Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, MAY 29, 1917. DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1718, 29 May 1917, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, MAY 29, 1917. DEMOCRACY AND THE WAR.

INTO (his-war no statesman has led America, and therefore into it America lias gone leaderless, says the New York Outlook. Public opinion has led the President, and not the President public opinion. For this war no leaders in the Government have prepared America; and therefore into it America, after two years and a-half of warning, goes unprepared. Because Congress has steadily refused to prepare the country for what the revision of Congress must ■ inevitably bring, and because Congress has been afraid of war, and therefore afraid of thinking enoi%h about war to prepare against it, whatever preparation has been made and can now be made must, for the most part, be the result of public and private initiative on the part of volunteers. In this respect the United States is repeating in its own way the experiences of the other democracies that are lighting Germany. France is carrying on its war against Germany under a Parliaiiient that was elected before the war on a pacifist issue. England entered the war under the guidance of a Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, who’s motto was not leadership, but “Wait and see.” Belgium entered the war, happily, under a great royal leader, but totally unprepared because of the opposition of the democratic leaders of Belgium to plan for an adequate army. Italy entered the war honeycombed with German influence and weakened by the pacificist agitation of extreme syndicalist Socialists. Russia entered the war with her democracy fettered by an autocracy more devoted to the interests of the enemy than to the interests of Russia. In the case of each of these democracies that are lighting Prussianism the people themselves, for one reason or another, have been either misled or have been without real leaders. It has been democracy itself in spite of misleaders or lack of leaders that has fought this war. Soft will have to be in the United States. The greatest war in all time has thus not only been a test of democracy, but a test of democracy at its weakest. If self-government and civic freedom can stand this test, they can stand any test. The miracle is not only that they are standing the test, but that they are growing stronger under the test.