Modern Democracy - Is It a Failure?

Modern Democracy:

Is It a Failure?

BY C. V. HANUMANTHA RAO, M.A.

I

The study of political institutions is at any time a fascinating one, because political institutions are essentially human, and enable us to appreciate the constant and interminable struggle which human nature puts forth in order to secure to itself better and still better methods of happiness and common welfare. The subject of Modern Democracy is interesting in this light, though it has too comprehensive a range to be dealt with in an exhaustive manner in the limited scope of an article like this. An endeavour will therefore be made here to indicate in a brief and concise manner the recent experiences through which Democracy has been passing, to discover the nature of the forces that oppose it, to evaluate the difficulties it has to contend against, and to show how in spite of so many discouraging and antagonistic forces, Democracy holds its ground and will in the end become triumphant. So much thought is now-a-days expended on this problem of Democracy, and so many well-known writers and thinkers like Wells, Dean Inge and others have been expressing themselves without reserve and not without a certain degree of vehemence against it, that it will be fruitful to examine some of their contentions in the light of our own experience.

II

Democracy may be defined as a form of Government in which an attempt is made to eliminate as far as possible the personal element, and to associate large masses of human beings with the supreme work of administration, so that there may be induced in them a sense of responsibility, as a consequence of which it is intended that the ultimate end of all Government, the ensuring of the happiness and contentment of the people, may be attained. There are many advantages which are claimed for a democratic form of Government; but if there is no other benefit which can be associated with Democracy, even if Democracy does not confer any other good and may be replete with many other ills, still this one single fact that it secures or attempts to secure the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number, that it is a Government for the people by the people themselves, will be enough; as it has been enough all along, to recommend it to the imagination of political idealists and to the approbation of people in all countries. When Democracy can, in this way, be expected to secure the happiness, the mental and the moral satisfaction of the people, there is no wonder that it possesses such an irresistible charm for organized and civilised humanity in every part of the world, and that it presents itself as the only effective safeguard against, and apposite substitute for, unjust and tyrannical oppression by an autocrat. From the beginning of the world, the ideal of Democracy, as a form of Government, has been adopted by peoples and nations claiming to be intelligent, educated and homogeneous, and everyone strove for and struggled to help in its attainment. Over and over again have nations reverted to it as a safe haven of refuge from the unscrupulousness and grovelling selfishness and tyranny of an autocratic rule or an oligarchy, as the case may be, and this is the factor which strengthens one in the belief that what happened in the past may happen in the future also and that Democracy will more than maintain its stand.

III

There has been a rather persistent cry in recent times from different quarters that the glorious ideal of Democracy is an ignominious failure and that, on that account, it should be replaced by other and rather curious variations of itself. At the same time, we find in practice that it is becoming in greater and greater degree the favoured form of Government in many young and new countries, which shot out into light as a sequel of the Great War, and which before that event, were groaning under the heels of monarchical and its consequences of sacerdotal, feudal and other types of tyranny. Paradoxical as the situation certainly is, it is nevertheless the undoubted truth, as even a casual observer of contemporary political institutions can see for himself. We can, however, explain the phenomenon by saying that it is but a consequence of the times, times when everything is in the melting pot, when the world is slowly settling down to the engrossing business of all-round reconstruction after the cataclysmic calamity which enveloped almost the whole of it for five long and dreadful years. Countries and constitutions are slowly but steadily emerging out of chaos, and the ideals of Democracy to which everyone of these new countries subscribes, are also passing through the stage of experiment with the result that it will be anticipating too much the course of events, if any ill-considered judgment is pronounced on their working in the new soil on which they have been planted. Though, therefore, for the time being, Democracy is apparently held up by antagonistic forces, there is every reason for entertaining the optimistic view that ultimately the victory will be with it and that all the opposing elements will bow down before it.

IV

Let us examine some of those forces which have proved inimical to the smooth development of Democracy and see if they are so insurmountable as to make the view expressed above partake of the nature of unmerited and extravagant hopefulness. Democracy is now passing through a stage of existence when it is assailed on all sides by forces of extraordinary vigour and vitality. Firstly, it is assailed by a knot of individuals, who hold the key position in their hands, because of their control over capital and therefore of industrial power, a class of which the rubber, the oil, the iron and other ‘kings’, as they are called, of the United States of America, are the outstanding representatives. Secondly, it is attacked and rather forcibly attacked by the forces of Communism, that inescapable off-shoot of economic troubles, trying to reduce everything to a dead level of uniformity–a proceeding the principle of which is opposed to the natural law of inborn inequalities, having as its subtlest and most sinister advocate in the Republic of Soviet Russia. Thirdly, its foundations are surreptitiously undermined by individuals, who make their military or other positions as convenient levers to elevate themselves to the unchallenged berths of dictators, by traducing the gullible section of the people by their show of superior force or capacity to play the demogogue. Such are Mussolini in Italy, Primo De Reviera in Spain, Peludeski in Poland and, to some extent, Kemal Pasha in Turkey. Some of these military or political dictators have not scrupled to use the trust and confidence reposed in them, either voluntarily or by force by the people, as stepping stones to effect the overthrow of the democratic constitutions and to become kings, as Ahmad Zogu Beg did recently in Albania and Rezakhan Pehlavi did in Persia five or six years ago. With so many and so varied and strong forces directed against it, Democracy has indeed a very hard task before it, if it wishes to fulfil its mission and survive. They have been able to effect temporary dislodgments in the citadel of Democracy, of course, but it is not to be supposed that they will be able to persist in their course and succeed in overthrowing, as between themselves, Democracy for good and all, for human nature cannot for any length of time remain in a state of tutelage to the dictation of an individual or a group of individuals or an indiscriminating and unintelligent Proletariat. It strives and struggles for self-expression, for freeing itself from the degrading and demoralizing worship at the shrines of particular persons or interests. The world has seen so many experiments of selfish persons trying to create and permanently to ensure for themselves a safe and supreme position as the arbiters of human destinies, failing miserably in the end, and the people, as the ultimate repositories of power and strength, asserting themselves. For a time and for a season, the people may be willing or may be forced to be willing to subordinate their will to that of an individual, as those of Italy in the present generation did in the case of Mussolini, and surrender themselves to his judgment and discretion; but such surrenders are seldom everlasting, and when the people feel their feet again on firm soil, they exhibit an inflexible determination to recover their position and resume their authority.

V

There is no purpose served, therefore, if in these circumstances one puts on a pessimistic air and says that Democracy is bound to fail, because the mass of mankind can, at no time, be expected to exercise political power by itself, but that it will allow itself on account of sheer inertia to be led by the nose by one person or by a combination of persons. It has, however, to be remembered that as in the case of all such generalizations, the statement contains only a modicum of truth and not the whole of it, for it is only very rarely that we have anywhere the existence of Democracy, pure, unqualified and undefiled. Democracy, except in such small, compact and homogeneous countries like Switzerland, has come to mean in practice only Representative Democracy. It is due to the fact that the people in other countries are either inherently incapable of undertaking and exercising democratic responsibility or there are insuperable impediments like size, population and absence of adequate sense of responsibility due to insufficient political education, for the introduction of direct Democracy. Only in the small City States of ancient times and the small country States of the present day like Switzerland, is the practice of associating the people directly with the work of administration found to be feasible. In all other countries, Democracy has been able to express itself only through the instrumentality of representative institutions, possessing in all fully self- governing countries, the highest legislative and executive powers, the latter in the sense that the ‘de facto’ executive is invariably dependent upon the legislative organ for the successful and continuous discharge of its functions. So, whenever one speaks of Democracy, one has necessarily to bear in mind the fact that it is but a natural and ubiquitous experience that the ‘common will’ to which Rousseau attributes rule, resolves itself into the radiation of the opinions of only a few people to the community at large, only to be resigned by the community to the few. Even in countries where the method of direct legislation by the people is in vogue, the propensity to pay obedience to the will of a superior individual or individuals is a proposition not altogether easy to dispense with. There will always be oligarchies within democracies, though there may be much to differentiate between oligarchies in which the government is carried on for the benefit of a class, and the ‘democratic oligarchies’ in which power is exercised for the benefit of the community by persons who are selected for their special capacity for administration and who have to fear disgrace and removal, if they attempt at misusing their power or using it for selfish ends.

VI

The problem of Democracy now is the problem of making the representative institutions thoroughly and unequivocally representative, that is to say, representative of the various sections and interests of the nation by weeding out all those influences which introduce a feeling of selfishness into the consideration of political and economic questions, as far as possible. In other words, it is to make them amenable to the political sovereign to all intents and purposes, a position to which they, at present, in many countries do not conform and from which they tend to stray further and further away. It is one of the greatest problems awaiting solution, the problem of the failure of representative Democracy and its reconciliation with the ideal of perfect Democracy, It becomes all the more grave, because this failure is the fruitful source of all those disintegrating ills manifesting themselves in the body politic of today, the forces of Bolshevism and Fascism, and the forces of Capitalism and Monarchism, which are the subtlest and the most powerful forces that pit themselves against Democracy and all that it stands for. These forces are in part a reaction against representative institutions, which fail to satisfy the craving of the several sections of the people to find their own place in the scheme of things, in so far as they (the representative institutions) are susceptible of being influenced by elements which are selfish in their outlook and particularistic in character, Bolshevism, which can be summed up as the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat’, seeks to do away with all institutions, economic or political, which perpetuate class disabilities and distinctions, though in doing so, it gives rise to the worst forms of class tyranny and oppression. It is Communism of the extreme variety, a variety directly and absolutely antithetical to the extreme of autocracy, which was a predominant feature of the Czarist regime. Fascism, on the other hand, is another phase of the reaction against Democracy, aiming at the destruction of all that for which the constitutional or the representative system stands, though it tolerates the retention, for purposes of embellishment and show, the outward semblances of that system, while the real power is concentrated in the hands of a Dictator, who, if he has done much for the improvement of the condition of the people, has done still more in the direction of suppressing by ruthless measures, the rights and liberties of all those who dared to oppose his Fascisti methods. Democracy in Russia and Italy can be said to be practically defunct, if at all it had any trial, though it is not too much to hope that, after the first spell of their respective Dictatorships, they will be able to evolve a pure and chastened form of Democracy. As Bryce, the eminent writer on Democracy says, "These two (Fascism and Bolshevism) are strange and unexpected evolutions of Democracy." He continues, "Democracy overthrows the despotism of the one man or the few, who ruled by force, in order to transfer power to the people, who are to rule by reason and the sense of common interest in one another's welfare; and after two or three generations, there arises from the bosom of Democracy an effort to overthrow it in turn by violence, because it has failed to confer the expected benefits. The wheel has gone round and the physical force which was needed to establish democracy is now employed to destroy it." The wheel has completed or is completing its round, and when it does so, Democracy will again resurrect itself.

VII

The third force that Democracy has to contend against is Capitalism. On the one hand, Capitalism perpetuates the distinction between classes; on the other it denies equal opportunities to all to enjoy economic independence, and keeps down a section, necessarily a large section, under economic subjection. There is no wonder, therefore, in those classes who have to bear the brunt of this economic tyranny revolting against it and trying to overthrow the system which makes it possible to exist and continue. Of course one cannot be unaware of the fact that the working classes in many countries are fast coming into their own, that the movement among them for combination and joint action has gone on apace, and that the introduction of adult suffrage has resulted in their attaining to a considerable voice in the determination of political and administrative questions. But all these developments notwithstanding, the influence which capitalists and money-power wields is still very great and makes the grant of adult franchise a mere shibboleth without much significance. There are many methods by which the influence of money-power is felt in a Democracy; and by far the worst method, according to Lord Bryce, by which it poisons the life-blood of Democracy is that of corruption and he enumerates four categories of people, having much to do with the Government of a country, which are liable to be victimised by corruption viz., the electors, the members of the legislatures, the officials and the judges. The classification covers practically the whole range of the administrative hierarchy, which tantamounts to saying that all the vital sinews on which Democracy can depend for success are susceptible to the blandishments, which can be readily requisitioned for use by money-power. Money again is the mainstay of the political parties, which have developed in all countries as the necessary addendums to representative institutions; and the man who handles a long purse and contributes a fine sum to the party exchequer, will be in a position to dictate terms to the party and secure, when that party attains to the reins of Government, advantages to himself and the interests he represents, advantages which may be subversive of the fundamental principle of equality in a Democracy. It is this menace of money-power that is making a mockery of democratic institutions in the U.S.A. and, to a certain extent, in England; in the former of which the ‘Diplomacy of the Dollar’ is the prevailing rule and ‘Big Business’ the controlling power in political matters.

The fourth and a minor danger which Democracy in the post-war era has to apprehend, as it has been actually apprehending in Europe, is from the dispossessed monarchs of countries like Hungary, Austria and Germany; and as it has already been pointed out, this danger has had its practical manifestation in the case of Ahmad Jogu Beg of Albania. But monarchy has little or no attraction for, and less likely to be welcomed by, the people of Europe, who have learnt too much of the ways of monarchs like Wilhelm II, and who have lost all love for all mediaeval and monarchical institutions like clericalism, the feudal noble and the pampered landlord.

VIII

Representative institutions have, therefore, rather failed to come up to the expectations formed of them and have roused the forces of opposition against them, but up to now, it is only Representative Democracy that has had a trial. But it could not be said on this basis that any other system of Government will be a greater success in the present temper of the nations, for the simple reason that no other system has so far been suggested as a substitute for it, nor is it easy to devise one of that nature. Some sort of representation is an indispensable necessity, for we cannot have a whole nation always on its nerves ready to take either an intelligent or a sustained interest in political matters, however educated and intelligent and advanced its people may be. Representative institutions have therefore come to stay, and the problem now is to see that their working attunes itself to the realities of the political situation in the different countries; in short, that there is a better understanding between them and the political sovereign and more frequent recourse to the methods for sounding the opinions of the people. In this connection, it is interesting to note that in many of the newly established democracies like Germany and Czechko-Slovakia and Poland, provision has been made in the constitutional laws for an appeal to the people by means of. the Referendum and the Initiative in matters of conflict and doubt.

IX

There is a certain danger of Democracy proving unsuccessful, when it is introduced into countries where some of the essential prerequisites of its existence are absent. It is both a condition and a cause of democractic advancement that people who aspire to practise Democracy, should be capable of taking a keen and continued interest in the work of politics; and politicians, of exercising the virtues of judgment, tact, discrimination and caution and of standing uprightly and without fear or favour to protect and safeguard their own rights and liberties from internal usurpation and external encroachment. Incorruptible and educated, politically conscious and judicious, the citizen of a democratic country can do honour not only to himself, but also to his State. It is, therefore, to the advantage and exaltation of a country, that its Government should undertake the promotion and dissemination of knowledge and the inculcation into its citizens of sound notions of human values and correct appreciation of men and matters. The recent introduction of democratic institutions in Eastern countries, like China and Persia, is interesting in the light of these observations, because it is still a matter for speculation how far the democratic and republican machinery established in China, especially, is going to work, in view of the deficiency of those countries in this one direction of political education. India also is fairly on its way to the securing of a democratic constitution, though her British rulers fight shy of conceding her fitness for the realization of the advantages of such a constitution, because there are religious, social and other differences. But the people are sick of the trusteeship voluntarily assumed by the British people, and are demanding the mastery of their own home–a demand which can be withheld only on pain of producing very unpleasant repercussions. Lord Bryce declares it as his opinion that one of the conditions of success of a Democracy is that the demand for democratic institutions should proceed from the masses of the people, because it is they who have ultimately to be guardians and watch-dogs of popular liberties. This condition is more than fulfilled in the case of India, in view of the tremendous upheaval of popular opinion in favour of political liberty, observable in recent years. There can, in this connection, be no wiser or more wholesome advice which can be commended to the understanding of those people, who want to keep whole nations under continued subjection or who favour the use of the ‘mailed fist’ in dealing with subject nations, than the profoundly wise maxim of a well-known writer on Democracy who says, "There are moments when it is safer to go forward with conferring responsibility than to stand still; wiser to confer democratic institutions, even if they are liable to be misused, than to foment rebellion by withholding them."

X

It is a common fallacy into which one is apt to fall that merely by the extension of the vote to all and sundry, the millennium would dawn, and that Democracy would be established straightway. The conferment of the franchise on all the sections of the people, even the carrying out of that process to its logical extremity of universality, cannot be said to be the only fundamental point of a democratic institution, although, it is, of course, a necessary corollary of Democracy, full-blown and unqualified. Just as there can be a real semblance of Democracy even with a restricted franchise, so also there can be universal adult suffrage without the substance of effective democratic control. A nation might provide for the exercise of the vote by all adult persons, but yet render itself easily liable to the domination of a ruling-class clique, for the very sound reason that the latter is well able to manage the populace by its superior command over the resources necessary for maintaining its own position against all other sections. This dominance of a ruling class even where there is universal suffrage is an interesting phenomenon in present day democratic countries and suggests many interesting problems in the study of human psychology in its relation to political affairs. For example, in England with the recent extension of the vote to women without any conditions, a huge problem has set in, which has put everyone in doubt as to in what direction and on what considerations the newly enfranchised ‘flapper’ will exercise her discretion. But universal franchise by itself can produce very beneficial consequences, since it induces in every citizen a sense of responsibility and civic duty, provides for him a valuable educative ground in politics and helps to prune down to a very considerable extent the sense of inequalities and consequent dissatisfaction among the people, which is such a virgin field for revolution breeding. If in countries like England and France, Communism with its incidental evils has not secured a firm lodgment, it is because the labouring and the economically ward classes are enabled to get substantial privileges to themselves by means of parliamentary action through the instrumentality of labour representatives, whom they could send in by their voting strength. This fact of the situation provides a good argument against the contention that representative institutions have altogether defeated themselves by their incapacity to secure any good to the people in a Democracy.

XI

One of the tests by which Democracy can be judged is by discovering what safeguards are provided by it for the protection of the interests of the minority. A discontented and sulky minority is a greater danger to the successful working of Democracy than the provision of some safeguards for the untrammelled expression of minority opinion. The minority may be a social minority, a religious minority or a racial or economic minority; but the stifling of its voice will turn out to be as politically dangerous as it is morally indefensible, because nothing is so very certain as to enable us to take it for granted that a majority is always right and a minority is always wrong. In fact, if the truth has got to be told, it has to be recognised that a majority may oftentimes be a manufactured and a manipulated majority and that, at other times, it is difficult to differentiate it from the ‘herd instinct,’ which invariably will be in the wrong; and the herd instinct, with its proneness to come round to the correct point of view in course of time, as the issues that cause the cleavage get clarified, will adopt the opinion of the at-present-small-number of discriminating and thinking individuals with perhaps as much vehemence and warmth as that with which it is espousing the cause of the majority now. The suppression of minority opinion is evident as much within the ranks of political parties, which are another inevitable concomitant of democratic advancement, as it is in the wider field of the nation. The agency through which minority opinion is effectively crushed in the ranks of a political party is the ‘Party caucus’, which sees to it that no individualist or particularist tendencies are allowed to develop in the members belonging to its group, while the suppression of minority opinion amongst the people at large leads to the shunting out of the way several small sections, whose opinions on individual questions are opposed to the generally prevailing orthodox opinion on them. Thus, there are, for example, in England some conscientious objectors to vaccination laws and there are in America some conscientious opponents of Negrophobia and such other groups, whose voice is not so much as heard in the legislatures of the respective countries, though for all one knows, their opinions are quite excellent. The predominant characteristic, therefore, of party government, which has come into being as the unavoidable consequence of the growth of political parties, is the ‘Rule of the majority’; and any member of the party, who dares to differ from the leaders of the party or from the decisions of the majority, will do so only at the risk of being brought under the heavy weight of the steam-roller of party machinery and crushed at once. It is this grinding power which the machinery of party possesses, that is responsible for the revolt of the minorities that is noticeable in many countries, especially in the newly formed Republics of Central Europe, where the problem is the reconciliation of incoherent racial minorities which have been amalgamated against their will into loose national entities, and for the measures that it is being found necessary to take in them to devise some method of proportional representation, whereby these minorities can be brought together in more friendly co-operation with one another and contribute to the progress of the nations of which they form a part.

But after all that has been said in criticism of political parties, the fact remains that Democracy necessitates the organisation and existence of such parties in some form or other, as it necessitates the existence of some sort of representative institutions. It is, however, an instructive feature of post-war democratic development that there has been a remarkable growth of a bewildering number of political groups in the various countries, which find their repercussions and reverberations in the legislatures of their respective homes of origin. These political groups have introduced an element of instability into the political equilibrium of countries like Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, Yugoslavia, France, Australia and New Zealand, leading firstly to kaleidoscopic changes in the complexion of Governments and secondly to the resort to the comparatively new device of unscrupulous ‘log-rolling’, resulting in unholy alliances and combinations of a transient character between mutually antithetical interests. This cluster of political parties encourages the tendency of carrying honest but too often minor political differences to ridiculous extremities, and emphasises the deficiencies and weaknesses of the various forces more than their similarities and points of contact. As many of these groups have their origin in economic grounds, it is not too much to hope they will gradually go out of being when the economic balance is more properly adjusted by the removal of economic inequalities.

It is the criminal neglect on the part of the ruling classes satisfactorily to solve the problem of the minorities and to adjust the equilibrium between the classes and the masses, that has given rise to the revolutionary creed of Bolshevism, the reactionary ascendancy of Fascism and the unparalleled electrification of the working classes, all of which, as has already been pointed out, threaten to indulge in what may be called ‘submarine attacks’ on the democratic principle. As a recent writer on Politics puts it, " The deepest problem facing Democracy today is the handling of a permanent and powerful minority. Oppression and the methods of the despot will not do. It is a problem for those in Europe professing Liberal Democracy as a bulwark against autocracy. Individuals and groups have to be protected against the encroachment of State and monopoly, against the rule of the classes and the masses. Neither Fascism nor Socialist Democracy can solve the problem. Post-war history is offering Liberal Democracy this unique opportunity of healing the nations."

XII

Coming round now to the original question whether Democracy in modern times has failed in its purpose, we can, in the light of what has been said above, give an unhesitating answer that it has not. If we interpret Democracy in the terms of its present outward expression, viz., representative institutions; if we consider that Democracy has bred within its bosom certain evils, which .may appear ineradicable, but which are not more formidable nor less tractable than the evils and defects to which all other human institutions are subject–then, we may have to accept it when it is declared that Democracy is a failure. But when side by side with this, we take into account the fact that Democracy, with its defects, is becoming more and more the ideal form of Government to which all liberal-minded men turn, as the final and fitting consummation in political organization; that it is actually the form of Government to which many countries both in Europe and also in Asia have reverted since the Great War; that, in fact, it is the only form of Government which can claim to its credit the elimination of personal and class rule and the training of the masses by practical experience to participate in political affairs; and lastly that, it alone, among other forms of government, has been best able to prevent external aggression and preserve internal tranquility; it must be readily admitted that the future holds a bright prospect for Democracy. Some of the defects ascribed to it, such as that it does not properly encourage talent and adequately recognise the experts and that it leads, in the ultimate analysis, to the glorification of the ‘boss’ and the deification of the Party; some of the draws noticeable in it, such as that the cry for liberty and equality has not been followed by the promotion of true ideas of fraternity; are not, if they are to be accounted, any alarming defects at all, very insignificant in comparison with the advantages which it confers, the benefits it secures, the potentialities it possesses, the sense of individual worth it infuses and the great political training it affords. Monarchy or oligarchy may secure for a country good rule and benevolent rule; but it is common experience that tons of good rule are not equal to an ounce of self-rule, which Democracy brings in its train. To some of the greatest nation-builders of the world like Mazzini in Italy, Jefferson in America and Gandhi in our own generation in our own country, Democracy is a matter of religious training, capable of affecting the life and morals of a people; and though Democracy has not been capable of effecting so profound a transformation, still what it has achieved is certainly creditable.

XIII

The conclusion that we are driven to from the above analysis of the working of Democracy is that it will be the future mode of Government in the world and that it will ingratiate itself in a greater and greater degree into the affections of nations and of peoples, in spite of the fact that it may be subjected at times and for a brief period, as it is being subjected now-a-days, to temporary eclipses; for humanity is a permanent entity, while those forces that might range themselves against it and try to keep it under the rule of thumb, are and will be only passing manifestations which come and go. The classes which hold the reins of power in their hands in the various countries will find the ground cut from under their feet, if they attempt to stem the tide of Democracy and stifle the aspirations of the populace. With the growing consciousness of the people, with the growth of their knowledge and experience, and with the realization of their rights and responsibilities by the masses, there is nothing, no force which can think of succeeding in effectively checking the onrush of the democratic flood. Representative institutions, through which Democracy has till now expressed itself, may not have been quite successful, and they may not have been able to confer the benefits which Mill and Bagehot claimed for them in the latter half of the 19th century; but even they have not been entirely unproductive, since it is through them only that Democracy over large areas can be made feasible, though they might possess less utility now than in those days; for we see even in the apparently anti-democratic forms and countries ‘enjoying’ the benevolent rule of Dictators, the element of popular voting, representative forms, party government and all other accompaniments of democratic government have not been absolutely abandoned. Soviet Russia in its constitution issued in May 1918 referred to the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" as having been created "in view of the present transition period" only; and while excluding from the franchise certain propertied classes, conferred the right to vote on the masses of men and women. While laughing long and heartily at the whole democratic and liberal processes of government, the Fascisti in all their recent constitutional forms including that adopted in May 1928, do not plan to eliminate popular voting completely and to vest absolute authority in Mussolini and his heirs and assigns. The same is the case with Spain and with Turkey and in the very recent case of Yugoslavia, where a liberal constitution was suspended by the King, who has assumed the Director's role, on account of violent conflicts between political parties, but where it is at the same time confidently foretold that the usurpation of Governmental functions by the King would be only of a temporary character. Democracy has thus attained some notable conquests; but it is of no use, however, trying to belittle the forces that range themselves against it, forces which have tremendous staying power and which can buttress up when necessity arises, all the instincts of self-interest and egotism, till at last the monopolistic power acquired by them is broken up by revolutionary outbreaks. It is when the appropriate conditions for the successful functioning of Democracy are not present or when the conditions which are inimical to it are present, that the failure of democratic institutions becomes apparent and it is then that a democratic country falls a prey to internal disturbances and external encroachments. There is some amount of truth in Rousseau's wail that, "Man is born free but is everywhere in chains"; and Democracy, which aims at emancipating him from his chains, is at present passing through a travail from which it is to be confidently hoped that it, will issue out triumphant and glorious; in the meanwhile, it is not beneficial to indulge in gloomy prognostications of failure and disappointment. As Bryce said, "the right way of judging Democracy is to try it by a concrete standard, setting it side by side with other Governments"; and what has been attempted above is the estimation of its achievements in the light of such a standard. The conclusion there from is–and it is the only legitimate conclusion that could be drawn from it–that it has, "in some countries destroyed and in others materially diminished many of the cruelties and terrors, injustices and oppressions that had darkened the souls of men for many generations", and that with the proper settlement of certain important deficiencies like those relating to the problem of minorities and the problem of the working classes, which are the victims of the present capitalistic organization of society, it will prove by far the best and the most beneficent form of Government. When humanity comes to recognise the merits of Democracy, as it is very clearly coming to recognize now-a-days; when it develops the necessary sense of realizing the ideals which Democracy stands for; then there will be every reason for supposing that the world will become one single unit and that the dreams of political idealists like Wells of a ‘World-State’ will come within the bounds of possible realization. Meanwhile, it is well to bear in mind that if Democracy is allowed to be flouted with impunity, nothing will remain; that if the light of Democracy is allowed to be put out by the gale of scepticism and doubt, and darkness intervenes, the darkness will be a very immense one indeed.