THEODORE ROOSEVELT 759 







ive democracy are geographical founda- people of the South have not begun to 



tions. This democracy is organized ami suspect it from the Government war 



centralized, but it avoids the common on the stegomyia mosquito and yellow 



dangers of centralization in that it is fever. The stegomyia mosquito defied 



democracy, /. c., that it is self- the philosophy of individualism for 



government. It differs from the funda- hundreds of years, to surrender to 



mental idea of the old democracy of in- science at last. 



dividualism in that it is self-government The American people have shown 



in its corporate and public aspect. It is their ethical soundness in nothing more 



national self-government in those areas than in the support they have given 



which concern the national and common their President in his effort to recon- 



good. For the very life of this democ- cile ethics and politics, in his aim to 



racy, and its fitness to survive, are guide the rebound of political theory 



bound up in the proposition that the and practise in its unmistakable reac- 



whole people is fit to govern, can gov- tion from the extreme of anarchy to- 



ern, and does govern itself. ward the extreme of socialism, and to 



A new era dawned in the United hew the highway of the national des- 



States with a sudden and almost revo- tiny straight along the middle way, on 



lutionary enlargement and moraliza- sound, safe, and rational, and at the 



tion of the sphere of the State during same time, ethical lines of historic na- 



this one administration. The National tionality. 



Government, qua National Government, The twentieth century dawned upon 



has for the first time frankly acknowl- the world in a state of arrested democ- 



edged its own responsibilities in the racy, with the creed of the revolu- 



matter of the commonwealth and the tionary forefathers discredited as not 



common good, and the whole American having fulfilled its promise. Conserv- 



people have overwhelmingly supported atism was sterile and without a social 



the constitutional creed of Mr. Roose- program, and glued to the status quo. 



velt to "promote the general welfare/' Liberalism the \vorld over had found 



The political significance of the con- itself bankrupt, except where it had 

 servation policies is that under them maintained solvency by borrowing 

 the aegis of the Constitution has been heavily from socialism. The ultra- 

 thrown over an unpreempted area of individualism of the eighteenth and 

 human endeavor, that recognition has nineteenth centuries had been a good 

 been given to the revolutionary doc- protestant philosophy in an age of re- 

 trine that people may better work to- action and revolt. It marked the end 

 gether than against each other for their of an era. But, as Mazzini has said 

 common good. Results have been of the French Revolution, it was in- 

 achieved undreamed of under laissez- capable of marking the beginning of a 

 faire. No section will profit so greatly new age, for it had no program and 

 as the new South, the stronghold of no possibility of a program, 

 the democracy of individualism, the It may be as well to state here that 

 South looking toward a prosperity Mr. Roosevelt's political philosophy is 

 never before thought possible, because founded on neither individualism nor 

 of these very conservation policies, which socialism as a theory of life. There is 

 their own confederacy would have a middle ground between the two, and 

 made forever impossible. For the an element of political philosophy lying 

 Montgomery constitution expressly de- outside the two, which define the ground 

 clared its Jeffersonian individualism in held by the Roosevelt school of politics, 

 that no public improvement should ever Unfortunately, no one yet has been 

 be undertaken at the public expense. able to coin a word which will cover 



Rut the South, more than all other this ground. But the seven and a half 



sections, is to learn the value of the years of his term of office have called a 



political application of scientific knowl- halt on the democracy of individualism, 



edge to human welfare through their have stemmed the tide of socialism by 



own organ the State, if, indeed, the the substitution of something better 



