One of the best and most conservative newspapers in the United States printed late in 1918 a carefully written editorial under the above title, from which I quote a few disconnected sentences, italicizing the most important: “Twenty-five hundred years ago in Athens, Plato, the philosopher, who is called the ‘father of idealists,’ framed the structure of an ideal government among men, in the form of a republic. ... When the dust of Plato was gathered into a Grecian urn, his dream did not die. The generations harbored and treasured it. Time after time, and in place after place, republics were formed. Men gave their blood and their lives to realize the dream of Plato. But always might prevailed over them. Only America endured to make the dream come true. In these times there are numerous republics but there is not one among them that does not owe its existence to the example and the influence of the United States. Were our republic to crumble, every other on earth would crumble with it.... Since the adoption of the Constitution in 1789, one hundred and thirty years have passed and _during that time America has met and overcome every trial to which the ideal republic could possibly be subjected_. It has answered every argument against a republican form of government advanced by the most stubborn objectors.” The foregoing is historically correct except the last two sentences. America has stood every test except that which ruined every other republic. It has not yet encountered _direct government_, towards which we seem radically tending. It has not withstood what Lord Macauley, a century ago, predicted would prove our overthrow. He declared the republic was “all sail and no ballast.” He predicted great speed for a period; but he warned against the day when those who did not have breakfast and did not expect dinner would elect our congress and our president. The demagogue would be abroad in the land and he would say: “Why do these have and you suffer?” “Your republic will be pillaged and ravaged in the 20th century, just as the Roman Empire was by the barbarians of the fifth century, with this difference, that the devastators of the Roman Empire, the Huns and Vandals, came from abroad, while your barbarians will be the people of your own country, and the product of your own institutions.” If “Coxie’s army” had been led by Eugene Debs, or any one of more than a score whose names are revered by many, instead of by a patriotic American, every mile of the road over which it traveled would have reeked with human gore. Had it resorted to bloodshed at that time, however, it would not have proceeded far. But socialism has made great progress since 1895.