78 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



nation, a little loud, a little pushing, a little braggart. 

 But might it not partly have been because we felt that 

 we had certain claims to respect that were not admitted] 

 The war which established our position as a vigorous 

 nationality has also sobered us. A nation, like a man, 

 cannot look death in the eye for foui* years, without some 

 strange reflections, without arriving at some clearer con- 

 sciousness of the stuff it is made of, without some great 

 moral change. Such a change, or the beginning of it, 

 no observant person can fail to see here. Our thought 

 and our politics, our bearing as a people, are assuming a 

 manlier tone. We have been compelled to see what was 

 weak in democracy as well as what was strong. We 

 have begun obscurely to recognize that things do not go 

 of themselves, and that popular government is not in 

 itself a panacea, is no better than au}^ other form except 

 as the virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and 

 that when men undertake to do their own kingship, they 

 enter upon the dangers and responsibilities as well as 

 the privileges of the function. Above all, it looks as if 

 we were on the way to be persuaded that no government 

 can be earned on by declamation. It is noticeable also 

 that facility of communication has made the best Eng- 

 lish and French thought far more directly operative 

 here than ever before. Without being Europeanizcd, 

 our discussion of important questions in statesmanship, 

 political economy, in {esthetics, is taking a broader scope 

 and a higher tone. It had certainly been provincial, 

 one might almost say local, to a very unpleasant extent. 

 Perhaps our experience in soldiership has taught us to 

 value training more than we have been popularly wont. 

 We may possibly come to the conclusion, one of these ■ 

 days, that self-made men may not be always equally 

 skilful in the manufacture of wisdom, may not be 

 divinely commissioned to fabricate the higher qualities 

 of opinion on all possible topics of human interest. 



