re-birth and people are
awakening from their complacency and thinking out toward the big things of
life. They are lifting their gaze above and beyond party, and creed, and
racial ties, and territorial boundaries, and fixing it upon their big
common interests. More and more has their thinking been focused upon
democracy, until this has become a watchword throughout the world. About
this focal point people's thoughts are rallying day by day, and their
community of feeling and thinking is leading to community of action.

Primarily, democracy is a spiritual impulse, the quintessence of the
Golden Rule. "As a man thinketh in his heart so is he," and this spiritual
quality inevitably precedes and conditions democracy in its outward
manifestations. Feeling, thinking, willing, doing--these are the stages in
the law of life. The Golden Rule in action has its inception in the love
of man for his fellow-man. The action is but the visible fruitage of the
invisible spiritual impulse. The soldier in the trench, the sailor on the
ship, the nurse in the hospital, the worker in the factory, and the
official at his desk, all exemplify this principle. The outward
manifestations of the inward impulse, democracy, are many and varied, and
the demands of the war greatly increased both the number and variety.
People essayed tasks that, a few years ago, would have seemed impossible;
nor did they demean themselves in so doing. The production and
conservation of food has become a national enterprise that has enlisted
the active cooeperation of men, women, and children of all classes, creeds,
and conditions. Rich and poor joined in the work of war gardens, thinking
all the while not only of their own larders but quite as much of their
friends across the sea. And while they helped win the war, they were
winning their own souls, for they were yielding obedience to a spiritual
impulse and not a mere animal desire. Thus Americans and the people of
other lands, like children at school, are learning the lesson of
democracy. Moreover, they are now appalled at the wastage of former years
and at the cheapness of many of the things that once held their interest.

In this process of achieving an access of democracy it holds true that
"There is no impression without expression." Each reaction of the spirit
tends to groove the impression into a habit, and this process has had a
thousand exemplifications before our eyes since the opening of the war.
People who