all for
such sacrificial service when danger seemed to threaten the national
existence, or enemies of the government lifted treasonable intent
against the peace and order to which the majority of citizens were
devoted. Now we are called upon, if only we can realize the new claims
upon the higher patriotism, to make the country we love what all
countries should be, a home of freedom, of mutual helpfulness, of
economic well-being and of incorrupt and progressive political order.
It has been said and truly, "The ideas of great men are apprehended
slowly, and a free and rational society must in part exist before the
dream of such a society can be interpreted." We have a dream of a
free, a noble, a competent, a happy people in our America. We must be
careful at every point lest by carelessness of political forms or lack
of understanding of what those forms should be, we hinder the
development of that free and rational society in which the noblest
thoughts and highest ideals of the best and finest of our leaders can
alone find root and grow.

=Problems Voters Must Solve.=--Three special problems are before the
voters of our country, problems commanding in importance and not easy
of solution. They are, first, the problem which inheres in our union
of States, with their wide divergence of climate, soil, industries,
population, standards of action and ideals of national and local
action. The problem is this: what shall we decide is the measure of
wise and useful division between the laws and conditions we shall make
national in extent of social control and in practical functioning of
political administration, and those of smaller autonomous units? What
shall belong to the Federal Government and make field for its
activity? What shall belong to the various States and make up their
separate systems of law and administration? And what shall be left to
each locality, or each county of each State, for its own political
activity? These are not easy questions to answer, and the constant
movement toward centralization of power, not only of standardization
but of control in the National Government (a movement which received
such an immense impetus during the war), is likely to make this a
movable problem of differing answers as our nation grows older. The
division of States may give a geographical symbol of deep inherent
differences of background of culture and even of race, or that
division may mean only a superficial mark of geographi