Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/197

 point of fact, it seldom follows. As I have said, there was little if any public fury over the colossal stealings that went on during the Wilson administration, and there was still less over the smaller but perhaps even more cynical stealings that glorified the short reign of Harding; in the latter case, in fact, most of the odium settled upon the specialists in righteousness who laid the thieves by the heels. The soldiers coming home from the War for Democracy did not demand that the war profiteers be jailed; they simply demanded that they themselves be paid enough to make up the difference between what they got for fighting for their country and what they might have stolen had they escaped the draft. Their chief indignation was lavished, not upon the airship contractors who made off with a billion, but upon their brothers who were paid $10 a day in the shipyards. The feats of the former were beyond their grasp, but those of the latter they could imagine—and envy.

This fellow feeling for thieves is probably what makes capitalism so secure in democratic societies. Under absolutism it is always in danger, and not infrequently, as history teaches, it is exploited and undone, but under democracy