Now, I will not pretend to be anything but a strong partizan in this matter.  When I speak of “democracy” I mean “selective democracy.”  I believe that “delegate democracy” is already provably a failure in the world, and that the reason why to-day, after three and a half years of struggle, we are still fighting German autocracy and fighting with no certainty of absolute victory, is because the affairs of the three great Atlantic democracies have been largely in the hands not of selected men but of delegated men, men of intrigue and the party machine, of dodges rather than initiatives, second-rate men.  When Lord Haldane, defending his party for certain insufficiencies in their preparation for the eventuality of the great war, pleaded that they had no “mandate” from the country to do anything of the sort, he did more than commit political suicide, he bore conclusive witness against the whole system which had made him what he was.  Neither Britain nor France in this struggle has produced better statesmen nor better generals than the German autocracy.  The British and French Foreign Offices are old monarchist organizations still.  To this day the British and French politicians haggle and argue with the German ministers upon petty points and debating society advantages, smart and cunning, while the peoples perish.  The one man who has risen to the greatness of this great occasion, the man who is, in default of any rival, rapidly becoming the leader of the world towards peace, is neither a delegate politician nor the choice of a monarch and his councillors.  He is the one authoritative figure in these transactions whose mind has not been subdued either by long discipline in the party machine or by court intrigue, who has continued his education beyond those early twenties when the mind of the “budding politician” ceases to expand, who has thought, and thought things out, who is an educated man among dexterous under-educated specialists.  By something very like a belated accident in the framing of the American constitution, the President of the United States is more in the nature of a selected man than any other conspicuous figure at the present time.  He is specially elected by a special electoral college after an elaborate preliminary selection of candidates by the two great party machines.  And be it remembered that Mr. Wilson is not the first great President the United States have had, he is one of a series of figures who tower over their European contemporaries.  The United States have had many advantageous circumstances to thank for their present ascendancy in the world’s affairs:  isolation from militarist pressure for a century and a quarter, a vast virgin continent, plenty of land, freedom from centralization, freedom from titles and social vulgarities, common schools, a real democratic spirit in its people, and a great enthusiasm for universities; but no single advantage has been so great as this happy accident which has given it a specially selected man as its voice and figurehead