This is evident in the jealousy of authority.  We resent the intrusion of the government into affairs of private life, and prefer to submit to annoyances and even injustice on the part of other individuals, rather than to have protection at the price of paternalistic regulation by the state.  We resent any law that we do not see is necessary to the general welfare, and are rather lawless even then.  This shows clearly in our reaction on legislation in regard to drink.  The prohibition of intoxicating liquor is about the surest way to make an Anglo-Saxon want to go out and get drunk, even when he has no other inclination in that direction.  In Boston, under the eleven o’clock closing law, men in public restaurants will at times order, at ten minutes of eleven, eight or ten glasses of beer or whiskey, for fear they might want them, whereas, if the restriction had not been present, two or three would have sufficed.

Not long ago we saw the very labor leaders who forced the Adamson law through congress, threatening to disobey any legislation limiting their own freedom of action, even though vitally necessary to the freedom of all.

The general behavior under automobile and traffic regulation illustrates the tendency evenmore clearly.  Thinking over the list of acquaintances who own automobiles, one finds it hard to recall one who would not break the speed law at a convenient opportunity.  Even a staid college professor, who has walked the walled-in path all his life:  let him get a Ford runabout, and in three months he is exultant in running as close as possible to every foot traveler and in exceeding the speed limit at any favorable chance.  These are not beautiful expressions of our national spirit, but they serve to illustrate our instinctive individualism.

Especially are we jealous of highly centralized authority.  De Tocqueville argued that we would never be able to develop a strong central government, and that our democracy would be menaced with failure by that lack.  That his prophecy has proved false and our federal government has become so strong is due only to the accidents of our history and the exigency of the tremendous problems we have had to solve.

The same individualistic spirit is strong in England.  It has been particularly evident, during the War, in the resentment of military authority as applied to labor conditions.  The artisans and their leaders dreaded to give up liberties for which they had struggled through generations, for fear that those rights would not be readily accorded them again after the War.  It must be admitted that this fear is justified.  The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription.  This attitude has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying on the War, as it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spirit of democracy in both lands.

In France, the Revolution was at bottom an affirmation of individualism —­of the right of the people, as against classes and kings, to seek life, liberty and happiness.  The great words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, that the French placed upon their public buildings in the period of the Revolution, are the essential battle-cry of true democracy,—­as it is to be, rather than as it is at present.