"But the reactions of this war will surely go beyond all previous
experience. They already are and must be, in a far greater measure,
profoundly intellectual, and one of the consequences of this fact
inevitably will be the broadening and deepening of the democratic
current.
"When peace returns it will be seen that democracy has received a
hitherto unimagined impetus. Then it will be understood that democracy,
in one of its most important aspects, is popular thinking, that it is
the widest possible extension of the sense of responsibility.
"A democratic world will be, all in all, a peace-loving world.
"We may confidently expect far-reaching changes in the internal
political organization of the nations now involved. In every nation of
Europe the people are asking: What, after all, is this conflict all
about?
"They will ask this many times, and however they may answer it they
will, by consequence, follow the question with another: Shall we go on
fighting wars about the necessity, expedience, and righteousness of
which we have not been consulted?
"And to this query they will find only one answer--an emphatic negative.
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