Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/49

 their sympathizers and those of us who have taken no interest in the problem.

For this condition of affairs, there is probably no simple remedy: the barrier to the practice of abstract idealism is our one essential ideal, democracy.

Our duty to our fellow-citizens, then, is fairly plain, even if a little costly in terms of detached and unrelated ideals. It becomes, perhaps, more apparent that our duty to our international neighbors does depend on all the circumstances in the case, and not on any one ideal in this rather complicated world. Wherever there is no political menace to our basic organization it would be reasonable to look forward to free trade with free neighbors. Wherever there is no danger from their traditions or practices, it would be equally reasonable to look forward to the free movement of free neighbors; but, apart from lofty considerations, these neighbors must, if we are to survive, suffer and enjoy our mixed handicap and safeguard of democracy before we try to exchange anything on equal terms, even ideals. As far as some of them are concerned we do not think or speak in common terms, and, even after they have accepted among themselves the hazard of political equality, we shall then have to scrutinize very closely the extent of their economic emancipation. But we should be sure of our own.

If we are sufficiently educated to deal honestly with our problems—if our conceptions of equity are not still distorted by the hope of special privilege—we may, without any reason to look for immediate peace or comfort, have the bracing sensation of facing our difficulties. The problem of democracy is the isolation and measurement of basic economic power, or control of value, owing to the imperative necessity of apportioning the corresponding responsibility. We have been quite justly so proud of the fact that we have a right to insist on a trial by a jury of our peers that we have paid no attention to what became of the King and Executioner and just what new weapons they picked up when we made them drop the sceptre and the axe.