The obligations of the writer to friends and writers are legion; it would be hopeless to enumerate them. Some items of this indebtedness may be inferred from the footnotes. The writer in particular regrets that Mr. Laski’s _Authority in the Modern State_ did not fall into his hands sooner; but he is glad to find himself in substantial agreement with the argument and conclusions of that notable work. _Ty’n-y-coed, Capel Curig, North Wales._ _July 15th, 1919._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter I. THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY “What is democracy? Sometimes, it is the name for a form of government by which the ultimate control of the machinery of government is committed to a numerical majority of the community. Sometimes, and incorrectly, it is used to denote the numerical majority itself, the poor or the multitude existing in a state. Sometimes, and still more loosely, it is the name for a policy, directed exclusively or mainly to the advantage of the labouring class. Finally, in its broadest and deepest, most comprehensive and most interesting sense, democracy is the name for a certain general condition of society, having historic origins, springing from circumstances and the nature of things, not only involving the political doctrine of popular sovereignty but representing a cognate group of corresponding tendencies over the whole field of moral, social and even spiritual life within the democratic community.”—LORD MORLEY. “I speak the password primeval, I give the sign of Democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.”—WALT WHITMAN. “To be a democrat is not to decide on a certain form of human association, it is to learn how to live with other men.”—MARY P. FOLLETT. THE inherent logic of the democratic idea calls for a society which will provide for all its members those conditions of equal opportunity that are within human control. It denies all forms of special and exclusive privilege, and affirms the sovereignty of the common man. In practice, however, democracy has gone no further than the achievement of a form of government; and in popular discussion the word has usually a connotation exclusively political. It is even yet but slowly becoming clear that a democratic form of government is no more than the bare framework of a democratic society; and democracy as we know it is justly open to the criticism that it has not seriously taken in hand the task of clothing the political skeleton with a body of living social flesh.