Democracy Can Not Bear It
Democracy Can Not Bear It.—The following from a series of thoughtful articles on "The Spirit of Democracy," by Charles Fletcher Dole, in the Springfield Republican, sets before us the results which are sure to follow the assumptions of a ruling nation: Every form of industrial or political management in which a group, a caste, or a race is made to take the place of superiors, by force of arms and incidental violence, over another group, or servile caste, or race of men, who must be looked down upon as inferior people, is inhuman and works evil accordingly. The more highly developed the stronger race is, the more subtly dangerous becomes the arrogance which is inevitable to such a relation. As slavery hurt men's character before they found out that it was wrong to hold slaves, so the relation of the "superior" and imperial nation involves a fatal pride. Assyrians, Romans, and Greeks could not endure the degradation incidental to playing the part of a ruling people. A democracy can least endure this aristocratic relation without blunting the edge of its moral sensitiveness and deadening its own love of liberty; for the relation of superiors to inferiors is tainted with suspicion and breeds enmity. The only secure and permanent relation of the strong to the weak, or of the educated to the ignorant, is that of sympathy, helpfulness, humanity, and good-will. The one relation works by force, the other by persuasion.