Stoux City Academy of Science and Letters. 133 
progress is to be found through the way of a direct move- 
ment for amendment of Article V. once for all, to the 
end that future amendment may be made easier. I be- 
lieve that such a measure should provide for amendment 
of our national constitution, by the same means we have 
found satisfactory in changing our state constitutions— 
a referendum vote of the whole people. As all amend- 
ments may be supposed to be stronger than any single 
one, this seems to me the only manner in which constitu- 
tional progress has any chance to succeed in the United 
States. 
If any think the views expressed herein pessimistic, 
I wish to disclaim all such philosophy. To my mind, the 
most hopeless thing in the world is the fool’s paradise of 
the professional self-styled optimist. The truest optim- 
ism is found in facing any situation which may exist, not 
in assuming some other situation. As expressing my 
view on this branch of the subject, as well as in justify- 
ing my estimate of the lions in our path, I quote from 
that most conservative magazine “The Independent,” of 
the issue of December 3rd, 1903, in an editorial entitled, 
“Racing the Ultimate Issue,” which says: “If the corpo- 
rations created by the state have become superior to the 
state, or, to speak in language technically correct, if they 
have wrested sovereignty from the people, and have 
themselves become the state, let us by all means have 
an authoritative declaration of the fact * * *. There 
are thousands of sincere and intelligent minds that have 
been slow to see that a third time popular sovereignty 
is being openly challenged and contemned.” 
In the same journal of a recent issue, the French 
statesman Alfred Naquet, in speaking of the present 
Irench constitution says: “But that the present Consti- 
tution should be revised, there can be no doubt. Conse- 
quently a scheme for easily amending it should be intro- 
duced. The American procedure in this matter is too 
slow and too beset with obstacles for its adoption here.” 
Elsewhere, in the same article, he says: “In a word, a> 
Supreme Court in France instead of being an element of 
peace would be a source of revolution.” 
