he
belief that the human spirit should be translated into action and into
ordinance. Not entire. You cannot go any faster than you can advance
the average moral judgment of the mass, but you can go at least as fast
as that, and you can see to it that you do not lag behind the average
moral judgments of the mass. I have in my life dealt with all sorts
and conditions of men, and I have found that the flame of moral
judgment burns just as bright in the man of humble life and limited
experience as in the scholar and man of affairs. And I would like his
voice always to be heard, not as a witness, not as speaking in his own
case, but as if he were the voice of men in general, in our courts of
justice, as well as the voice of the lawyers, remembering what the law
has been. My hope is that, being stirred to the depths by the
extraordinary circumstances of the time in which we live, we may
recover from those steps something of a renewal of that vision of the
law with which men may be supposed to have started out in the old days
of the oracles, who commune with the intimations of divinity."

Before this war, very few nations paid any attention to public opinion.
France was probably the beginner. Some twenty years before 1914,
France began to extend her civilisation to Russia, Italy, the Balkans
and Syria. In Roumania, today, one hears almost as much French as
Roumanian spoken. Ninety per cent of the lawyers in Bucharest were
educated in Paris. Most of the doctors in Roumania studied in France.
France spread her influence by education.

The very fact that the belligerents tried to mobilise public opinion in
the United States in their favour shows that 1914 was a milestone in
international affairs. This was the first time any foreign power ever
attempted to fight for the good will--the public opinion--of this
nation. The governments themselves realised the value of public
opinion in their own boundaries, but when the war began they realised
that it was a power inside the realms of their neighbours, too.

When differences of opinion developed between the United States and the
belligerents the first thing President Wilson did was to publish all
the documents and papers in the possession of the American government
relating to the controversy. The publicity which the President gave
the diplomatic correspondence between this government and Great Britain
over the search and seizure of vessels emphasised in Washington this