Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 80.djvu/154

150 can hardly be referred to as high, nevertheless the nation is making progress steadily toward more efficient courts; our peace establishment meets the needs of the republic; and great advance has been made toward the civic and friendly disposition among the people of the United States, sufficient to induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies enumerated by Washington as the fourth desideratum. We have still the problem of federal authority and the wise determination of what and how far the government should attempt to rule by central authority. The question is of vast importance; its determination will have much to do with the perpetuation of the republic.