DEMOCRACY UNDER THREE DIFFERENT CULTURES.

This article has briefly directed attention to the salient character traits of three nations England, France and the U.S. in relation to democracy. To the peculiar habits of each have been attributed the differences in their democracies, but it would hardly do to rest the case there. For there is every evidence that significant character changes are taking place and beginning to manifest themselves in all three nations. These changes, moreover, appear to be very similar and so bid fair to make all more alike politically. Under the capitalistic industrial system, the common man is being regimented, organized, robbed of responsibility, denied opportunity for initiative, and made a part of a great social machine. Thus he is being forced into habits of irresponsibility, dependence, obedience, and servitude. He is being standardized too much the same pattern everywhere. In the U.S. for example, uniformity of behavior is rapidly approaching among the mass of urban dwellers. There is little pride in individuality of thought or act, but an ambition on the part of everyone to be like his neighbor. This conformity apparently has its main root in conditions of work and living, which deny opportunities of free choice and the exercise of individual judgment. Wherever such conditions prevail, there tends to develop a dependent type of man who, having little experience of it, will have little interest in political liberty as such. The idea of liberty has long since lost currency, and hence credit among them. The faith of ancestors is dead and the institution of created by their fathers has died or will die with it. The same thing to a greater or less degree is happening in France and England, and if that were the case, liberty is going to disappear, largely, from the scene.