THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



759 



ive democracy are geographical founda- 

 tions. This democracy is organized and 

 centralized, but it avoids the common 

 dangers of centralization in that it is 

 democracy, i. c, that it is self- 

 government. It differs from the funda- 

 mental idea of the old democracy of in- 

 dividualism in that it is self-government 

 in its corporate and public aspect. It is 

 national self-government in those areas 

 which concern the national and common 

 good. For the very life of this democ- 

 racy, and its fitness to survive, are 

 bound up in the proposition that the 

 whole people is fit to govern, can gov- 

 ern, and does govern itself. 



A new era dawned in the United 

 States with a sudden and almost revo- 

 lutionary enlargement and moraliza- 

 tion of the sphere of the State during 

 this one administration. The National 

 Government, qua National Government, 

 has for the first time frankly acknowl- 

 edged its own responsibilities in the 

 matter of the commonwealth and the 

 common good, and the whole American 

 people have overwhelmingly supported 

 the constitutional creed of Mr. Roose- 

 velt to "promote the general welfare." 



The political significance of the con- 

 servation policies is that under them 

 the aegis of the Constitution has been 

 thrown over an unpreempted area of 

 human endeavor, that recognition has 

 been given to the revolutionary doc- 

 trine that people may better work to- 

 gether than against each other for their 

 common good: Results have been 

 achieved undreamed of under laisses- 

 faire. No section will profit so greatly 

 as the new South, the stronghold of 

 the democracy of individualism, the 

 South looking toward a prosperity 

 never before thought possible, because 

 of these very conservation policies, which 

 their own confederacy would have 

 made forever impossible. For the 

 Montgomery constitution expressly de- 

 clared its Jefifersonian individualism in 

 that no public improvement should ever 

 be undertaken at the public expense. 



But the South, more than all other 

 sections, is to learn the value of the 

 political application of scientif.c knowl- 

 edge to human welfare through their 

 own organ — the State, if, indeed, the 



people of the South have not begun to 

 suspect it from the Government war 

 on the stegomyia mosquito and yellow 

 fever. The stegomyia mosquito defied 

 the philosophy of individualism for 

 hundreds of years, to surrender to 

 science at last. 



The American people have shown 

 their ethical soundness in nothing more 

 than in the support they have given 

 their President in his effort to recon- 

 cile ethics and politics, in his aim to 

 guide the rebound of political theory 

 and practise in its unmistakable reac- 

 tion from the extreme of anarchy to- 

 ward the extreme of socialism, and to 

 hew the highway of the national des- 

 tiny straight along the middle way, on 

 sound, safe, and rational, and at the 

 same time, ethical lines of historic na- 

 tionality. * * * 



The twentieth century dawned upon 

 the world in a state of arrested democ- 

 racy, with the creed of the revolu- 

 tionary forefathers discredited as not 

 having fulfilled its promise. Conserv- 

 atism was sterile and without a social 

 program, and glued to the status quo. 

 Liberalism the world over had found 

 itself bankrupt, except where it had 

 maintained solvency by borrowing 

 heavily from socialism. The ultra- 

 individualism of the eighteenth and 

 nineteenth centuries had been a good 

 protestant philosophy in an age of re- 

 action and revolt. It marked the end 

 of an era. But, as Mazzini has said 

 of the French Revolution, it was in- 

 capable of marking the beginning of a 

 new age. for it had no program and 

 no possibility of a program. 



It may be as well to state here that 

 Mr. Roosevelt's political philosophy is 

 founded on neither individualism nor 

 socialism as a theory of life. There is 

 a middle ground between the two, and 

 an element of political philosophy lying 

 outside the two, which define the ground 

 held by the Roosevelt school of politics. 

 Unfortunately, no one yet has been 

 able to coin a word which will cover 

 this ground. But the seven and a half 

 years of his term of office have caMed a 

 halt on the democracy of individualism, 

 have stemmed the tide of socialism by 

 the substitution of something better 



