n and man. But, chiefly because of the
elementary crudity of existing electoral methods, hardly anywhere at
present, except at Washington, do these great ideas and this world-wide
will find expression. Amidst the other politicians and statesmen of the
world President Wilson towers up with an effect almost divine. But it
is no ingratitude to him to say that he is not nearly so exceptional a
being among educated men as he is among the official leaders of mankind.
Everywhere now one may find something of the Wilson purpose and
intelligence, but nearly everywhere it is silenced or muffled or made
ineffective by the political advantage of privileged or of violent and
adventurous inferior men. He is "one of us," but it is his good fortune
to have got his head out of the sack that is about the heads of most of
us. In the official world, in the world of rulers and representatives
and "statesmen," he almost alone, speaks for the modern intelligence.

This general stifling of the better intelligence of the world and its
possible release to expression and power, seems to me to be the
fundamental issue underlying all the present troubles of mankind. We
cannot get on while everywhere fools and vulgarians hold the levers that
can kill, imprison, silence and starve men. We cannot get on with false
government and we cannot get on with mob government; we must have right
government. The intellectual people of the world have a duty of
co-operation they have too long neglected. The modernization of
political institutions, the study of these institutions until we have
worked out and achieved the very best and most efficient methods whereby
the whole community of mankind may work together under the direction of
its chosen intelligences, is the common duty of every one who has a
brain for the service. And before everything else we have to realize
this crudity and imperfection in what we call "democracy" at the present
time. Democracy is still chiefly an aspiration, it is a spirit, it is an
idea; for the most part its methods are still to seek. And still more is
this "League of Free Nations" as yet but an aspiration. Let us not
underrate the task before us. Only the disinterested devotion of
hundreds of thousands of active brains in school, in pulpit, in book and
press and assembly can ever bring these redeeming conceptions down to
the solid earth to rule.

All round the world there is this same obscuration of the real
intelligence of men. In