Page:The League of Nations and the democratic idea.djvu/20

 swore in the presence of the gods that he was voting to the best of his judgement for the good of the whole city. And that is still the spirit in which every good citizen ought to vote, and as a rule does vote.

The externals of Democracy as a form of government can be attained easily enough: parliamentary institutions, universal suffrage, abolition of privileges and the like. But Democracy! as a spirit is not attained until the average citizen feels the same instinctive loyalty towards the whole people that an old-fashioned royalist felt towards his King. It is that spirit which is first needed in order to build up the organization for preventing war

For that is the need before us. It is not enough to trust to the presence of wise statesmen; they can be so easily thwarted by fools. It is not enough to make them directly subject to democratic control; nor to remove the sinister interests which make for war and the aggravating causes which make disputes more difficult than they need be. All these things are good, but they are not enough. War does not always arise from mere wickedness or folly. It sometimes arises from mere growth and movement. Humanity will not stand still. One people grows while another declines. One naturally expands in a particular direction and finds that thereby it is crossing the path of another. The strong and civilized peoples tend to spread over the world. The uncivilized and incompetent peoples both tempt others