A striking exception to the attitude of the average American in the matter of his personal responsibility was Mr. John Jay Chapman’s visit to Coatesville, Pennsylvania, to do penance for “that blot on American history”—the burning a negro to death in the public square of Coatesville—because he felt that “it was not the wickedness of Coatesville but the wickedness of all America.” But there are signs to-day of a new spirit among us. We have begun to be restless under our present political forms: we are demanding that the machine give way to the man, we want a world of men governed by the will of men. What signs have we that we are now ready for a creative citizenship? Every one is claiming to-day a share in the larger life of society. Each of us wants to pour forth in community use the life that we feel welling up within us. Citizens’ associations, civic clubs and forums are springing up every day in every part of the country. Men are seeking through direct government a closer share in law-making. The woman suffrage movement, the labor movement, are parts of this vital and irresistible current. They have not come from surface springs, their sources are deep in the life forces of our age. There is a more fundamental cause of our present unrest than the superficial ones given for the woman movement, or the selfish ones given for our labor troubles: it is not the “demand for justice” from women nor the “economic greed” of labor, but the desire for one’s place, for each to give his share, for each to control his own life—this is the underlying thought which is so profoundly moving both men and women to-day. But a greater awakening has come since April, 1917. It has taken the ploughshare of fire to reveal our true selves: this war is running the furrows deep in the hearts of men and turning up desires of which they were unconscious themselves in their days of ease. Men are flocking to Washington at the sacrifice of business and personal interests willing to pour out their all for the great stake of democracy; the moment came when the possession of self-government was imperilled and all leapt forward ready to lay down their lives to preserve it. This war has revealed the deeper self with its deeper wishes to every man and he sees that he prizes beyond life the power to govern himself. Now is the moment to use all this rush of patriotism and devotion and love of liberty and willingness to serve, and not let it sink back again into its hidden and subterranean depths. Let us develop the kind of institutions which will call forth and utilize these powers and energies for peace as for war, for the works of peace are glorious if men can but see the goal. Let us make a fitting abiding place for men’s innate grandeur. Let us build high the walls of democracy and enlarge its courts for our daily dwelling.