ke the
children and youth of each generation and develop them into men and
women able to fulfill the responsibility and enjoy the opportunity of
free citizenship in a free society.

XVI

MENACES OF DEMOCRACY

Since modern democracy is a new thing under the sun, so its menaces are
new, or, if old, they take misleadingly new forms. For instance, the
greatest danger in the path of our democracy is the world-old evil of
selfishness, but it does take surprisingly new form. It is not
aggressive selfishness that we have primarily to dread. There are
those, it is true, who believe we may soon be endangered by the
ambitions of some arrogant leader in the nation. The fear is
unwarranted, for our people are still so devoted to the fundamental
principles of democracy, that if any leader were to take one clear step
toward over-riding the constitution and making himself despot, that step
would be his political death-blow. No, we are not yet endangered by the
aggressive ambitions of those at the front, but we are in grave danger
from the negative selfishness of indifference, shown in its worst form
by just those people who imagine they are good because they are
respectable, whereas they may be merely good--for nothing.

Plato argued that society could never have patriotism in full measure
until the family was abolished. A singular notion that any school boy
to-day can readily answer, yet here is the curious situation. Family
life, among ourselves, in its better aspects, has reached a higher plane
than ever before in any people. More marriages are made on the only
decent basts of any marriage. This is the woman's land. Children have
their rights and privileges, even to their physical, mental and moral
detriment. It is here that men most willingly sacrifice for their
families, slaving through the hot summer in the cities, to send wife and
children to the seashore or the mountains; yet it is just here that men
most readily unhinge their consciences when they turn from private to
public life.

Some cynic has said that there is not an American citizen who would not
smuggle to please his wife. Of course the statement is not true, but if
you have ever crossed the ocean on a transatlantic liner, and watched
the devices to which ordinarily decent men--men who would be ashamed to
steal your pocket handkerchief or to lie to you as an individual--will
resort, in order to lie to the government or steal from the government