t in its patriotism as
well as in its daily life. We all need historical perspective. We must
have through education what tradition has failed to give us. It is
just by lacking the patriotism that a vivid sense of country as
historic personage gives, by lacking imagination and the ability to
detach themselves from the reality and the surroundings of the daily
life that the working classes are so likely to be affected by
influences that tend to break down _all_ patriotism.

We shall have a true patriotism, we should say, only when country is
an idea that is worked for by all classes; when it is an idea that is
woven into the daily lives of the people; when it makes the daily toil
lighter and touches it with glory, and when it enters into all the
enthusiasm of the more favored classes and inspires it with the spirit
of daily service.

CHAPTER VII

POLITICAL EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY

One of the results of the war has been to raise in the minds of all
peoples, to an extraordinary degree, the most earnest questions about
the nature and validity of government. The political sense of all
peoples has been stimulated. We see on every hand new conceptions of
government and demands for more and better government, but also the
most radical criticism and the denial of all government. The
determination in very fundamental ways of what government is, and must
be, what ideas must prevail, what must be suppressed, what an ideal
government is, if such an ideal can be formed, the question of evils
inherent in the idea of government itself (if such evils there be),
the laws of development of government in all their practical
aspects--all these questions now come up for examination, and will not
be repressed. If we do not take them at one level we must upon
another. Naively or scientifically, philosophically or radically, the
nature of government must be dealt with.

Government is now being examined, we all see, from points of view not
hitherto taken. The conscientious objector raises the question of the
ultimate basis of the right of the many to control the lives of
individuals, and he asks especially whether there is any ground for
the assumption that in this sphere, more than in any other, might
makes right. Conscription, in fact, has driven us to consider the
meaning of liberty and the foundations upon which the right to it
rests. This stern fact of conscription, the realization that in a
moment the most democratic govern