It is fair to assume that a democracy will be less likely to go to war than an autocracy. It is the middle and lower classes that bear the chief burdens of war. They fight for no promotions. Generally the happiest thing that can come to one of them is a disabling wound to send him home with his head safely on his shoulders. Kings and their sons are rarely killed in battle. When this war began the kaiser was one of the proud Germans who had five tall sons of military age. After nearly four years of fighting none of them have been seriously injured. It would be interesting to know if there is another German father of five sons who has been so gently treated by fortune. Report says that fifty thousand schoolmasters were killed in Germany during the first two years of the war. It would be interesting to learn whether or not the titled class has given up so large a proportion of its members for the cause of the Fatherland. And yet, it must not be thought that wars cannot exist in democratic countries. When Rome was a republic war was a constant thing. Athens in her republican days had many wars. In the region that is now the United States of America have been several wars. The war for independence was essentially popular. It was organized by that part of the population which resented British aristocratic institutions, the class we should today call “the plain people.” In the civil war the demand that slavery be destroyed did not come from the wealthy men of the North, the class that stood for the American aristocracy, but from the middle classes, men who filled the churches and who followed the common impulses of the heart. It was resisted by the South, as democratically organized as Germany would be with the Junkers turned out of power, and the struggle was as bitter as any the world had seen up to the fatal year 1914. Democratic states can fight, and they do fight, but they are less likely to go to war than autocratic states. If it seems to any of us a necessary thing that autocracy must be removed from the earth, it is well to remember that autocracy can be removed only through the operation of a long and slow process. It can be reduced by some great catastrophe, but it cannot be smitten out in a day. Take away its political power, and perhaps its financial power will be left. Undermine that by raising up a rich bourgeoisie, and its social influence will perhaps still exist. You do not abolish it by decree; you banish it only when you have substituted a better thing.