[signed] John Galsworthy
Questionings
I have a brilliant idea which, without any parade of modesty, I hereby commend to the notice of the American, French and British Governments. Let them get together as soon as may be and give us an authoritative definition of Democracy. Then we shall know where, collectively, we are. Of course you may say that it has been defined for all time by Abraham Lincoln. But thrilling in its clear simplicity as his slogan epigram may be, a complex political and social system cannot be fully dealt with in fifteen words. I thought I knew what it was until a tidy few millions of friends and myself were knocked silly by recent events in Russia. Here, where the privates of a regiment hold a mass meeting and discuss for hours an order to advance to the relief of sorely pressed comrades and decide not to obey it, and eventually throw down their rifles and with a meus conscia recti, proudly run away, we have Democracy with a vengeance. Not one of the Defenders of Democracy who are writing in this book would stand for it a second. Nor would they stand for the slobbering maniacs who yearn to throw themselves into the arms of the Germans, and, with the kiss of peace and universal brotherhood, kiss away their brother's blood from their blood-smeared faces. Nor would they stand entirely for those staunch democrats who, inspired with a burning sense of human wrongs but with none of proportion or humor, would sacrifice vital interests of humanity in general for the transient amelioration of the lot of a particular section of the community. For years these visionaries told us that every penny spent on army or navy was a robbery of the working-man. We yielded to him many pennies; but alas, they now have to be repaid in blood.
America has joined the civilized world in the struggle against the surviving systems of medieval barbarism in Europe that have been permitted to exist under the veneer of civilization. She sees clearly what she has to destroy. So do we. No American and Englishman can meet but that they grip hands and thank God together that they are comrades in this Holy War. They are out, like Knights of Fable, to rid the earth of a pestilential monster; and they will not rest until their foot is on his slain monster's head.
Which is, by Heaven! a glorious and soul-uplifting enterprise. In it the blood of the Martyrs, rising to God. But with this difference: the Martyrs died for a constructive scheme—that of Christianity. What is the constructive scheme for which we are dying? It is easy to say the Democratization of Mankind. It is a matter of common assent that this consummation is ardently desired by the Royal Family of England, by enlightened Indian Princes, by the philanthropists of America, by the French artist, by the Roumanian peasant, by the howling syndicalist in South Wales, by the Belgian socialist, by the eager soul in the frail body who is at the helm of storm-tossed Russia to-day, by the Montenegrin mountaineer, by the Sydney Larrikin yelling down conscription, by millions of units belonging to the civilized nations of such social and racial divergence that the mind is staggered by the conception of them all fighting under one banner. But are we sure they are all fighting for the same thing? If they're not, there will be the deuce to pay all over the terrestrial globe, even with a crushed Central European militarism.
Therefore, with the same absence of modesty I cry for an authoritative crystallization of the democratic aims of the civilized world. England and France have groped their way through centuries towards a vague ideal. America proudly began her existence by a proclamation of the equal rights of man. She proudly proclaims them now; but the world is involved in such a complicated muddle, that the utterances of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (to say nothing of their intellectual and political ancestor Jean Jacques Rousseau) require amplification. The political thought of the older nations of Europe is tired out. It is for the fresher genius of America to lead them towards the solution of the greatest problem which has ever faced mankind:—the final, constructive and all-satisfying definition of the myriadwise interpreted word Democracy.
[signed] W. J. Locke
Democracy in Peace and War
Democracy is by nature a lover of peace. That is the state which it regards as the normal condition of human life, and in which it seeks its best rewards and triumphs by the organization of the common effort of all citizens for the common welfare.
But while democracy is pacific in its desires and aims, it is not a "pacifist." It is willing and able, though not always at the moment ready, to take up arms in self-defense. In its broadening vision of a fraternity of mankind, which shall be in the good future not only intranational but also international, it is willing also to FIGHT for the safety of its principles everywhere, and for the security of all the peoples in a true and orderly liberty. That is the position of the democracy of the United States of America to-day.