In other words, it seems to me, nationalism is only a prophecy. It is too distant to be certainly detailed. Present day accounts of it will one day be, as Horace Greeley said of something else, "mighty interesting reading." We may be inspired by it as the end towards which present movements are tending. But each age solves its own problems; and the passage into that promised land is the issue for another generation. A nearer view alone can determine where the passage is, and whether the land is truly desirable. We may justly put some faith in the common sense, as well as in the political ingenuity of those who come after us. If military socialism, whatever it is, should ever be the issue, this American people can be trusted to vote against it if it is undesirable. Meantime, what our people must vote upon in the present year of grace, is whether great private corporations shall control legislatures and city councils, and charge their own unquestioned prices for such public necessities of life as light and transit. There is an issue between tyranny and liberty which is to the point. The future is in the hands of evolution. Another opprobrious epithet is "paternalism." This is the most familiar of the titles of reproach. It suggests an idea of government made pestiferous by old abuse. The most atrocious despotisms both of king and church have planted themselves _in loco parentis_. The welfare of the people has been the hoary excuse for the cruelest outrages of history. Mr. Flower goes a step further and avers that, with the good of the people for a pretext, tyranny has always been in exact proportion to power and authority. Without stopping to query as to this last rather sweeping statement, it will be enough to check ourselves while the editor leaps to his induction; namely, that because the monarchical and ecclesiastical governments have tyrannized in proportion to their power, nothing less is to be expected if our Republic becomes affected with a greater sense of governmental responsibility for the welfare of her citizens. If our nation, it is claimed, allows this specious excuse to commit it to the doctrine of State interference, we are drifted into the despotic paternalisms of the old world. But a paternalism must have a parent, a royal sire, or a priestly grandmother. In the antique paternalisms there is invariably this parental personality at the top; down beneath it are the puppet children. "My soldiers are my children," says Napoleon; and he orders a charge for their benefit; an hour afterwards the dying address him as Sire as he walks over the field. "The German people are my children," says Emperor William; and he issues the edict for the compulsory life-insurance of workingmen; an undoubted blessing. Both are instances of paternalism; and the principle in one case is as obnoxious as in the other. The principle of paternalism is an irresponsible authority above the people, mastering the people, with their welfare as a pretext.