; under another, as direct action. We 
 must see if party-organization can profit from the experi- 
 ence of these movements. 
 
 The ineffectiveness of party organization, reflected in 
 representative government which rests upon it, has led to 
 a line of action upon the part of those interested in certain 
 policies, which has cut in upon the processes of that govern- 
 ment to an extent unknown by the citizens at large. Groups 
 
 35
 
 which are intent upon securing or preventing government 
 action organize themselves to bring pressure to bear upon 
 legislatures or administrations. They may use the lines 
 which lead to lobbies and more or less corrupt influences, 
 or they may content themselves with the effort to stir the 
 electorate to use its influence through the mails. In most 
 cases they claim to "keep out of politics" by keeping out 
 of political parties, having only specific points to gain, and 
 not a continuous policy to advance. The play and counter- 
 play of these "influences" is perhaps as determining a factor 
 in our governmental action today as the elections them- 
 selves. Some observers are inclined to go farther, and to 
 say that the center of political forces lies in such group 
 action rather than in the older parties which do little but 
 supply it with the arena and the nominal protagonists. It 
 invades the executive as well as the legislative bodies, de- 
 ciding for presidents, even when elected by huge majorities, 
 who shall hold portfolios of state. Reformers, business 
 men, labor leaders and farmers, all classes or groups that 
 are large enough or important enough to become nationally 
 articulate, use such action whenever their interests are at 
 stake ; for it is their only way of reaching those "in power" 
 — a power achieved through party action at the polls. 
 
 This growth of group action may, as some suppose, be 
 reaching such dimensions as to offer a substitute for the 
 ineffectiveness of party politics, called out by the growing 
 complexity of modern society. And if the test is to be 
 made between the old party structure, limited to election 
 campaigns, and these groups representative of the larger 
 functional units of the nation, the group action is sure to 
 grow in proportion as these groups express the coherent 
 view of their own constituents. But before such a tendency 
 becomes really dominant, it is well to see how much of 
 the needs which have called it out can be met by readjust- 
 ing the formal political organization which we already 
 possess, that of the party. 
 
 36 

 
 If parties are solely for election purposes — apart from 
 their role in legislatures or executives — then it is clear that 
 we shall have to look elsewhere, more and more, for 
 guidance in crises. The problems of statecraft do not come 
 only at election times ; new ones arise constantly, involving 
 issues unforeseen and unforeseeable. We may, in the old 
 theory of representative government, say that our legisla- 
 tors are left free to meet them in our stead; but where our 
 interests are involved deeply enough we do not in practice 
 leave our representatives free. And every such interference 
 as we bring to bear, tends to disorganize the institutions 
 we outwardly regard as the very structure of the state. 
 There are only two alternatives ; either the parties must 
 become better and more constant media for expressing the 
 will of the people, more adjustable functions of the body 
 politic; or they will be less and less effective in securing 
 us a working government. Since, however, they still re- 
 main, in popular esteem, the chief political agency of the 
 people, it surely requires no further argument to justify an 
 attempt to use them, if we can, to cure their own ills. 
 
 How, then, can parties become less these dead-and- 
 alive organs of tradition and prejudice which they have so 
 largely been, and more educational with regard to the 
 electorate and functional with regard to the government? 
 The answer has already been suggested in the foregoing 
 pages. By studying facts. 
 
 PARTIES AND FACTS 
 
 If, alongside of campaign committees and the other ex- 
 isting party organs, there were a national committee, artic- 
 ulated with a series of local committees, whose duty it was 
 to find out the facts in those matters upon which the party 
 must in any case have an opinion, what would be the 
 possibilities of such a mechanism? Its value at election 
 
 37
 
 times is already recognized, for such temporary committees 
 now exist ; but a well organized permanent organization, 
 with its capital already largely available in the shape of 
 well-ordered reference files would enormously increase the 
 efficiency of the present devices. Apart from elections, 
 however, it could supply legislators with data for debate 
 and party leaders with the means for criticizing opponents 
 or better weighing current issues. By the sheer advantage 
 which it could oflfer over those who lacked the facts, it 
 would justify itself as a part of the party machine. 
 
 But, beyond that, it would help to restore confidence in 
 the honesty of political leadership. Frankly admitting the 
 partisan use to which its conclusions would be put, it could 
 still ensure thoroughness in research, knowing that any . 
 mistake in fact would be detected and pilloried by the com- 
 mittees of the other side. Thus, partisanship would be 
 reduced more and more to the field of inferences ; and the 
 public mind could reach a fairer judgment as to the real 
 merits of the case. 
 
 It needs no argument to prove the value of such a device 
 to both nation and party. A few examples, however, may 
 serve to indicate how it might work. Suppose the propo- 
 sition were made by a government to protect the property 
 of its nationals in some relatively backward country. This 
 seems like a somewhat simple proposition, but it may prove 
 of the gravest importance. The World War sprang from 
 one not much unlike it. Questions of national honor are 
 at once involved. These, in turn, rapidly stimulate patriotic 
 emotions. In spite of a dozen Bryan treaties, this country 
 is as likely as any other, not to wait and weigh the issue. 
 In such a crisis, only a knowledge of the facts can effec- 
 tively safeguard the nation from unredeemable blunders — 
 and blunders in such matters are invariably crimes — in 
 either failing in its duty to its own citizens or committing 
 acts of aggression in the name of justice. The peace of the 
 world depends to a large degree upon fuller knowledge. 
 
 38
 
 Had the Austrian cabinet known what Berchthold knew 
 but concealed from it, that the murder of the Archduke 
 Ferdinand was not instigated from Serbia, the war might 
 have been averted. 
 
 There are, of course, many questions which cannot be 
 solved this way. Any committee of research which set 
 out to answer everything would soon make itself ridiculous. 
 It is not proposed to substitute professors for statesmen. 
 There is such a thing as political insight ; and there are 
 men of genius who reach just conclusions by something 
 approaching intuition. Pedantry is no substitute for com- 
 mon sense. But common sense itself can be applied to the 
 elimination of pedantry from such a plan. Properly de- 
 limited and articulated to its uses, a Research Department 
 should form a part of every well-ordered political party's 
 household. 
 
 The experiment here proposed is not a new one. As a 
 matter of fact, the nearest approach to what is here sug- 
 gested, is the Labor Research Department maintained in 
 connection with the British Labor movement. It, in turn, 
 owes its initiation to Fabian Socialism ; but there is a wide 
 difference between the specific purposes of socialist study- 
 groups or research committees, and the open and free 
 analysis of all kinds of questions which come within the 
 purview of such a miscellaneous body as our old-line politi- 
 cal party. Socialist debaters have long enjoyed the ad- 
 vantage of this superior piece of mechanism — a little section 
 of the co-operative commonwealth, which they themselves 
 have created, but their activity is rather to be classed with 
 that of those groups mentioned above, whose action is less 
 through than across the existing state-mechanism. The 
 great political parties lack that coherence and singleness of 
 purpose which characterizes socialism ; they are less organs 
 of a doctrine and more humanly complex. Hence the 
 British party is more akin. For it concerns itself with 
 national policies as such, and not simply with the achieve- 
 ment of a labor-state. 
 
 39
 
 The Labor Research Department is therefore an inter- 
 esting institution to study. It attempts to answer questions 
 of fact (as well as to suggest policy) in all matters which 
 affect the nation, since it holds that the interests of labor 
 are as large as those of the nation itself. This breadth of 
 view may of course be interpreted two ways ; but, without 
 going into the question as to whether Labor is enhancing 
 its class to cover the nation or simply losing its own nar- 
 rowness, the fact remains that we have here substantially 
 a national political party using a research mechanism in 
 the way described. Its reference files contain tabulated 
 and statistical material on all kinds of questions; tariffs, 
 British trade in Africa, opium traffic, reparations, mandates, 
 colonial policies, etc. Its staff, largely voluntary — for its 
 funds are so slight that it can hardly exist without help — 
 is drawn from the ranks of trained investigators and tech- 
 nical experts, mostly college men and women, who can be 
 set upon special tasks of investigation as the demand arises. 
 Any opinions it expresses are edited by committees with 
 an eye to the facts ; it is as near applied political science 
 as the limitations of party machinery permit. The result 
 is beyond expectation. It was largely by means of this 
 device — which is not solely monopolized by the Research 
 Department — that the pronouncements of British Labor 
 on world policies have, during the last few years, attracted 
 such attention on the part of thinking people the world 
 over, by their rare breadth of view and control of fact. 
 While the older parties have sometimes seemed to be 
 floundering in the anarchy of thought which comes from 
 a break-down of their ancient shibboleths, unable to proceed 
 further than the expediency of the day requires — in short, 
 "muddling through" and hardly knowing whither — British 
 labor has managed to impress so competent an observer as 
 Lord Haldane, as being "on the heights." One may utterly 
 disagree with its conclusions, but it at least forces its 
 opponents to meet fact with fact in the great battle of 
 
 40
 
 argument. And from this sort of controversy, if from any, 
 truth emerges. 
 
 If industrial democracy can, so early in the day, show 
 such results from applied research, still greater results 
 should follow the co-ordination and development of the 
 agencies for research which the great middle class possesses 
 — but ordinarily fails to use, except for profit. But to do 
 so, one would have to be ready to bring to the problems 
 not only an adequate mechanism but also a free, critical 
 but receptive mind. The progress made by labor toward clar- 
 ification of the issues which front it is partly due to the fact 
 that it largely lacks that sense of proprietorship in existing 
 society which makes even outworn institutions sentimental- 
 ly valuable to those whose heritage they have been. There 
 is therefore a better chance for the development of a critical 
 attitude in the newer political forces than in the old. But 
 those who claim a sense of responsibility for things as they 
 are must maintain the balance in the state by meeting 
 criticism with fact. 
 
 It may be objected, from the practical side, that a re- 
 search organization in connection with our traditional 
 parties would not have as definite a purpose as those work- 
 ing with the radical movements. The two great parties are 
 both miscellanies, whereas the newer parties have a nar- 
 rower platform. To have anything approaching, an applied 
 science of politics, there should be not merely an analysis 
 of facts, but co-ordinated and directed criticism, related 
 definitely to policies. This would not be easy. It might 
 be best, therefore, to attempt a little less at first ; and simply 
 propose to study those problems which are novel in Amer- 
 ican politics, to co-ordinate the outlook of specialists, such 
 as engineers or economists, with those of practical states- 
 men, and so, by enlarging the premises, secure increasing 
 breadth as well as sobriety of jtidgment. 
 
 41
 
 THE ALTERNATIVES 
 
 If the old parties continue to meet their problems by 
 the old-time methods and refuse to employ more adequate 
 agencies for securing efficiency in government, there are 
 alternatives which it requires no gift of prophecy to fore- 
 tell. There will be an acceleration of the growth of that 
 group-action in politics referred to above ; and, along the 
 same lines but still more disruptive of the existing scheme 
 of things, a development of direct action by which sections 
 of the community will attempt to achieve their ends by 
 ignoring the machinery of representative government alto- 
 gether. 
 
 The first of these alternatives is more or less inevitable 
 in any case. The only question is how far it will go to 
 replace or nullify the party-structure of government. With- 
 in due limits, there is nothing but benefit to all concerned 
 from research committees maintained by private organiza- 
 tions. Farmers, as well as bankers, should be able to make 
 their demands not only more articulate, but also more con- 
 sistent with public welfare. But if the process is unduly 
 encouraged, through the absence of any more general sift- 
 ing of evidence by expert hands, the result will be a 
 discrediting of political action ; chaotic administration will 
 respond to inconsistency in policy, and the way will lie 
 open to that next step in disintegration, direct action. If 
 those parts of a community who know how their interests 
 are at stake succeed in imposing their will upon the repre- 
 sentatives of the whole community, who do not know how 
 its interests are affected, there is in operation a revolution- 
 ary change in politics which threatens to transform the 
 very nature of the state. For it is a process which is not 
 likely to stop at legislative and executive action ; its 
 invasion of the courts as well is just as inevitable. Subtly 
 but surely, those who know what they want will devise the 
 
 42
 
 way to get it, if they meet on the other hand, only befuddle- 
 ment and good intentions. 
 
 For the present, the employment of adequate means to 
 express the point of view of different sections of the 
 country on specific questions is something to be grateful 
 for, rather than to fear. In the absence of more widely 
 representative committees of research, we must, in self- 
 defense, call for all the information which each technical 
 body can supply. Our safety lies in calling in experts of 
 more than one such body and weighing their statements. 
 We must spend more and more time in hearings, and leave 
 conclusions largely to semi-ofTicial and official boards. 
 
 This is a process which is likely to grow in any case. 
 But if it grows by itself, without a parallel development in 
 the unofficial, but nation-wide political bodies, it promises 
 to produce new organs of government — some of which are 
 already in but thinly disguised operation. We shall have 
 government by quasi-judicial action of commissions. Such 
 commission government is probably a needed adjunct to 
 our present system ; but it is well to be aware of its impli- 
 cations. For, if allowed just a little more scope, it will 
 bring along a new American bureaucracy. xA.nd bureau- 
 cracy means a lessening of responsible government. 
 
 There is an easy optimism in democracies ; that things 
 will come out all right in the end. It combines readily 
 with a belief that our political structure is the happy 
 product of long experience, and therefore adequate. But 
 history leads to no such complacent conclusions. The past 
 is full of fools' paradises. The price of liberty is more than 
 constant vigilance ; there is no virtue in merely being alert. 
 The most alert may be the most mistaken if snap-judg- 
 ments and quick action are the criteria of alertness. And 
 if liberty demands foresight, much more so does welfare. 
 No nation can live off its political heritage ; for that is 
 something that wastes in all but the most experienced 
 
 43
 
 hands. The processes of history are long; and we are in 
 their midst, not at the close. 
 
 But if the issues before us gain in clarity when seen in 
 their true perspectives, they gain in significance when seen 
 in their application to the present. Politics no longer 
 touches the outer fringe of daily life. Every household is 
 aflFected by it. Our problem, viewed nationally, is to give 
 direction and cohesion to this vast but relatively inarticulate 
 power of public opinion. Viewed from the standpoint of 
 the individual, it is to secure a larger measure of intelligent 
 interest in these things. 
 
 The fact that we are in the midst of historic processes 
 instead of at their close, is after all a cheering one. What- 
 ever happens to such schemes as these, it is well to realize 
 what can be done. Reform in politics, one way or another, 
 must keep pace with educational and economic reforms. 
 The political and social sciences, which never before our 
 day have been called upon to meet the world problems of 
 democracy, must work out their methods by experiment. 
 That suggested here is but one of many. But some day 
 it should be possible to treat quackery in politics, as we 
 have learned — only in our own time — to treat it in medicine, 
 and brand the demagogue as a charlatan. This does not 
 call for any change in human nature. The ancient virtues 
 could still operate. Patriotism would still stir the same 
 sentiments as it has always done, and the old ardor of 
 attachment to immemorial things continue to glow. Im- 
 pulse will long continue to make a stronger appeal thari 
 intelligence. But the disciplines of science could be applied 
 to society as elsewhere — not left in academic desuetude — 
 in order to prevent even the best impulses in the world 
 from beclouding the issues. For some of these issues may 
 be vital for civilization itself. 
 
 44
 
 DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL MORALITY* 
 
 The generalizations of history are seldom of interest to 
 the reformer, for the simple reason that they usually stand 
 in his way. But there is one important field which seems 
 to have escaped analysis, where Clio offers unexpected help 
 to those who in these troubled times are trying to keep 
 their bearings by old landmarks, while fully aware that they 
 are moving farther and farther from them every day. It is 
 a generalization in the field of morals, and that is perhaps 
 why it has escaped notice, but as it bears directly upon the 
 most pressing problem of the hour — the effect upon society 
 of the enlarged national control in industry and other things 
 — it should offer whatever consolation it can bring to those 
 who watch the running tide of public affairs with sad and 
 disillusioned ej'es, and it may perhaps help to cheer to 
 some degree those who are struggling somewhat uncer- 
 tainly to realize the aspirations of democracy. 
 
 If one looks over the political history of modern Europe 
 and of America, three main facts stand out. There is in 
 the first place that steady growth of representative govern- 
 ment by means of the widening of the electorate, which 
 now, at the close of the war, extends over practically the 
 entire citizenship. This patent fact of the extension of the 
 suffrage to a practically universal basis is what is in most 
 people's minds when they speak of the growth of democracy 
 in our era. Barrier after barrier has been passed until we 
 have at last done everything which the conservatives of 
 even a generation ago regarded as dangerous to the com- 
 monweal. We have done what Lecky so frankly charac- 
 terized as political folly — we have placed power in the 
 hands of the "unintelligent" and we have done this on a 
 colossal scale. There is no need to elaborate this point. 
 
 ♦Although opening up a somewhat different theme to that in 
 the foregoing chapters, this article, reprinted from the Political 
 Science Quarterly for March, 1921, has been added as an appendix, 
 for reasons which may appear toward the close. 
 
 45
 
 but it is only by contrast with the extremely limited elec- 
 torate of a century ago, that we can grasp the full signifi- 
 cance of the change which has taken place. Instead of a 
 few thousand leading citizens, the masses pass judgment 
 on the policies and acts of the modern state. 
 
 Parallel with this familiar fact runs another hardly less 
 familiar but somewhat more intricate. The scope of gov- 
 ernment has increased almost as notably as the suffrage. 
 The concentration of power in the hands of war govern- 
 ments was but an extravagant and revolutionary phase 
 of a movement which extends back through our whole era. 
 When the modern states were taking shape under the stress 
 of the new business conditions which the industrial revolu- 
 tion had brought about, the theory of government was that 
 of laissez-faire. The chief aim was to get rid of the hamper- 
 ing paternalism of the old regime and allow the individual 
 free scope for the development of the new business relation- 
 ships which had their roots in the factory and the mine. 
 Political institutions based upon old territorial sovereignty 
 and more or less outworn administrative procedure, were 
 ill-adapted to control and direct intelligently the political 
 forces emerging under the aegis of capitalism. The prin- 
 ciples of the new freedom enunciated by Turgot in France 
 and by Adam Smith in Britain, were embedded to the full 
 in the one constitution of a great state which was drawn 
 up at that time — that of the United States, where the tra- 
 dition was further developed through the influence of great 
 jurists like John Marshall. The Supreme Court of the 
 United States became the ultimate safeguard of the liberties 
 of the individual against the interference of the govern- 
 ment, in the eyes of orthodox political theorists, rescuing 
 sovereignty itself from the possible tyranny of national 
 representation in Congress. 
 
 From about the middle of the nineteenth century on- 
 wards, the trend of constitutional history has been along 
 the lines of a growing conscious protest and an accumula- 
 
 46
 
 tion of legislative enactments against this first great prin- 
 ciple of laisses-faire. One can trace the development in the 
 mtiltiplication of administrative offices as well as in the 
 scope and character of legislation. The machinery of gov- 
 ernment in the modern state has grown so vast and intricate 
 as to defy the analysis of all but the most highly specialized 
 experts. Government is no longer possible on the simple 
 basis of trial and error carried out by distinguished ama- 
 teurs, and if parliaments retain in outward appearance 
 much of their earlier form, their debates touch but a fringe 
 of the vast political control which they exercise. This 
 vast increase in the scope of government needs only to be 
 mentioned to be recognized as hardly less typical, in the 
 growth of modern politics, than the growth of the franchise. 
 
 Starting with these two familiar generalizations we 
 come upon the third, which is intimately connected with 
 them, but which seems to escape notice. 
 
 Both the extension of the suffrage and the extension of 
 the scope of government have increased the possibilities of 
 corruption. Personal responsibility grows ever more diffi- 
 cult to place. Even in the administration of single depart- 
 ments the impersonal tends to replace the personal and 
 reliance to be placed on machinery more, and on individual 
 character less. Along with this growing impersonality of 
 government grows the increased opportunity for corrupt 
 practices from the very enlargement of its scope. With 
 every enlargement there is that much more chance for 
 graft. Wherever national affairs are entrusted to func- 
 tionaries, which formerly were left for the private initiative 
 of citizens, there is just that much more temptation for 
 corruption. 
 
 Yet the history of public morals throughout the same 
 period seems to indicate that the very reverse of this is true. 
 Apparently, parallel with the enlargement of the suffrage 
 and the extension of the scope of government, there has 
 been, not a decline, but a steady growth in public honesty. 
 
 47
 
 If this be so, the fact is of the utmost significance, for it 
 means that a study of the past may relieve us of at least 
 half our anxiety about the future. Distrust in democracy 
 is twofold ; distrust in its moral integrity and distrust in its 
 capacity for affairs. If history can remove the former, 
 the question narrows down to the simple — but as yet un- 
 solved — issue of efficiency. 
 
 But is this really the case? History does not often pre- 
 sent any such argument for optimism ; and it is surely a 
 bold optimism which can discover, either in the processes 
 of democracy or in a w-orld so susceptible to political cor- 
 ruption as our own, any lessened menace from the selfish 
 ambitions of those whose private fortunes are bound up 
 with public affairs, or even from the hardly less corrupting 
 influences of communities which, under the guise of local 
 patriotism, prey upon the interests of the commonweal. 
 Moreover, although this optimism is justified only, if at all, 
 by the facts of history, the facts have not yet been grappled 
 with in any large and synthetic survey by historians. No 
 scientific history of corrupt practices in politics has yet been 
 written, no counterpart to the manuals of constitutional 
 history dealing with the shady side of that structure. Such 
 studies of corruption as have been made have been 
 concerned with specific or local issues, or have been pre- 
 pared as partisan attacks on political opponents, as pam- 
 phlets for the times, rather than as contributions to history. 
 The subject of the misuse rather than the legitimate and 
 sanctioned use of the machinery of government still awaits 
 the scientific historian. 
 
 If, however, history has not solved the problem, it at 
 least presents it to us ; and it is time to examine its impli- 
 cations and frame a provisional hypothesis along lines 
 which seem to fit the major facts upon which all can agree. 
 Stated baldly, that hypothesis seems to be that, instead of 
 increasing with the growth of democracy, the practice of 
 
 48
 
 corruption in politics tends to decrease. What can history 
 do with such an hypothesis? 
 
 The first and most obvious answer is to be found in a 
 broad comparison of the practices of today with those ad- 
 mitted as legitimate or practised widely at various stages 
 of the development of the modern state. Take first the 
 basis of representative government itself, the election. It 
 is hardly necessary to do more than call attention to the 
 contrast between the methods of today and those of a 
 century or so ago. What civilized country would now sub- 
 mit to the practices, which Hogarth's pencil has so 
 graphically depicted, of the elections of the old regime? 
 Dark corners still exist in all countries where such methods 
 may be found, but they exist in defiance of the law and of 
 the public conscience. The mixture of bribery and intimi- 
 dation which so largely determined the suff"rage upon which 
 the government of the good old days reposed, would, if 
 revealed today, endanger rather than strengthen the tenure 
 of power of any civilized government which had con- 
 sciously resorted to such devices. Yet some of the most 
 glorious pages in the history of the English Parliament 
 were due to statesmen whose power rested upon the sup- 
 port of men elected by means so corrupt as would today 
 send to prison, instead of to St. Stephens, those who em- 
 ployed them. The revelations of the era of the first Reform 
 Bill are so familiar to us that we seem to forget their 
 implications in the contrast which they offer to the political 
 life of today. 
 
 Corrupt manipulation of elections is, however, a much 
 more intricate thing than that which shows itself in crude 
 forms on election day. One is reminded of this especially 
 in French elections, where the independence of the elec- 
 torate suffers from the subtle but powerful influence of a 
 bureaucracy whose interests are bound up with those of 
 the administration, and perhaps as well from certain vested 
 interests whose continuance depends upon government 
 
 49
 
 support. But the most pessimistic critic of the politics of 
 the Third Republic may find a reason for hesitation in any 
 wholesale denunciation of present evils by a study of the 
 practices sanctioned by a man capable otherwise of such 
 loftiness of view as Guizot. It is true that Guizot over- 
 reached the mark even for the France of his day, but the 
 fact remains that the methods which he employed were by 
 no means outlawed after his overthrow. Compared with 
 any previous period of French history, the electoral prac- 
 tices of the France of the Third Republic invite the atten- 
 tion of the optimist. 
 
 The same general facts stand out in a survey of electoral 
 practices in the United States. With successive adminis- 
 trations turning the tables upon their opponents there have 
 grown up safeguards of the public against corrupt practices 
 which would nullify its will as registered in the ballot, to 
 such an extent that the things done openly, even a genera- 
 tion ago, would set their perpetrators now behind the bars 
 of federal or state prisons instead of securing for them office 
 and power. 
 
 However poorly the laws may still be enforced in back- 
 ward communities, the laws which have accumulated upon 
 the statute books during the last generation to maintain 
 the integrity of elections, bear witness to a constant height- 
 ening of moral effort in the fundamentals of representative 
 government. 
 
 If one turns from elections and parliaments to admin- 
 istration and the civil service, the same general tendency 
 marks the history of the last half-century. Almost within 
 the memory of the present generation power has been 
 regarded as an avenue to wealth. If one extends the sur- 
 vey back to the beginnings of political institutions, one 
 comes upon the time when such a maxim would be almost 
 axiomatic. It has required forces of revolution to induce 
 kings and rulers even to account to the public for the spend- 
 ing of its money. The process by which government con- 
 
 50
 
 tractors founded noble houses and so perpetuated in vested 
 interests the enjoyment of the fruits of office, furnishes a 
 striking contrast to the theory of democratic administration 
 that the public servant should receive less for his services 
 than he could procure for the same ability directed toward 
 private ends. 
 
 What is scandalous today in the administration of the 
 modern state was common practice in the days preceding 
 representative government, and continued to be not uncom- 
 mon practice, avowed and sought, until our own time. It 
 may indeed be that the moral standards set for public serv- 
 ice by democracy have demanded such a degree of self- 
 sacrifice that efficiency has been hampered. The voting 
 tax-payer's reluctance to see others profit from his contri- 
 butions to the public purse has clothed itself in the altruistic 
 language of general self-denial; but whatever selfish mo- 
 tives may lie at the root, the effect upon the administrative 
 staff itself has been a heightened sense of responsibility, 
 and the acceptance of standards of public honesty undreamt 
 of in the past. 
 
 It may be objected that this is a misleading and super- 
 ficial line of historial platitudes, and that while its legis- 
 lative and administrative branches, both, have renounced 
 the cruder methods of political corruption, the modern 
 political system, extending as it does throughout the whole 
 life of the nation, still perpetuates effectively, if more 
 subtly, opportunities for corrupt practice. Where the 
 public life and the business of the community are so largely 
 controlled by legislation, and where that legislation is de- 
 pendent upon so many personal factors, the problem of 
 corruption tends to elude analysis. The critic of today 
 may find in the functioning of government itself a counter- 
 part of the cruder and more obvious corruption of earlier 
 days. 
 
 The answer to this criticism demands more investigation 
 than has yet been given it. But if it is meant to imply that 
 
 SI
 
 wherever legislation responds to the call of interest, it is 
 necessarily corrupt, we are surely carrying the theory of 
 politics over to an unjustifiable altruism. It can hardly be 
 a sane theory of government which would exact of legis- 
 lation such a degree of disinterestedness as would dissociate 
 it from any large section of the community on the theory 
 that it was bound up with the prejudices and self-interest 
 of those who secured its adoption. 
 
 The problem here involves the whole field of the history 
 of morals; a field so difficult that historians of the more 
 cautious temper are inclined to refuse to deal with it. 
 What after all are the criteria to be applied? The moral 
 judgment of one age is not always applicable to another. 
 Political corruption may be simply another name for inade- 
 quate machinery of government or inexperience in handling 
 it, or for a low degree of political capacity. It may be a 
 short-cut towards efficiency and justified by its results or 
 its adaptation to a particular time and country. The his- 
 tory of morals ceases to be historical if it judges all ages and 
 societies by a single standard. Throughout most of the 
 Christian era for instance, the morals of the Roman world 
 have been appraised according to the standards of the 
 Christian Fathers. Yet it would go hard with the world 
 today if it were to be measured by the ideals of a St. 
 Jerome. The problem of morals in history cannot be 
 solved by the application of absolute principles. Judged 
 by Christian standards the Romans were surely in about 
 as bad plight when they conquered the world as when they 
 lost it. The province of history is the slow upbuilding of 
 ordered society in this imperfect world and not the depic- 
 tion of divine government in a City of God. Yet, on the 
 other hand, were we to eliminate from our criticism those 
 principles which furnish us with a point of contrast with 
 reality, we should be equally at sea. There is only one 
 criterion which will meet this compromise between the 
 idealistic and the realistic point of view. The test lies in 
 
 52
 
 what contributes most toward the commonweal. This does 
 not mean what contributes most at any given moment, but 
 what history in the long run will justify. 
 
 The conclusion seems to be that the further elimination 
 of corruption in politics depends upon enlightenment. The 
 chief measure of precaution on the part of any people is 
 education, in order that it may discover where its own 
 self-interest lies; and the only way to secure that end is by 
 actual experience in political life, which means an ever- 
 widening measure of democratic control. 
 
 The achievement of democratic efficiency is thus a 
 fundamental chapter in the history of public morals. 
 
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