Germany--which we have
considered above--shows how easily a good and friendly and pacific
people may, by mere political inattention and ignorance, and by a
quasi-scientific philosophy, which imposes on its political ignorance,
be led into a disastrous situation. It shows how preposterous it is that
Governments generally--as at present constituted--should set themselves
up as the representatives of the mass-peoples' wishes, and as the
arbiters of national destinies. And it shows how vitally necessary it is
that the people, even the working masses and the peasants, should have
some sort of political education and understanding.

In that matter, of the political education of the masses, America, in
her United States and Canada, yields a fine example. Though not
certainly perfect, her general standard of education and alertness is
infinitely superior to that of the peoples of the Old World. And some
writers contend that it is just in that--in her general level and not in
her freaks of genius--that America's claim lies to distinction among the
nations of the earth. If you consider the peoples of the Old World,
whether in England, Scotland, or Ireland, in France, Spain, Italy,
Germany, Austria, Russia, or farther East and farther South over the
earth, you will find the great masses, on the land or in the workshops,
still sunk in vast ignorance, apathy, and irresponsibility. Only here
and there among those I have mentioned, and notably among the smaller
peoples of Western Europe, like Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, and
Sweden, are the masses beginning to stir, as it were, towards the
daylight. It can only be with the final opening of their eyes and
awakening from slumber that the rule of the classes will be at an end.
But that awakening--with the enormous spread of literature and
locomotion and intercommunication of all kinds over the modern world,
cannot now, one would say, be long delayed.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, and until that era arrives, we can only insist (at any rate
in our own country) on a different kind of foreign policy from what we
have had--a policy open and strong, not founded on Spread-Eagleism, and
decidedly not founded on commercialism and the interests of the trading
classes (as the Empire League seem to desire), but directed towards the
real welfare of the masses in our own and other lands. If our rulers and
representatives really seek peace, here is the obvious way to ensue