on the principles upon which
democracy is founded has an easy road, for the populace is familiar
with those principles and eager to see them put into practical effect.
The late Cecil Chesterton, in his penetrating "History of the United
States," showed how Andrew Jackson came to power by that route. Jackson,
he said, was simply a man so naive that he accepted the lofty doctrines
of the Declaration of Independence without any critical questioning
whatever, and "really acted as if they were true." The appearance of
such a man, he goes on, was "appalling" to the political aristocrats of
1825. They themselves, of course, enunciated those doctrines daily and
based their whole politics upon them--but not to the point of really
executing them. So when Jackson came down from the mountains with the
same sonorous words upon his lips, but with the addition of a solemn
promise to carry them out--when he thus descended upon them, he stole
their thunder and spiked their guns, and after a brief struggle
he had disposed of them. The Socialists, free-speech fanatics,
anti-conscriptionists, anti-militarists and other such democratic
maximalists of 1917 and 1918 were, in essence, nothing but a new and
formidable horde of Jacksons. Their case rested upon principles held to
be true by all good Americans, and constantly reaffirmed by the highest
officers of state. It was thus extremely likely that, if they were
permitted to woo the public ear, they would quickly amass a majority of
suffrages, and so get the conduct of things into their own hands. So it
became necessary, in order that the great enterprises then under way
might be pushed to a successful issue, that all these marplots be
silenced, and it was accordingly done. This proceeding, of course, was
theoretically violative of their common rights, and hence theoretically
un-American. All the theory, in fact, was on the side of the victims.
But war time is no time for theories, and a man with war powers in his
hands is not one to parley with them.

As we have said, the menace presented by such unintelligent literalists
is probably a good deal more dangerous to a democracy than to a
government of any other form. Under an aristocracy, for example, such as
prevailed, in one form or another, in England, Germany, Italy and France
before the war, it is possible to give doctrinaires a relatively free
rein, for even if they succeed in converting the mob to their whim-wham,
there remain insuperabl