know why we do a thing before we do it. We have that ingrained respect for the individual conscience, which is at the bottom of all free institutions. Some years before the War, an intelligent and cultivated Austrian who had lived long in England, was asked for his opinion of the British. “In many ways,” he said, “I think you are inferior to us; but one great thing I have noticed about you which we have not. You think and act and speak for yourselves.” If he had passed those years in America instead of in England he must needs have pronounced the very same judgment of Americans. Free speech, of course, like every form of freedom, goes in danger of its life in war time. In 1917 an Englishman in Russia came on a street meeting shortly after the first revolution had begun. An Extremist was addressing the gathering and telling them that they were fools to go on fighting, that they ought to refuse and go home, and so forth. The crowd grew angry, and some soldiers were for making a rush at him; but the Chairman, a big burly peasant, stopped them with these words: “Brothers, you know that our country is now a country of free speech. We must listen to this man, we must let him say anything he will. But, brothers, when he’s finished, we’ll bash his head in!” I cannot assert that either Britons or Americans are incapable in times like these of a similar interpretation of “free speech.” Things have been done in my country, and perhaps in America, which should make us blush. But so strong is the free instinct in both countries, that it will survive even this War. Democracy, in fact, is a sham unless it means the preservation and development of this instinct of thinking for oneself throughout a people. “Government of the people by the people for the people” means nothing unless the individuals of a people keep their consciences unfettered, and think freely. Accustom the individual to be nose-led and spoon-fed, and democracy is a mere pretence. The measure of democracy is the measure of the freedom and sense of individual responsibility in its humblest citizens. And democracy is still in the evolutionary stage.