hereby commend to the notice of the American, French and British
Governments. Let them get together as soon as may be and give us an
authoritative definition of Democracy. Then we shall know where,
collectively, we are. Of course you may say that it has been
defined for all time by Abraham Lincoln. But thrilling in its
clear simplicity as his slogan epigram may be, a complex political
and social system cannot be fully dealt with in fifteen words. I
thought I knew what it was until a tidy few millions of friends
and myself were knocked silly by recent events in Russia. Here,
where the privates of a regiment hold a mass meeting and discuss for
hours an order to advance to the relief of sorely pressed comrades
and decide not to obey it, and eventually throw down their rifles
and with a meus conscia recti, proudly run away, we have Democracy
with a vengeance. Not one of the Defenders of Democracy who are
writing in this book would stand for it a second. Nor would they
stand for the slobbering maniacs who yearn to throw themselves into
the arms of the Germans, and, with the kiss of peace and universal
brotherhood, kiss away their brother's blood from their blood-smeared
faces. Nor would they stand entirely for those staunch democrats
who, inspired with a burning sense of human wrongs but with none
of proportion or humor, would sacrifice vital interests of humanity
in general for the transient amelioration of the lot of a particular
section of the community. For years these visionaries told us that
every penny spent on army or navy was a robbery of the working-man.
We yielded to him many pennies; but alas, they now have to be repaid
in blood.

America has joined the civilized world in the struggle against the
surviving systems of medieval barbarism in Europe that have been
permitted to exist under the veneer of civilization. She sees clearly