Democracy, we shall all agree, can not develop among the Australian bushmen. It will not develop among the gypsies. It will not develop, for a long time, among the African Negroes. Democracy will grow slowly among the white peoples of central and eastern Europe. It will probably grow much more slowly among the brown and yellow peoples of Asia. We can best advance the cause of democracy in our time by saving it and developing it in those countries where it has been already pretty well established. Surely the greatest possible service we can render the cause of democracy among the peoples not yet wholly fitted for its practice is to give them a high and striking example of its success in our own country. The supreme battle for democracy in this our day is taking place in the minds and hearts of American citizens. There is no immediate cause for doubt and worry concerning the preservation of democracy in Great Britain and France. There is cause for deepest concern in our own country, whose democracy is threatened from every side, by greedy and designing powers above, as by a great mass of incompetent, unprincipled and undemocratic voters from below. CHAPTER XV The American Negro as Ward of The Nation Grover Cleveland once declared that one American problem for which he saw no solution whatever was the problem of the Negro. If we were in The land of the beginning again, that country of our dreams, we should, of course, not bring the Negro to our shores. It is easy to idealize our American ancestors, but no doubt they made enough errors in their time. Their most gigantic blunder, one to make Providence himself almost despair of humanity, was the Afro-American slave trade. "Man's inhumanity to man" brings at last the greatest of all sorrows upon him who works the inhumanity. The first emotion that thought of the great problem of the Negro must awaken in the hearts of all Americans is humility. Before Almighty God we must resolve in this matter to do justice, and more than justice. Here more than any other place, we must be moved by Christlike kindness and love. The bane of us Americans, in all periods of our history, has been carelessness. We have a tendency to let things drift from bad to worse. Such has been particularly the case with reference to our attitude toward the Negro. It is high time that we applied to our public thinking some of that sounder knowledge of society and social laws which recent years have given to us.