We will use the weapons we have and invent new ones; and we had better be prompt. Because we have a victory to win with these weapons and a world to make. We have to work Democracy because we have to create a world in which democracy can live. There is no time to lose. CHAPTER XII Democratic Control The shape of this war was created in dark back rooms of cheap saloons, in a lodging house in Geneva, in several prison cells, in small half secret meetings, up back flights of stairs, behind drawn shades, in boarding houses over the dining table, in the lobbies of movie-houses, at lectures attended by the idle and the curious and the hopeless, in the kitchen of a New York restaurant where waiters talked more about the future than about tips; it was molded also in British pubs and by the sullen lives of dole-gatherers; it took a definable shape and could have been re-formed but was not, so that its shape today is the result of the pressure of those who willed to act and the missing pressure of groups which failed to meet and talk and plan. The earth-shaking events of our time may have been created by the great and mysterious forces of history, but their exact form was fixed by obscure people: the Russian Revolution by Lenin and Trotsky, students, impractical men, and the homeless Stalin; and the war by Hitler, the house painter, the despised little man, the corporal who couldn't get over his military dreams. These were the leaders, the conspicuous ones. They planned--and wrote--and gathered a few even more obscure followers, and talked and lived in utter darkness until the time came for them to fight. For a thousand years the destiny of mankind will be shaped by what these men did in countries barely emerging into freedom--and we to whom the gods have given all freedom, sit by and hesitate even to talk about the future, folding our hands and piously saying that in any case it will be decided for us. That is the result of forgetting our democratic rights and duties; with them we have forgotten that the future is ours to make. It will not be made for us; it will not be made in our favor unless we make it for ourselves; the weapons with which we fight the war will be strong and terrible when we come to create the peace. And we will create it either by using the weapons or by dropping them and running away from our triumph, which is also our responsibility.