tification which threatens to destroy it, must not draw its
members from the ranks of manual labour alone, but from all elements
of our population. It should contain all the liberal professions, and
clerks and shopkeepers, as well as manual workers; administrators, and
even those employers who have become convinced that our present
economic system does not suffice to meet the needs of the day. In short,
membership in such a party, as far as possible, should not be based upon
occupation or economic status, but on an honest difference of view from
that of the conservative opposition. This would be a distinctly American
solution. In order to form such a party a campaign of education will
be necessary. For today Mr. Wilson's strength is derived from the
independent vote representing the faith of the people as a whole; but
the majority of those who support the President, while they ardently
desire the abolition in the world of absolute monarchy, of militarism
and commercial imperialism, while they are anxious that this war shall
expedite and not retard the social reforms in which they are interested,
have as yet but a vague conception of the social order which these
reforms imply.

It marks a signal advance in democracy when liberal opinion in any
nation turns for guidance and support to a statesman of another nation.
No clearer sign of the times could be desired than the fact that our
American President has suddenly become the liberal leader of the world.
The traveller in France, and especially in Britain, meets on all sides
striking evidence of this. In these countries, until America's entrance
into the war, liberals had grown more and more dissatisfied with the
failure of their governments to define in democratic terms the issue of
the conflict, had resented the secret inter-allied compacts, savouring
of imperialism and containing the germs of future war. They are now
looking across the Atlantic for leadership. In France M. Albert Thomas
declared that Woodrow Wilson had given voice to the aspirations of his
party, while a prominent Liberal in England announced in a speech that
it had remained for the American President to express the will and
purpose of the British people. The new British Labour Party and the
Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conferences have adopted Mr. Wilson's
program and have made use of his striking phrases. But we have between
America and Britain this difference: in America the President stands
virt