(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. As the time approaches for the return of the Missouri General Assembly, we offer these thoughts.):

FUNDAMENTALS IN DEMOCRACY

These are axioms of democracy. Think on these things.

1. The whole people is wiser than any group of men in it. Its judgment is sounder, surer. As Lincoln put it, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
2. Democracy is not a scheme of voting, a plan for securing rules; it is a spirit.
3. Remember what Mazzzini* said, that some day a man would arise to whom democracy would be a religion. He would be the Great Man (I quote from memory, and may be inexact.)
4. Democracy is run for the benefit of the people in it; autocracy for the benefit of the people upon it.
5. Autocracy is most concerned about efficiency; democracy about welfare. Autocracy is eager to build the house; Democracy, that the builders be happy.
6. Autocracy is a White Passion; Democracy is a Red Passion.
7. Autocracy thinks of the State; Democracy of the people that compose the State.
8. Autocracy is abstract; Democracy concrete. The former exults impersonal aims; the latter aims constantly at men.
9. Autocracy producers Order; Democracy Initiative. Democracy invents; Autocracy applies.
10. Autocracy’s efficiency is quick, specious, and temporary; Democracy’s efficiency is cumulative; every success means another.
11. Democracy is natural; Autocracy is artificial.
12. Democracy is its own remedy. The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. It carries within itself its own recuperation. Autocracy prepares its own ruin.
13. Democracy has in it the seed of evolution; Autocracy has in it the seed of revolution.
14. The strength of democracy is education; the strength of autocracy is obedience.
15. The God of democracy is the same God the individual has; the God of autocracy has a different moral code from that of the individual. The Kaiser’s God, for instance, approved of the rape of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania.**
16. The method of democracy is light; of autocracy, darkness. Democracy created the free press; Autocracy the censor.
17. It is complained of democracy that it debates too much, but only by free debate can the right be winnowed out.
18. Democracy “washes its dirty linen in public.” True, but it gets it clean.
19. Democracy is dangerous. And there is no progress without danger.
20. Democracy is called vulgar, common, cheap. The real truth is that Autocracy is more so, only its defects are concealed and fester, while democracy’s are open and are healed.
21. Democracy is capable of a more perfect organization and unity than autocracy.
22. Autocracy is built upon caste; Democracy upon humanity.
23. “The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World,” is only possible in a world of democratic nations. So long as there are kings, emperors, and dynasties there can be no world unity.
24. Militarism is a function of autocracy; democracy functions in law.
25. Art, science, and literature will do better under democracy than under any protection and patronage they may get from autocracy, just as plants and people grow better in the air and sunshine than in a closed room.

*Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was an Italian politician and writer who was influential in the Italian Revolutionary Movement that argued for a unified Italy

**This column appeared during World War I and was published in one of his books in 1919.