ay to gain peace is actively to restrain wrong
in order that right may triumph. The United States recently has been
engaged in just this kind of an undertaking. Also, man is a social
animal as well as an individual being, so social consciousness or social
responsibility consists in the common responsibility of society to see
that each individual gets a "square deal" in the form of equal
opportunity for advancement by self effort.

In fact, the American ideal is to restrain human initiative only to the
extent that is necessary to give equality of opportunity to all, and
that the government should act only on the principle of the greatest
good of the greatest number. Hence Americans believe that Rousseau was
right when he said that the individual gives up a small part of his
personal liberty, or license, in order to receive back full civil
liberty, which is much greater because it has a wider outlook and
possibilities and is guaranteed through the support of society.
Furthermore, they believe that real liberty is freedom of individual
action within the law as the expressed will of the people.

But everything depends upon the fact that the impulse to use this
liberty must come from within, and not be commanded by a government from
without. In the words of the Declaration of Independence, Americans
believe "that all men are ... endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
[not the gift] of happiness." On this basis alone was this nation
founded and has it prospered.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: _The Rebuilding of Europe_, p. 63.]

[Footnote 3: _The World War and Leadership in a Democracy_, p. 111.]

[Footnote 4: _Law and Politics in the Middle Ages_, p. 306.]

II

WHY IT APPEALS TO OUR FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION

It is often remarked that a reading of the names of the members of the
present Socialist party, or of those who advocate Socialism in the
United States to-day, will disclose the fact that most of these names
denote foreign or Continental European, as contrasted with American or
British, origin. This can readily be understood when it is remembered
that the governments of Continental Europe are theoretically on a
different basis and of different origin from those of the United States
and Great Britain or of those countries where the English Common Law
prevails.

Whether in democratic France, Italy, Belgium or Norway, or in autocratic
Germa