d kept from the light
only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded
confidences of a narrow, privileged class. They are happily impossible
where public opinion commands and insists upon full information
concerning all the nation's affairs.

"A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic Government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a
league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals
away; the plotting of inner circles who could plan what they would and
render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart.
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a
common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of
their own.

"Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope
for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening
things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?
Russia was known by those who know it best to have been always in fact
democratic at heart in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the
intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct,
their habitual attitude toward life.

POLITICAL AUTOCRACY.

"The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long
as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not,
in fact, Russian in origin, character or purpose; and now it has been
shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all
their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for
freedom in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner
for a league of honor.

"One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friend, is that from the very
outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and
even our offices of Government with spies and set criminal intrigues
everywhere afoot against our national unity and counsel, our peace
within and without our industries and our commerce.

"Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war
began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved
in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once
come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the
in