The Present Crisis in Democracy

THE SUBJECT I have been asked to treat is as vast and complex as any that has occupied the mind in relation to human affairs. It will engage men's thoughts and fill the time of publicists and historians as long as life endures upon this planet. Anything that one can write about it briefly must be fragmentary and superficial—at best a touching of a few obvious points, like the description by an aviator of the life in a great city gathered from a flight over its dwellings, temples and skyscrapers, with a vague glimpse of the throngs in the