“I did,” Mr. Corinth said. “I made a speech a few weeks ago at a meeting of a bunch of gabby women and earnest men. I told ’em what democracy is. Not a form of government—but a way of maintaining almost any damned form of government. A fair way. An enlightened way. A way that gives the most people a chance, and government the most chance to do for the people. The wise men who founded this democracy fixed it up at the start so that nearly any solitary principle or law could be changed in any way. Excepting, you might say, the main principle that, in whatever is done, the majority should be the ones to pick the doers. That is absolutely all democracy is—and a hell of a lot, even so!
“It’s—to put it another way—the only fair and fluid system by which people can evolve together. Change and grow. Washington’s eyes would pop if he could see what we call democracy today. No slavery. Women voting. The central government stronger than the squabbling states—and able to assert its strength, thank God. Drink prohibited and restored. A war to keep together the union behind us. An industrial civilization, with a thing called Labor, that Washington never heard of. All those things weren’t here when he died; but he helped set up a constitution by which, one way or another, they could be.
“Democracy is a way of governing, designed to promote and encourage change. It’s not static. That’s the reason people who lose it always fight back to it. It’s the only possible permanent system. Naturally, it’s no better than people are. And people aren’t so good. I wish I could show everybody in every spot—high and low—the great simple, self-evident, unavoidable, natural fact that there never will be a gang, a group, a government, a state, or anything that is one solitary damned bit better than the people in it! Communism is no better than the Russians—a statement of fairly low degree in many departments. Fascism is no better than the Germans—a compelling argument to demonstrate its future possibilities—and lack of ’em. Muskogewan is no better than its citizens—impress upon it what economic and social systems and ideas you may. <…>
wrong end of the stick. Everybody’s trying to improve the rules and neglecting the character of the players. That, Jimmie, is all backwards. And you can only switch it around rightwise again, in a democracy—where every individual’s character counts, and if things get too sour it shows, and people have to do something to save themselves—something they have the set-up to do! In any other kind of government they have to stick to some damn’ plan—even in an opportunistic one like Hitler’s. And whenever a new, present fact shows a past plan is in error, a Fascist, a Commie, a bigot, a standpatter suddenly becomes a fool and a liar for all to see. So does his drop-forged form of government. Only a democracy, in other words, can go right on changing its mind, without collapsing. As soon as we Americans remember that what we’ve got is a way to live together and do things—instead of a hard and fast system we can’! tinker with—we’ll go to work on the changes that lie ahead and we’ll put ’em in effect. Changes, I mean, like earned capital versus lucky capital. Those businessmen who are going around bellowing that you can’t do this and you gotta do that because of the Constitution, are nuts. If they wanted alterations in their favor, they wouldn’t hesitate to hack at the law! That’s what the Constitution is essentially—a blank order for changing itself. That’s about all it is. That—and a starting point—is all! A democratic constitution is merely a springboard.”
Jimmie thought about the people of England—the easy, corrupt, short-sighted ways into which they had fallen. He thought of the prewar schism between the classes, of the sympathy the ruling class had entertained for Fascism, in the belief that Fascism and Naziism were strong dams against Bolshevism. They’d had a dread of Bolshevism—a just dread—but no less just than the dread of Fascism, which they had been too property—panicked to feel. He thought about the grim, grinning game they were playing now, as democrats, as men and women devoted to the clear purpose of saving the sum of those things that were most important to them. He thought about the changes that would have to come in England out of this new association of all the people. He wondered how much tumult, how much wanton greed, how much reasserted selfishness would rise in England after the war, when the settlement came. Not as much, he was sure—not a hundredth as much—as there was before the war. Not a tenth as much as there was now in America.
England had fallen in a coma. America was still in a coma. Dead, was Hitler’s diagnosis.
But England was not dead and, Jimmie thought, it would take half the men in Germany to kill England. America, though, was still asleep, still deep in a half-dream, half-recollection—a backward-looking fuguelike memory of “good times” that were good only because history had retained a solitary aspect of them. He considered that last, great “good time”—the reckless spree of the 1920’s—when so many men alive today had assisted at the drunk debauch—and suffered in the subsequent hangover—and were now busy with the single wish that they could get drunk again, regardless of the consequences.
Mr. Corinth yawned. “The English,” Jimmie said, “are learning about democracy.”
“The hard way. People learn best—the hard way. Sometimes I catch myself passionately hoping that the war will go on long enough so that the bombers will sweep over some American cities and give them the-the lesson of the hard way. We need it. Material luxury doesn’t postulate eternal, world-wide luxury for the human spirit—even if the advertisers and the popular psychologists try to persuade us of it. I could do without the philosophy of looking on the bright side. Too damned blinding. You can’t see the reaching shadows till the claws they stem from have you by the throat—if you’re a ‘bright-side looker,’ a ‘keep smiling’ idiot, a self-pronounced optimist. No attitude means anything unless it jells with the facts. Or unless it is transmitted into action that changes facts. We try to maintain attitudes without action, and irrespective of fact. What we need is the critical attitude. A reverence for skilled iconoclasm, a recognition of the values on the dark side. Yeah, Jimmie, I sometimes wish the bombs would drop.”
Jimmie shrugged. “I remember one morning, in a little mess of rubble, in London. There was a kid—a girl about ten—with her mother, ambling about meaninglessly and looking at everything. The child’s mother was out on her feet. But not the youngster. She talked to me—about the scene. She said, ‘The trouble with death is, it’s so— soiling.’”