Page:Armistice Day.djvu/356

334 out of the very war which brought about this result have grown new animosities. Some of the nations created by that war are at odds with one another and also with some of the nations to whose efforts they owe their creation. In the ten-year perspective the war that was to end war does not look so final as enthusiastic spirits proclaimed it to be.

The chief factor in the feeling of disheartenment which has to no small extent succeeded the gaiety of Armistice Day is the shock which has been sustained by the ideal of democracy. While kings and emperors have been swept aside, autocrats have appeared in Italy, Spain and Poland, with Russia freeing herself from the Czars only to fall into the hands of an oligarchy. The seamy side of democracy is being held up for inspection and we are bidden to compare it with the finished side of autocracy.

"Don't you see that democracy's shortcomings are much worse than autocracy's virtues?" This, in effect, is the astounding question which is being put to free peoples in the second decade of the twentieth century and ten years after the outbreak of a war which saw the triumph of the world's leading democracies over its most powerful monarchies.

The question may safely be left to answer itself. To doubt that intelligent nations will in the long