For it
cannot be too often repeated that the unquenchable conflicts are those
waged for ideas and not dollars. These are tinged with religious
emotion.
IV
Mr. Wilson's messages to the American people and to the world have
proclaimed a new international order, a League of Democracies. And in a
recent letter to New Jersey Democrats we find him warning his party, or
more properly the nation, of the domestic social changes necessarily
flowing from his international program. While rightly resolved to
prosecute the war on the battle lines to the utmost limit of American
resources, he points out that the true significance of the conflict lies
in "revolutionary change." "Economic and social forces," he says, "are
being released upon the world, whose effect no political seer dare to
conjecture." And we "must search our hearts through and through and make
them ready for the birth of a new day--a day we hope and believe of
greater opportunity and greater prosperity for the average mass of
struggling men and women." He recognizes that the next great step in
the development of democracy which the war must bring about--is the
emancipation of labour; to use his own phrase, the redemption of masses
of men and women from "economic serfdom." "The old party slogans," he
declares, "will mean nothing to the future."
Judging from this announcement, the President seems prepared to condemn
boldly all the rotten timbers of the social structure that have outlived
their usefulness--a position that hitherto no responsible politician has
dared to take.
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