New-York tribune., 1918-07-01
Democracy

ELSEWHERE OH luiS peASS wv A~PN
"The New Europe" remarkable artl-
Gle on Russia. The writer is Harold
Williams. British journalist, who lived
through the revolution and came out OF 1t
with a feeling that too many illusions
had been torn away, that one had seen
things that it was not good to see IN TINS
life"
He has a strange power Of telling you
what he has seen-or some OF lt-ln
way to make you see it, too-not ooJec-
lively, but by an inner sense OF seeing.
He shows you imponderable things and
makes them vivid. He saw "children
playing in the market place with the
ancient secrets of power" That IS an
illuminating thought. The children are
the Russian people. The ancient secrets
of power are to them as the parts OF an
intricate mechanism might be to a-prlml-
tive tribe. There are the secrets, but
where is the power?
The title of the article is "The Fur
mace of Democracy" The writer's
theme is democracy, and he is full of
anxiety concerning it. He has seen a
vast and naive people take democracy
in their hands with superstitious faith
IA it's power to work magic, and then
dash it to the ground and trample upon
it, calling plaintively for the miracle.
What is democracy? What is it's
magic for us, for the English, for the
highly developed people who practise it,
fa;1 &ho
Williams asks this question in his own
way, anxiously. He begins to fear de-
mocracy. How are we to be sure that
we can make the world safe for democ-
racy and at the same time make democ-
racy safe for the world? "The case of
Russia" he says, "shows the necessity
fer re-testing, re-examining democracy
as the principle of worldwide vitality"
Mr.. Williams is shaken. Anybody
would be. He is still looking deeply into
the soul of Russia for the answer to
question that does not exist. He is dam
gerously near doing what the Russians
have done, namely, to mistake the word
for the object or the thing it represents.
The Russian people have not performed
an experiment in democracy. They may
think they have, if they think at all
about it, which is doubtful; but what in
fact they have been undergoing is an
experience in human unrestraint They
have been drunk with license which
they miscalled freedom. Nothing that
has happened to them, or which they
have procured to happen to themselves,
touches in any way the principle of de-
mocracy, which is an inner principle, de-
rived from a capacity for self-control,
which at the proper time in the evolu-
tion of a people may be substituted for
the discipline that has been imposed
upon them by taboo and superstition,
by religious authority or by force. The
Russians rudely destroyed an authority
which had become intolerable but they
have found nothing to put in its place
and do not know how to enact restraints
upon themselves
This will not last, because chaos gives
way to order by law of existence.
Whether Russia will find her way to de-
mocracy or not no man is yet competent
to say. But authority of some sort will
arise IN Russia, and the form of gov
ernment finally evolved will in large
sense be the kind of government the peo-
pie require.
The lesson has yet to be we'll learned
that people in general are governed as
they need to be. Literally, people never do
govern themselves. They only elect how
and by whom they shall be governed
that is to say, how and by whom their
ean1lomerate affairs shall be admins
tered and by what means restraints
shall be decreed