III
The embarrassments of the partisan who is challenged to explain the faith that is in him are greatly multiplied in this year of grace. Considerable literature is available as to the rise and development of the two major parties, but a student might exhaust the whole of it and yet read the Chicago and San Francisco platforms as through a glass darkly. There is a good deal of Jeffersonian democracy that is extremely difficult to reconcile with many acts of Mr. Wilson. The partisan who tries to square his Democracy or his Republicanism with the faith he inherited from his grandfather is doomed to a severe headache. The rope that separates the elephant from the donkey in the menagerie marks only a nominal difference in species: they eat the same fodder and, when the spectator’s back is turned, slyly wink at each other. There is a fine ring to the phrase “a loyal Republican” or “a loyal Democrat,” but we have reached a point of convergence where loyalty is largely a matter of tradition and superstition. What Jefferson said on a given point, or what Hamilton thought about something else, avails little to a Democrat or a Republican in these changed times. We talk blithely of fundamental principles, but are still without the power to visualize the leaders of the past in newly developed situations of which they never dreamed. To attempt to interview Washington as to whether he intended his warning against entangling alliances to apply to a League of Nations to insure the peace of the world is ridiculous; as well invoke Julius Cæsar’s opinion of present-day questions of Italian politics.
Delightful and inspiring as it would doubtless be, we can’t quite trust the government to the counsels of the ouija-board. The seats of the cabinet or of the supreme bench will hardly be filled with table-rapping experts until more of us are satisfied of the authenticity of the communications that purport to be postmarked oblivion. We quote the great spirits of the past only when we need them to give weight and dignity to our own views. (Incidentally, a ouija-board opinion from John Marshall as to the propriety of tacking a police regulation like the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution would be first-page stuff for the newspapers.)
Monroe was luckier than most of our patriarchs. The doctrine associated with his name is jealously treasured by many patriotic Americans who haven’t the slightest idea of the circumstances that called it forth; but to mention it in a discussion of international affairs is to stamp the speaker as a person of breeding, endowed with intellectual gifts of the highest order. If by some post-mortem referendum we could “call up” Monroe to explain just how far America might safely go in the defense of his doctrine, and whether it could be advantageously extended beyond the baths of all the western stars to keep pace with such an expansion as that represented by the Philippines, we might profit by his answer—and again, we might not.
We can’t shirk our responsibilities. One generation can’t do the work of another. In the last analysis we’ve got to stand on our own feet and do our own thinking. The Constitution itself has to be interpreted over and over again, and even amended occasionally; for the world does, in spite of all efforts to stop it, continue to move right along. This is not a year in which either of the major parties can safely harp upon its “traditional policy.” There are skeletons in both closets that would run like frightened rabbits if dragged into the light and ordered to solve the riddles of 1920.
The critics of President Wilson have dwelt much on the vision of the founders, without conceding that he too may be blessed with a seer’s vision and the tongue of prophecy. To his weaknesses as a leader I shall revert later; but his high-mindedness and earnest desire to serve the nation and the world are questioned only by the most buckramed hostile partisan, or by those who view the present only through the eyes of dead men.