The Irish standard., 1918-12-21
By Walter George Smith
Ex-President of the United States Bar
Association.

The great world war has drawn to
close. Victory rests with the forces
of democracy. The ancient Empire
of Austria is dismembered, Turkey is
at the mercy of the Allied Powers,
and the German Empire has tottered
to it's fall. We are too near these
epoch-making events fully to realize
their import. Political and social
ideals, hoary with antiquity, have
yielded to the new thought of man
kind.
It has been a long struggle. Not
until the experiment of self-restrained
democratic government proved it's ef-
ficacy in America could it be believed
tt the masses were even potentially
susceptible of education adequate for
TIE determination of their political
government. While there are many
evidences of its ill success in detail,
it must be evident to any unprejudiced
student that in the main American de-
mocracy has succeeded as no other
scheme ever put into practice on so
large a scale, in giving justice under
universal law.
Will Turn to America as Model for
New System.
Now that the peoples of Europe,
reacting from the Ubiquitous attempt
of the Central Empires to lay the
whole world under their domination,
are throwing off autocratic govern
ment, they will naturally turn to
America as the model for their new
systems. The danger to them, as to
a certain extent it is to their model,
lies in the teaching of false doctrines
derived from the theories of Rous-
seau and his school and developed
by modern German Socialists, which
make the unbridled will of tenn
porary majority of the electorate the
true test of political wisdom. There
is grave danger that the excesses
which marked the French Revolution
and which, if all accounts be true,
have been carried to more horrible
extremes in Russia, may be but the
prelude Of similar events in the late
Austrian Empire and in Germany.
Only the few, and they among the
most thoughtful and calm-minded of
European political thinkers, under
stand democracy as we in America
have practiced it. To the average the
term means absolute State suprem-
acy, just as under recent autocratic
constitutions, save that the govern
mental machinery is in the hands of
demagogues and Missionaries instead of
kings and kaisers. With them all
ideas of order, personal liberty, the
rights of property, the sacred exer-
else of religious freedom, are made
subordinate to an infallible state
which in the name of the common
good leaves little or nothing to the
individual. This theory of the gov.
ernmental function is utterly foreign
to the American school of democracy.
While with us the popular will is in
deed the final test and sanction, the
far-seeing statesmen who nodded our
national and State constitutions, know.
ing the danger of emotion, provided
the checks and balances which dis.
tinguish our three-fold system, giving
the courts of justice the power of final
decision on all questions between citi
zen and the State.
Have Learned to Distinguish Between
Liberty and License.
Our national government came into
being under especially favored circum
stances: We possessed a great un
developed territory; our people were
homogeneous in character; and we
were free from the hereditary social
castles that make so much difference
in the old world. Fortunate it was
that the foundations of our self
restrained democratic instructions
were laid and tested before the heavy
tide of foreign immigration had set in
Time was needed for the masses tt
become familiar with and put in prac
tice their duties towards the State
and thus become teachers Of the PEG
pie who came later. Thus has ou1
electorate learned to distinguish lib
erty from license and maintain a sober
recognition of the dangers of dissolv
ing bonds that hold society together
In Europe, outside OF Great Britain
both the friends and enemies of de
mocracy look upon it as synonymou:
with something not unlike the mol
rule of the Paris Commune or thu
Bolsheviki of Russia. No wonder I'm
der such circumstances that conserva
tive and religious people have recoilet
from it's practical exercise.
Church Always on Side Of Govern
ment.
Although the Church has sedulous