e servers and all who cry out
for precedent. Yet it is an interesting and encouraging fact that the
faith of democratic peoples goes out, and goes out alone, to leaders
who--whatever their minor faults and failings--do not fear to reverse
themselves when occasion demands; to enunciate new doctrines, seemingly
in contradiction to former assertions, to meet new crises. When a
democratic leader who has given evidence of greatness ceases to develop
new ideas, he loses the public confidence. He flops back into the ranks
of the conservative he formerly opposed, who catch up with him only when
he ceases to grow.

In 1916 the majority of the American people elected Mr. Wilson in the
belief that he would keep them out of war. In 1917 he entered the war
with the nation behind him. A recalcitrant Middle West was the first
to fill its quota of volunteers, and we witnessed the extraordinary
spectacle of the endorsement of conscription: What had happened? A very
simple, but a very great thing Mr. Wilson had made the issue of the
war a democratic issue, an American issue, in harmony with our national
hopes and traditions. But why could not this issue have been announced
in 1914 or 1915? The answer seems to be that peoples, as well as their
leaders and interpreters, must grow to meet critical situations. In 1861
the moral idea of the Civil War was obscured and hidden by economic and
material interests. The Abraham Lincoln who entered the White House in
1881 was indeed the same man who signed the Emancipation Proclamation
in 1863; and yet, in a sense, he was not the same man; events and
responsibilities had effected a profound but logical growth in his
personality. And the people of the Union were not ready to endorse
Emancipation in 1861. In 1863, in the darkest hour of the war, the
spirit of the North responded to the call, and, despite the vilification
of the President, was true to him to victory. More significant still,
in view of the events of today, is what then occurred in England. The
British Government was unfriendly; the British people as a whole had
looked upon our Civil War very much in the same light as the American
people regarded the present war at its inception--which is to say that
the economic and materialistic issue seemed to overshadow the moral one.
When Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it to be a war for human freedom,
the sentiment of the British people changed--of the British people as
distinct from the governing class