enthusiasm for the war was, however, genuine; the sacrifices they are
making are changing and softening them; but as yet they can scarcely be
expected, as a class, to rejoice over the revelation--just beginning to
dawn upon their minds--that victory for the Allies spells the end of
privilege. Their conception of democracy remains archaic, while wealth
is inherently conservative. Those who possess it in America have as a
rule received an education in terms of an obsolete economics, of the
thought of an age gone by. It is only within the past few years that our
colleges and universities have begun to teach modern economics, social
science and psychology--and this in the face of opposition from trustees.
Successful business men, as a rule, have had neither the time nor the
inclination to read books which they regard as visionary, as subversive
to an order by which they have profited. And that some Americans are
fools, and have been dazzled in Europe by the glamour of a privilege not
attainable at home, is a deplorable yet indubitable fact. These have
little sympathy with democracy; they have even been heard to declare that
we have no right to dictate to another nation, even an enemy nation, what
form of government it shall assume. We have no right to demand, when
peace comes, that the negotiations must be with the representatives of
the German people. These are they who deplore the absence among us of a
tradition of monarchy, since the American people "should have something
to look up to." But this state of mind, which needs no comment, is
comparatively rare, and represents an extreme. We are not lacking,
however, in the type of conservative who, innocent of a knowledge of
psychology, insists that "human nature cannot be changed," and that the
"survival of the fittest" is the law of life, yet these would deny Darwin
if he were a contemporary. They reject the idea that society can be
organized by intelligence, and war ended by eliminating its causes from
the social order. On the contrary they cling to the orthodox contention
that war is a necessary and salutary thing, and proclaim that the