The past year has been marked by the agitation for military
preparedness; civil preparedness strikes me as being of equal
importance. If I am right--or only half right--in my assertion that we
are governed very largely by second-rate men and that public business
is confided chiefly to the unfit, then here is a matter that cannot be
ignored by those who look forward hopefully to the future of American
democracy. There are more dangers within than without, and our tame
acceptance of incompetence in civil office would certainly bring
calamity if suffered in a military establishment. The reluctance of
first-rate men to accept or seek office is more disquieting than the
slow enlistments in the army and navy. Competence in the one would do
much to assure intelligent foresight and efficiency in the other.
It is a disturbing thought that we, the people, really care so little,
and that we are so willing to suffer government by the second-rate,
only murmuring despairingly when the unhappy results of our apathy
bring us sharply face to face with failure.
“The fatalism of the multitude,” commented upon strikingly by Lord
Bryce, has established in us the superstition that a kindly providence
presides over our destinies and that “everything will come out right
in the end.” But government by good luck is not a safe reliance for a
nation of a hundred millions. Nothing in history supports a blind faith
in numbers or in the wisdom of majorities. America’s hope lies in the
multiplication of the fit--the saving remnant of Isaiah’s prophecies
and Plato’s philosophy--a doctrine applied to America by Matthew
Arnold, who remains one of the shrewdest and most penetrating of all
our critics. Mr. Arnold distrusted numbers and had no confidence in
majorities. He said:
To be a voice outside the state, speaking to mankind or to the
future, perhaps shaking the actual state to pieces in doing so, one
man will suffice. But to reform the state in order to save it, to
preserve it by changing it, a body of workers is needed as well as a
leader--a considerable body of workers, placed at many points, and
operating in many directions.
These days, amid “the thunder of the captains, and the shouting,”
there must be many thousands of Americans who are truly of the saving
remnant, who view public matters soberly and hold as something very
fine and precious our heritage of democracy. These we may suppose will
witness the dawn of election day with a lively apprehension of their
august responsibilities, and exercise their right of selection sanely
and wisely. “They only who build upon ideas, build for eternity,” wrote
Emerson.
This nation was founded on ideas, and clearly in the ideas of the fit,
the earnest, the serious, lies its hope for the future. To eliminate
the second-rate, to encourage the first-rate man to undertake offices
of responsibility and power--such must be the immediate concern and the
urgent business of all who love America.