ratic 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 name 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 classes; and the textile workers of the
northern counties, whose mills could not get cotton on account of