peed limit at any
favorable chance. These are not beautiful expressions of our national
spirit, but they serve to illustrate our instinctive individualism.

Especially are we jealous of highly centralized authority. De
Tocqueville argued that we would never be able to develop a strong
central government, and that our democracy would be menaced with failure
by that lack. That his prophecy has proved false and our federal
government has become so strong is due only to the accidents of our
history and the exigency of the tremendous problems we have had to
solve.

The same individualistic spirit is strong in England. It has been
particularly evident, during the War, in the resentment of military
authority as applied to labor conditions. The artisans and their
leaders dreaded to give up liberties for which they had struggled
through generations, for fear that those rights would not be readily
accorded them again after the War. It must be admitted that this fear is
justified. The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription.
This attitude has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying on
the War, as it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spirit
of democracy in both lands.

In France, the Revolution was at bottom an affirmation of individualism
--of the right of the people, as against classes and kings, to seek life,
liberty and happiness. The great words, _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,_
that the French placed upon their public buildings in the period of the
Revolution, are the essential battle-cry of true democracy,--as it is to
be, rather than as it is at present.

Through her peculiar situation, threatened and overshadowed by potential
enemies, France has been forced to a policy of militarism, with a large
subordination of the individual to the state. The subordination,
however, is voluntary. That is touchingly evident in the beautiful
fraternization of French officers and men in the present War. With our
Anglo-Saxon reserve, we smile at the pictures of grave generals kissing
bearded soldiers, in recognition of valor, but it is a significant
expression of the voluntary equality and brotherhood of Frenchmen in
this War. The reason France has risen with such splendid courage and
unity is the consciousness of every Frenchman that complete defeat in
this War would mean that there would be no France in the future, that
Paris would be a larger Strassburg, and France a greater
Alsace-