e impediments to its adoption and execution as
law. In England, as every one knows, the impediment was a ruling caste
highly skilled in the governmental function and generally trusted by a
majority of the populace--a ruling caste firmly intrenched in the House
of Lords and scarcely less powerful in the House of Commons. In France
it was a bureaucracy so securely protected by law and custom that
nothing short of a political cataclysm could shake it. In Germany and
Italy it was an aristocracy buttressed by laws cunningly designed to
nullify the numerical superiority of the mob, and by a monarchical
theory that set up a heavy counterweight to public opinion.

In the face of such adroit checks and balances it is a matter of
relative indifference whether the mob blows scalding hot or freezing
cold. Whatever the extravagance of its crazes, there remains effective
machinery for holding them in check until they spend themselves, which
is usually soon enough. Thus the English government, though
theoretically as much opposed to anarchists as the American government,
gave them cheerful asylum before the war and permitted them to preach
their lamentable notions almost without check, whereas in America they
early aroused great fears and were presently put under such
disabilities that their propaganda became almost impossible. Even in
France, where they had many converts and were frequently in eruption,
there was far more hospitality in the Germany of Bismarck's day, the
Socialists, after a brief and aberrant attempt to suppress them, were
allowed to run free, despite the fact that their doctrine was quite as
abhorrent to German official doctrine as anarchism was to American
official doctrine. The German ruling caste of those days was sheltered
behind laws and customs which enabled it to pull the teeth of Socialism,
even in the face of enormous Socialist majorities. But under a democracy
it is difficult, and often downright impossible, to oppose the popular
craze of the moment with any effect, and so there must be artificial
means of disciplining the jake-fetchers who seek to set such enthusiasms
in motion. The shivering fear of Bolshevism, visible of late among the
capitalists of America, is based upon a real danger. These capitalists
have passed through the burning fires of Rooseveltian trust-busting and
Bryanistic populism, and they know very well that half a dozen Lenines
and Trotskis, turned loose upon the plain people, would qui