The grandeur of Rome, the splendour of Paris--what just and adequate
expression do they give of modern American life? Then shall we find in
our great hotels, say, such expression? Truly they represent, in the
phrase of Henry James, "a realized ideal" and a study of them should
reveal that ideal. From such a study we can only conclude that it
is life without effort or responsibility, with every physical need
luxuriously gratified. But these hotels nevertheless represent
democracy, it may be urged, for the reason that every one may there
buy board and lodging and mercenary service if he has the price. The
exceeding greatness of that price, however, makes of it a badge
of nobility which converts these democratic hostelries into feudal
castles, more inaccessible to the Long Denied than as though entered
by a drawbridge and surrounded by a moat.

We need not even glance at the churches, for the tides of our
spiritual life flow no longer in full volume through their portals;
neither may the colleges long detain us, for architecturally
considered they give forth a confusion of tongues which has its
analogue in the confusion of ideas in the collective academic head.

Is our search for some sign of democracy ended, and is it vain? No,
democracy exists in the secret heart of the people, all the people,
but it is a thing so new, so strange, so secret and sacred--the ideal
of brotherhood--that it is unmanifest yet in time and space. It is
a thing born not with the Declaration of Independence, but only
yesterday, with the call to a new crusade. The National Army is its
cradle, and it is nurtured wherever communities unite to serve the
sacred cause. Although menaced by the bloody sword of Imperialism in
Europe, it perhaps stands in no less danger from the secret poison