The movies, the radio, the popular publication are so new, they seem to rise on the international horizon of the 1920's, to have no link with our past, to be the same with us as they are all over the world. With these, it is true, we return to the universals of human expression and communication. But what we have done with them is unique, and their significance as part of our war machinery is based on both the universal and the special qualities they possess. That is why I have treated them separately; because they are powerful and have enormous inertia, the slightest error may accumulate tremendous consequences, and the instinctively right use of them will be the most complete protection against disaster at home. We have to study the right use because these tools have never yet been completely used for the purposes of democracy; and with them we have to remind the American people of other tools and instruments they have neglected, so many that it sometimes seems a passion with us to invent the best instruments and to hand them over to our enemies to use against us. CHAPTER XI The Tools of Democracy The tools of democracy are certain civil actions, certain inventions, certain habits. They can be used against us--but only if we fail to use them ourselves. The greatest tools are civil liberties which we have been considering as "rights" or "privileges". The right to free speech is a great one; free speech probably was originally intended to protect property; it preserves liberty; the rights of assembly, of protest for redress, of a free press all have this double value, that they guarantee the integrity of the private man and protect the State. The great debate on the war brought back some long forgotten phenomena: broadsides, street meetings, marches, and brawls. Before they began, virtually _all_ the civil rights were being used either by newcomers to America or by enemies of the American system. The poor had no access to the radio; they used a soap box instead and genteel people shrank away; the Bundist and the American Communist assembled and protested and published and spoke; the believers in America waited for an election to roll around again, and then did nothing about it. The enemies of the people sent a hundred thousand telegrams to Congressmen, signing the names of dead men to kill the regulation of utilities, but the believer in the democratic process didn't remember the name of his Congressman. Bewildered aliens got their second papers and were inducted into political clubs; the old line Americans never found out how the primaries worked. _Public Addresses_