Freedom is not as precious to the members of this postwar generation as it was to some of their ancestors. The nation which once followed the leadership of Mazzini and Garibaldi now suffers a dictatorship with apparently little protest. In England, the stronghold of liberalism, a conservative government places a censorship upon the words of the man who is probably that country’s best-known writer. Socialism has its beginnings in that passion for freedom and humanity which inspired the youth of the early nineteenth century and ends at Moscow with a constitution from which even a Bill of Rights is omitted. In America we now see that democracy does not guarantee liberty. The government shows decreasing respect for the immunities of the individual. Crowd movements spread intolerance and are ever demanding more strict regulation in matters of personal conduct and private judgment. One frequently hears the remark, “The talk about personal liberty is disgusting nonsense.” There are various reasons for this change of spirit. The individual rather willingly permits himself to be transformed from a private person to a numerical unit in his group or mass because as part of a public he gains power through the force of numbers. Individualism in a society in which every one is chiefly interested in industrial competition tends to become little more than the stock argument of those who wish to defend economic privilege. Other privileges are lost sight of in a standardized world. Moreover, as people begin to see that freedom is not something with which all men are equally endowed by their creator, but is achieved in varying degree, there is a tendency to minimize its importance. We are naturally somewhat suspicious of the freedom of others. Those who themselves have little capacity for it would impose their own limitations upon all others. From childhood onward we wish to be able to do what we see others doing. When this is impossible, there is a tendency to restrain them from doing what we cannot do. Masterful spirits grant themselves privileges which may appear wicked to the crowd. The free mind allows too much. When on the other hand a person who has not attained some degree of mastery declares his independence, we do not speak of him as free, we say that he “takes liberties.”