d at the expense of community welfare.

We recognize and acknowledge the gracious influences of
practical Christianity in community life.

We ask that our homes be guarded by right social conditions
throughout our community.

We declare the duty of the community to provide good
schools, means for community recreation, safe sanitary
conditions, improved highways, and encouragement to thrift
and home-ownership.

We purpose to make the neatness and attractiveness of our
homes and farms assets of distinct value to the township.

We agree to do our share in the creation of public sentiment
in support of all measures in the public interest.

We agree to put aside all partisan and sectarian relations
when dealing with community matters.

We state our conviction that the best rewards from this
organized effort lie before each one in a deepened interest
in others and in an increased ability to cooperate the one
with the other for the good of all.

We, the citizens of Plainsboro Township, incorporated by act
of the Legislature of the State of New Jersey, approved
April 1, 1919, and accepted by us on May 6, 1919, subscribe
to this declaration."

If such a Declaration of Purposes were adopted by every rural community,
and were taught the children as a civic oath of allegiance, would it not
have more immediate effect on practical patriotism than even the
Declaration of Independence, and what new meaning would be given to
local government? Here is an example of rural civic spirit which, if it
could become general throughout the rural communities of the United
States, would remold the political and social organization of the whole
country; for it provides both the mechanism and the spirit which are
essential for making democracy a reality rather than an ideal.

_Community Government and Democracy._--The local community is
indispensable as the primary political unit for the maintenance of true
democracy, both because it is small enough that there can be personal
relations between its members, in which a real consensus of opinion can
be formed, and also because only in it can the masses of mankind have
any personal experience or participation in government. Unless the
individual has a social consciousness of the community in which he
lives, he can have but a feeble and hazy realization of larger