for a different spirit in the German nation to assert itself.
Democracies, however, have from time to time been aggressive, and have
claimed to dominate their neighbours. A change far deeper than a change
in the form of Government is needed. The claim put forward both by word
and deed to impose the German will on others by organised force of any
kind must be abandoned utterly, if the world is to be really at peace
with Germany and with those whom Germany has been able to compel or to
beguile into alliance with her. The conflict is not simply between
autocracy or oligarchy and democracy, but between different ideals and
diametrically opposed notions of duty. The conception of their State as
an organisation carefully arranged to impose its will on others
regardless of their feelings and their rights must be eradicated.
Democracy and Liberty do not necessarily go together. There may be
democracy without liberty, and it is possible though not probable that
there may be real liberty without the form of democracy. An enlightened
monarch, governing as well as reigning, may express the real will of a
nation more truly than the vote of a majority of representatives; and
individual liberty may be more secure under such a monarch than when it
is dependent on the result of divisions taken when party passion is
running high. But such a rule must lack the element of stability. The
Antonines pass away and Commodus and Heliogabalus rule in their place.
Permanent strength and settled liberty are best secured when the acts of
Government are the expression of the conscious will of the nation as a
whole, where the people think out for themselves the general lines of
action and the Government is their minister. It is not enough that there
should be a just rule in which they acquiesce, but it is they themselves
who should act--through agents, no doubt--and learn the habit of forming
right judgments and acting justly. To deny him a share in political
life--that is, in deciding the action of the State to which he
belongs--is to deprive a man of one of those "activities of the soul