monplace a truism that
it is hardly worth while to get excited over it.

But while he does not define himself, nor tell us what it is, nor how
it is to be come at, it is plain, all the way through, that he is a
believer in "nationalistic socialism." Now, we cannot indict a man for
cherishing hopes, or for encouraging them in others. But, in the case
of the negroes, at the close of the war, it was a real evil for them
to be expecting "a mule and forty acres of land" from the government;
for it stood in the way of real effort in practical directions. So,
while a nobler ideal is of incalculable benefit to a people, it is a
real evil for them to be indulging in impractical dreams. They waste
effort and divert power from practical ends, and result in that kind
of disappointment that discourages the heart and unnerves the arm.
Those, then, who talk of nationalism as a solution of our troubles,
ought to tell us just what they are after, and what methods they
propose. Then we can find out whether the plans will work or not.
Otherwise time, enthusiasm, and effort may all be wasted.

But the only definite end this article hints at is the destruction of
those monopolies that make light and transportation dear. But it is
conceivable that this may be done without a resort to nationalistic
socialism. And this, which he says is the first step, may be a step in
any one of several different directions. And if what he is after is to
come only as the result of a natural evolution, when everybody wants
it, and not as the result of a social catastrophe, then it would seem
to be difficult to tell the difference between it and individualism.
"The rounded development of the greatest number of individuals," he
himself sets forth as the motive and end of his kind of nationalism.
Now if somebody is going to _make me_ take on a "sounder development,"
that is one thing, but if everybody is only going to let _me_ do it,
that is quite another thing. Mark Twain's "Buck Fanshaw" was going to
have peace, if he had to "lick every galoot in town" to get it. This
may well stand for Edward Bellamy's military nationalism. But if we
are only going to have peace when everybody wants it, and will behave
himself, why this seems like the Rev. Francis Bellamy's nationalism,
with the "military" left out. And this, I say, looks to me very much
like the kind of individualism which I believe in.

I pass by, completely, the philosophical discussion as to what
consti