essives and the Democrats--the old discredited Republicans fell
back into a rather dead conservative minority. No sooner did Roosevelt
take the stump than the paradox loomed up before him. His speeches began
to turn on platitudes--on the vague idealism and indisputable moralities
of the Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount. The fearlessness of the
Chicago confession was melted down into a featureless alloy.

The embarrassment from the liquor question which Woodrow Wilson feared
does not arise because teetotaler and drunkard both become intoxicated
when they discuss the saloon. It would come just as much from a radical
program of land taxation, factory reform, or trust control. Let anyone of
these issues be injected into his campaign and the lines of party action
would be cut "athwart." For Woodrow Wilson was dealing with the
inevitable embarrassment of a party system dependent on an inexpressive
homogeneity. The grouping of the voters into two large herds costs a
large price: it means that issues must be so simplified and selected that
the real demands of the nation rise only now and then to the level of
political discussion. The more people a party contains the less it
expresses their needs.

Woodrow Wilson's diagnosis of the red herring in politics is obviously
correct. A new issue does embarrass a wholesale organization of the
voters. His desire to avoid it in the midst of a campaign is
understandable. His urgent plea that the liquor question be kept a local
issue may be wise. But the general philosophy which says that the party
system should not be cut athwart is at least open to serious dispute.
Instead of an evil, it looks to me like progress towards greater
responsiveness of parties to popular need. It is good to disturb
alignments: to break up a superficial unanimity. The masses of people
held together under the name Democratic are bound in an enervating
communion. The real groups dare not speak their convictions for fear the
crust will break. It is as if you had thrown a large sheet over a mass of
men and made them anonymous.

The man who raises new issues has always been distasteful to politicians.
He musses up what had been so tidily arranged. I remember once speaking
to a local boss about woman suffrage. His objections were very simple:
"We've got the organization in fine shape now--we know where every voter
in the district stands. But you let all the women vote and we'll be
confused as the devil. It'll b