That is understandable enough. But how is it that the democratic method should be abandoned so commonly in more leisurely and less catastrophic times? Why in time of peace should people provoke that centralization of power which deprives them of control over the use of that power? Is it not a probable answer to say that in the presence of certain issues, even in time of peace, the dangers have seemed sufficiently menacing to cause people to seek remedies, regardless of method, by the shortest and easiest way at hand? It could be demonstrated, I think, that the issues which have seemed so overwhelming were of two kinds: those which turned on the national defense or the public safety and those which turned on the power of modern capitalism. Where the relations of a people to armed enemies are in question or where the relations of employee, customer or farmer to large industry are in question the need for solutions has outweighed all interest in the democratic method. In the issues engendered by the rise of the national state and the development of large scale industries are to be found the essentially new problems of the modern world. For the solution of these problems there are few precedents. There is no established body of custom and law. The field of international affairs and the field of industrial relations are the two great centers of anarchy in society. It is a pervasive anarchy. Out of the national state with its terrifying military force, and out of great industry with all its elaborate economic compulsion, the threat against personal security always rises. To offset it somehow, to check it and thwart it, seemed more important than any finical regard for the principle of assent. And so to meet the menace of the national state, its neighbors sought to form themselves into more powerful national states; to tame the power of capitalism they supported the growth of vast bureaucracies. Against powers that were dangerous and uncontrolled they set up powers, nominally their own, which were just as vast and just as uncontrolled. 3 But only for precarious intervals has security been attained by these vast balances of power. From 1870 to 1914 the world was held in equilibrium. It was upset, and the world has not yet found a new order. The balances of power within the nations are no less unsteady. For neither in industry nor in international affairs has it yet been possible to hold any balance long enough to fix it by rule and give it an institutional form. Power has been checked by power here and there and now and then but power has not been adjusted to power and the terms of the adjustment settled and accepted.