social science.

Woodrow Wilson's Mexican policy, being a projection of the American Idea
to foreign affairs, a step toward international democracy, marks the
beginning of a new era. Though not wholly understood, though opposed by
a powerful minority of our citizens, it stirred the consciousness of a
national mission to which our people are invariably ready to respond.
Since it was essentially experimental, and therefore not lacking in
mistakes, there was ample opportunity for a criticism that seemed at
times extremely plausible. The old and tried method of dealing with such
anarchy as existed across our southern border was made to seem the safe
one; while the new, because it was untried, was presented as disastrous.
In reality, the reverse was the case.

Mr. Wilson's opponents were, generally speaking, the commercial classes
in the community, whose environment and training led them to demand a
foreign policy similar to that of other great powers, a financial
imperialism which is the logical counterpart in foreign affairs of the
commercial exploitation of domestic national resources and domestic
labour. These were the classes which combated the growth of democracy at
home, in national and state politics. From their point of view--not that
of the larger vision--they were consistent. On the other hand, the
nation grasped the fact that to have one brand of democracy at home and
another for dealing with foreign nations was not only illogical but, in
the long run, would be suicidal to the Republic. And the people at large
were committed to democratic progress at home. They were struggling for
it.

One of the most important issues of the American liberal movement early
in this century had been that for the conservation of what remains of our