centralized authority would, if they should continue to prevail, definitely and absolutely forbid a gradually improving cooerdination between American political organization and American national economic needs or moral and intellectual ideals.  The conception of democracy out of which the supposed contradiction between the democratic and national ideals issues is the great enemy of the American national advance, and is for that reason the great enemy of the real interests of democracy.

To be sure, any increase in centralized power and responsibility, expedient or inexpedient, is injurious to certain aspects of traditional American democracy.  But the fault in that case lies with the democratic tradition; and the erroneous and misleading tradition must yield before the march of a constructive national democracy.  The national advance will always be impeded by these misleading and erroneous ideas, and, what is more, it always should be impeded by them, because at bottom ideas of this kind are merely an expression of the fact that the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.  An American national democracy must always prove its right to a further advance, not only by the development of a policy and method adequate for the particular occasion, but by its ability to overcome the inevitable opposition of selfish interests and erroneous ideas.  The logic of its position makes it the aggressor, just as the logic of its opponents’ position ties them to a negative and protesting or merely insubordinate part.  If the latter should prevail, their victory would become tantamount to national dissolution, either by putrefaction, by revolution, or by both.

Under the influence of certain practical demands, an increase has already taken place in the activity of the Federal government.  The increase has not gone as far as governmental efficiency demands, but it has gone far enough to provoke outbursts of protest and anguish from the “old-fashioned Democrats.”  They profess to see the approaching extinction of the American democracy in what they call the drift towards centralization.  Such calamitous predictions are natural, but they are none the less absurd.  The drift of American politics—­its instinctive and unguided movement—­is almost wholly along the habitual road; and any effective increase of Federal centralization can be imposed only by most strenuous efforts, by one of the biggest sticks which has ever been flourished in American politics.  The advance made in this direction is small compared to the actual needs of an efficient national organization, and considering the mass of interest and prejudice which it must continue to overcome, it can hardly continue to progress at more than a snail’s pace.  The great obstacle to American national fulfillment must always be the danger that the American people will merely succumb to the demands of their local and private interests and will permit their political craft to drift into a compromising situation—­from which the penalties of rescue may be almost as distressing as the penalties of submission.