"It seems to me that the amount of lawlessness and crime, the amount of
waste and futility, the amount of war and war possibility and war danger
in the world are just the measure of the present inadequacy of the world's
system of collective organisations to the purpose before them. It follows
from this very directly that only one thing can end war on the earth, and
that is a subtle mental development, an idea, the development of the idea
of the world commonweal in the collective mind."--H.G. WELLS in 1908.

THIS is a testing time for Democracy. The people of Great Britain and the
Dominions, to whom all the world looks as the trustees, together with
France and America, of the great democratic tradition, are brought face
to face, for the first time, with their full ultimate responsibility as
British citizens. Upon the way in which that responsibility is realised
and discharged depends the future of the democratic principle, not only in
these islands, but throughout the world.

Democracy is not a mere form of government. It does not depend on ballot
boxes or franchise laws or any constitutional machinery. These are but its
trappings. Democracy is a spirit and an atmosphere, and its essence is
trust in the moral instincts of the people. A tyrant is not a democrat, for
he believes in government by force; neither is a demagogue a democrat, for
he believes in government by flattery. A democratic country is a country
where the government has confidence in the people and the people in the
government and in itself, and where all are united in the faith that the
cause of their country is not a mere matter of individual or national
self-interest, but is in harmony with the great moral forces which rule the
destinies of mankind. No form of government is so feeble as a democracy
without faith. But a democracy armed with faith is not merely strong: it