moral evils. It is possible, to some extent, to suppress vice by
legislation, but not to create virtue. Virtue can be developed only by
conduct and education. You cannot drive men into the kingdom of heaven
with the whip of legislation; and if you could, you would so change the
atmosphere of the place that one would prefer to take the other road.

If our democracy is to survive, we must think it through; carrying it
down, from these superficial political devices, into our industry and
commerce, still so largely dominated by feudal ideas of the middle age,
into our science and art, far more completely into our education, into
our social relationship, and beyond all else, into our fundamental
attitude of mind. Democracy is, at bottom, not a series of political
forms, but a way of life.

Thus the War will be the supreme test of democracy. The question it
will settle is this: can free men, by voluntary cooperation, develop an
efficiency and an endurance which will make it possible for them to
stand and protect their liberties against the machinery and aggressive
ambitions of autocratic empires where everything is done paternally from
the top? If they can, then democracy will survive and grow as the
highest form of society for ages to come; if not, then democracy will
pass and be succeeded by some other social order.

That is why this War has been our war from the beginning, though we have
entered it so late. As we look back upon the struggle of Athens and the
other free Greek cities with the overwhelming hordes of Asia, at
Marathon and Salamis, as the conflict that saved democracy for Europe
and made possible the civilization of the Occident, so it is probable
that the world will look back upon this colossal War as the same
struggle, multiplied a thousand times in the men and munitions employed,