WALKING DECLARATIONS 241

%

of treaties, or other schemes aiming at a ** balance
of powfer." % But these intellectuals, %s we have
seen, are by no means the dominating influence
in American politics.

It is admitted by all who have looked closely
into the matter, from Plato onwards, that demo-
cracy without discipline is, of all forms of govern-
ment, the most impracticable and ruinous.
Democracy without discipline is another name for
anarchy, not necessarily of the violent, fuliginous,
infuriated and reciprocally murderous kind
(though it sometimes comes to that), but more
likely of the muddled, confused, bewildered,
aimless kind—the parent, in short, of just such
a chaotic state of affairs as the world, in this
nineteen hundred and thirty-third year of grace,
now generally exhibits, a world not only lacking
in dominating leadership but still more fatally
lacking in competent fbllowership. Which latter
deficiency explains, when attentively reflected on,
why great leaders fail to appear.

Nay, worse than that, A democracy without
discipline cannot advance in any determinate
direction, north, south, east or west. Place a
hundred undisciplined individuals shoulder to
shoulder in a line—even that will not be easy—
and let the hundred be ordered to follow their
noses and march straight forward. What will
happen ? In ten paces they will be out of step,
in twenty the line will be broken, in fifty the
direction will be lost, in a hundred the marchers