tuation.

This latter is, in effect, an altogether different question from that of
preserving neutrality and amicable relations in the midst of importunate
belligerents, and it may even, conceivably, perhaps not unlikely, come
to involve a precautionary breach of the current peace and a taking of
sides in the war with an urgent view to a conclusive outcome. It would
be going too far to impute to the administration, at the present stage,
such an aggressive attitude in its pursuit of a lasting peace as could
be called a policy of defensive offense; but it will shock no one's
sensibilities to say that such a policy, involving a taking of sides and
a renouncing of national isolation, is visibly less remote from the
counsels of the administration today than it has been at any earlier
period.

In this pacific attitude, increasingly urgent and increasingly
far-reaching and apprehensive, the administration appears to be speaking
for the common man rather than for the special interests or the
privileged classes. Such would appear, on the face of the returns, to be
the meaning of the late election. It is all the more significant on that
account, since in the long run it is after all the common man that will
have to pass on the expediency of any settled line of policy and to bear
the material burden of carrying it into effect.

It may seem rash to presume that a popularly accredited administration
in a democratic country must approximately reflect the effectual changes
of popular sentiment and desire. Especially would it seem rash to anyone
looking on from the point of view of an undemocratic nation, and
therefore prone to see the surface fluctuations of excitement and
shifting clamor. But those who are within the democratic pale will know
that any administration in such a country, where official tenure and
continued incumbency of the party rest on a popular vote,--any such
administration is a political organisation and is guided by political
expediency, in the tawdry sense of the phrase. Such a political
situation has the defects of its qualities, as has been well and
frequently expounded by its critics, but it has also the merits of its
shortcomings. In a democracy of this modern order any incumbent of high
office is necessarily something of a politician, quite indispensably so;
and a politician at the same time necessarily is something of a
demagogue. He yields to the popular drift, or to the set of opinion and
demands among