loss of its
integrity, it can be applied to specific problems, differing radically
one from another in character and significance. That the idea of a
constructive relationship between nationality and democracy is flexible
without being invertebrate is one of its greatest merits. It is not a
rigid abstract and partial ideal, as is that of an exclusively socialist
or an exclusively individualist democracy. Neither is it merely a
compromise, suited to certain practical exigencies, between
individualism and socialism. Its central formative idea can lend itself
to many different and novel applications, while still remaining true to
its own fundamental interest.

Flexible though the national ideal may be, its demands are in one
respect inflexible. It is the strenuous and irrevocable enemy of the
policy of drift. It can counsel patience; but it cannot abide collective
indifference or irresponsibility. A constructive national ideal must at
least seek humbly to be constructive. The only question is, as to how
this responsibility for the collective welfare can at any one time be
most usefully redeemed. In the case of our own country at the present
time an intelligent conception of the national interest will counsel
patient agitation rather than any hazardous attempts at radical
reconstruction. No such reform can be permanent, or even healthy, until
American public opinion has been converted to a completer realization of
the nature and extent of its national responsibilities. The ship of
reform will gather most headway from the association of certain very
moderate practical proposals with the issue of a deliberate, persistent,
and far more radical challenge to popular political prejudices and
errors. It will be sufficient, in case our practical proposals seek to
accomplish some small measure both of political and economic
reconstruction, and in case they occupy some sort of a family relation
to plans of the same kind with which American public opinion is already
more or less familiar.

In considering this matter of institutional reform, I shall be guided
chiefly by the extent to which certain specific reforms have already
become living questions. From this point of view it would be a sheer
waste of time just at present to discuss seriously any radical
modification, say, of the Federal Constitution. Certain transformations
of the Constitution either by insidious effect of practice, by
deliberate judicial construction, or by amen