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 virtua