The second fundamental fact of the situation partly depends upon this first fact. Where neither party ventures to have any real convictions upon the vital issues of the day it is normally impossible to use either as an instrument for meeting these vital issues. Most of these issues, at least in their present form, have become such during the lifetime of the present generation. There are, of course, issues of which this is not true. The need of fortifying the Panama Canal and of building and maintaining a thoroughly efficient navy of adequate size, find their justification in the policy of Washington, for instance, and neither policy can be antagonized save by those who are the heirs of Washington’s bitterest and most insidious opponents. Again, the questions arising in connection with our international relations must to-day, as always, be settled exactly along the lines of general policy laid down by Washington, under penalty of risking grave national discredit and disgrace. But most of the issues which nine times out of ten most concern the average man and average woman of our republic have reached their present form only within the lifetime of the men who are now of middle age. They are due to the profound social and economic changes of the last half-century, to the exhaustion of the soil and of our natural resources, to the rapid growth of manufacturing towns and great trading cities, and to the relative lowering of the level of life in many country districts, both from the standpoint of interest and the standpoint of profit. Whether we approach the problem having in view only the interests of the wage-worker or of the farmer or of the small business man, or having in view the interests of the public as a whole, we are obliged to face certain new facts. One is that in their actual workings the old doctrines of extreme individualism and of a purely competitive industrial system have completely broken down. Another is that if we are to grapple efficiently with the evils of to-day, it will be necessary to invoke the use of governmental power to a degree hitherto unknown in this country, and, in the interest of the democracy, to apply principles which the purely individualistic democracy of a century ago would not have recognized as democratic.