Does this constitute success? Look on the other side of the picture. Our form of national government has been notoriously inefficient--taking Germany as the standard. Our state governments at their best are mediocre, while at their worst they stand pitifully paralyzed before mob law. Our unpunished lynchings of coloured people, innocent as well as guilty, make us contemptible in the eyes of the civilized world. No other government on earth remains silent and helpless while its citizens assemble as for a holiday and burn a criminal at the stake. Our municipalities are largely rotten with graft, and the graft is accompanied by its inevitable handmaids, extravagance and inefficiency. Enormous wealth, in the hands of a few, dwells side by side with extreme poverty. Our cities are overcrowded, and the country of Whittier, where "Shut in from all the world without We sat the clean-winged hearth about," is handed over to the huts and shanties of immigrants. Capital fights labour and labour fights capital. Politics are such that most men avoid them. The standard of work is not how well you can do your job, but how much you can make out of it. Is this democracy a success? In answer to this, however, does not an inner consciousness in each of us, perhaps the spirit of Lafayette and perhaps our own, perhaps the whispering of an unseen, great, and infinite power, tell us that the really relevant question is not whether we have yet achieved success, but whether a successful democracy is worth striving for? If, however, I should be obliged to answer the question by "Yes" or "No" I would say, "Yes, it is a success!" The best route for the development of any man lies along the hard and thorny road of self-development. In the end, self-development, by dint of hard work and mistakes, produces the best man, provided he has the courage to "see it through." Nations are merely big collections of individuals. In the end this self-development produces the best nation. The road is filled with difficulties, but so are most roads to goals that are worth reaching.