He also speaks of " the high and dry optimism which presents the existing order of things as the noblest possible, and the undisturbed sway of the majority as the way of salvation." If you care to read the summing up of the tremendous indictment against modern democracy, you will find it in Hobhouse's striking work, " Democracy and Reaction." This thouglitful author claims that the new imperialism, which has become an obsession among the great powers of the world within a few years, " stands not for widened and ennobled sense of national responsibility, but for a hard assertion of racial supremacy and national force ;" and pleads for " the unfolding of an order of ideas by which life is stimulated and guided," and for " a reasoned conception of social justice." Unfortunately there is too much truth in all these utterances. These are not " wild and whirling words." We need not to be told of the evils of our times. We hardly dare turn the searchlight upon our own civilization, for we know how much of shame it reveals. We need no candid, sympathetic, and enlightened critic like James Br>xe, to tell us where our republic is weak, in spite of our Titanic power, immense prosperity, roaring trade, restless energy, chartered freedom. We know that, in many respects, " the times are out of joint." The sordid and incapable governments of many of our large cities ; the venality among those to whom great public trusts have been committed; the recrudescence of race prejudice; the colossal fortunes heaped up by shrewd manipulations of laws.