Such foresight and flexibility is necessary to continued survival, but flexibility of convictions alone does not meet the requirements. Indeed, it has been tried. It is only the minor politicians--the most numerous and long-lived, it is true--who can hold their place in the crevices of the party organisation, and get their livelihood from the business of party politics, without some power of vision and some hazard of forecast. It results from this state of the case that the drift of popular sentiment and the popular response to the stimulus of current events is reflected more faithfully and more promptly by the short-lived administrations of a democracy than by the stable and formally irresponsible governmental establishments of the older order. It should also be noted that these democratic administrations are in a less advantageous position for the purpose of guiding popular sentiment and shaping it to their own ends. * * * * * Now, it happens that at no period within the past half-century has the course of events moved with such celerity or with so grave a bearing on the common good and the prospective contingencies of national life as during the present administration. This apparent congruity of the administration's policy with the drift of popular feeling and belief will incline anyone to put a high rating on the administration's course of conduct, in international relations as well as in national measures that have a bearing on international relations, as indicating the course taken by sentiment and second thought in the community at large,--for, in effect, whether or not in set form, the community at large reflects on any matters of such gravity and urgency as to force themselves upon the attention of the common man.