effect upon the electorate. But just now, when democracy is fighting for its life in the world, we do well to give serious heed to such warnings. If we have not time or patience to perform the services required of a citizen who would be truly self-governing, then the glory of fighting for free institutions on the battle-fields of Europe is enormously diminished. The coming of the war found the West rather hard put for any great cause upon which to expend its energy and enthusiasm. We need a good deal of enthusiasm to keep us “up to pitch,” and I shall not scruple to say that, in spite of our fine showing as to every demand thus far made by the war, the roll of the drums really found us inviting the reproach passed by the prophet upon them “that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall.” Over and over again, as I have travelled through the West in recent years, it has occurred to me that sorely indeed we needed an awakening. Self-satisfaction and self-contemplation are little calculated to promote that clear thinking and vigorous initiative that are essential to triumphant democracy. Yes; this may be just as true of East or South; but it is of the West that we are speaking. I shall go the length of saying that any failure of democracy “to work” here in America is more heavily chargeable upon us of these Middle Western States than upon our fellow Americans in other sections. For here we are young enough to be very conscious of all those processes by which States are formed and political and social order established. Our fathers or our grandfathers were pioneers; and from them the tradition is fresh of the toil and aspiration that went to the making of these commonwealths. We cannot deceive ourselves into believing that they did all that was necessary to perpetuate the structure, and that it is not incumbent upon us to defend, strengthen, and renew what they fashioned. We had, like many of those who have come to us from over the sea to share in our blessings, fallen into the error of assuming that America is a huge corporation in which every one participates in the dividends without reference to his part in earning them. Politically speaking, we have too great a number of those who “hang on behind” and are a dead weight upon those who bear the yoke. We must do better about this; and in no way can the West prove its fitness to wield power in the nation than through a quickening of all those forces that tend to make popular government an intelligently directed implement controlled by the fit, and not a weapon caught up and exercised ignorantly by the unfit.