It does not particularly matter because the State Department gave even grosser expression to the “realistic” point of view that, to paraphrase, democracy is based on compromises in which big ends are surrendered to small goals. Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: “(1) Men and women of full age, _without any limitation due to race_, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family....” (Italics mine.) Could it be that this provision was in Mr. Barrett’s mind when he wrote: “Neither the Executive Branch nor the Congress would desire that our Government should ratify a convention which contains obligations that our Government and our people are unwilling or unable to honor.”? There is a deep sickness in the American mind and spirit, and it threatens to infect democracy itself and render it impotent as an ideal. But not only this; the sickness also threatens to make democracy ineffective as an instrument through which the individual can realize his highest self and in co-operation with other selves give zest, richness and meaning to human endeavor. For democracy is two things. It is a political instrument: it is an ideal. As an ideal, the notion of the world as a vast arena, where purposeless and inexplicable forces play, and where inevitable fate renders the mind and the spirit of the individual helpless, dissolves before it. As an ideal, it is in raw conflict with sterile determinism and fatalism. It assumes that the only source of human happiness or misery is human beings themselves, and its very dogma proclaims that co-operative endeavor is the way to human happiness. And this is sensible, for we know—and we know it scientifically—that co-operation is the law of life. When men co-operate, they and their enterprises prosper; peace reigns. This is not humanistic nonsense. Authorized to speak the considered opinion of a group of renowned scientific scholars of the Committee of Experts on Race Problems of UNESCO, Ashley Montagu declared: “Man’s _inherent_ drives toward co-operation need but to be cultivated and intelligently handled for this world to be turned into a Paradise on earth—when all men will, at last, _live by the rule it is their nature to live by_—the Golden Rule to love your neighbor as yourself.” (Italics mine.) 16