John Dickinson of Delaware, a member of the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, asked and answered an important question in the following words: "For who are a free people? Not those over whom government is reasonably and equitably exercised, but those who live under government so constitutionally checked and controlled that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised." It will not do to trust to the mere magnanimity of majorities. They must be constitutionally checked and controlled. Democracy posts sentinels to guard it from without. But also it needs a provost marshal in the midst. of its own camp. Better than any other instrument ever devised by the wit of man, the Constitution of the United States has preserved the rights of the citizens and secured to all living under its protection the blessings of true and ordered liberty. But never has it been free from peril; and its foes have been "they of its own household." This is especially true today, when civilization goes reeling, when the ferment of war is terribly at work within the organism of society, and when the philosophy of unrestraint has gripped a great nation and brought it to the dust. There is something peculiarly sinister in the suggestion, now whispered behind the hand, now openly avowed, that as soon as the war is over Congress or the states must call a convention to revise the Constitution. It is no longer proposed to amend it in detail. It must be scrapped. A new constitution must be

written, presumably by and for the American bolshevists.

For, let no one doubt it, there are plenty of American citizens whose bolshevism is very thinly veiled. Let us collate a few facts. For instance, an act of Congress has recently been passed to punish disloyalty and sedition. The one member of the House of Representatives who voted against this measure was the solitary Socialist member. An impressive lesson is to be learned from the results of the municipal elections in 1917. In New York, the Socialist candidate for mayor polled 145,895 votes, which was over 21 per cent of the total vote. In the judicial election in Chicago, the Socialists cast more than one-third of the entire vote. In Cleveland, the election showed a gain in strength for the same party of approximately 350 per cent over the last municipal election, and in Cincinnati the proportion of their gain was nearly 400 per cent, while in Toledo they cast 35 per cent of the total vote. Summarizing the results, a writer in the National Municipal Review says: "The fifteen cities from which we have been able to derive accurate election statistics show that out of the total vote of 1,450,000, the Socialists polled 314,000, or 21.6 per cent of the whole. This is over four times the proportion of the vote usually polled by the Socialist candidates in these cities. Had the Socialists polled an equal proportion in the presidential election of 1916, their total vote would have been ap

proximately 4,000,000." And it

proximately

should not be forgotten that in the recent senatorial election in Wisconsin, where the issue of loyalty was sharply drawn, more than 100,000 citizens expressed their preference for the Socialist candidate. This vote, says the Washington Star with entire justice, "is a declaration in favor of a socialization of the United States. It turns its back squarely on the institutions established by Washington and preserved by Lincoln, and dismisses them as having been well enough in their time, but as in a large measure, become obsolete today."

Even less ambiguous is the attitude of the so-called "National Party." In its platform adopted March 8, 1917, we read: "Labor is gaining a ruling position in all fields of society, and this position must be strengthened until labor controls society." That is to say, we must abandon our outworn notion of government of the people by the people and for the people, and substitute a government of, by, and for certain "councils of workmen's delegates," as in Russia. For the camouflage which is erected to conceal the maximalist proclivities of American socialists and their like is absurdly transparent. It was hardly more than a pretense, for instance, in the pronouncements of the Illinois State convention of the Socialist party last May, which declared for constant opposition to the war and for the immediate recall of American soldiers from France, and also demanded that the government of the United States should forthwith give recognition to the bolshevist government of Russia. This was also the

tone and temper of the State conference of Socialists in Minnesota in February, which nominated for the governorship a man who was then under sentence of a federal court for obstructing the draft, but out on bail pending an appeal, and which "passed resolutions indorsing the policies of the Russian bolsheviki," as the newspapers record. But perhaps the climax of effrontery was reached by the State Socialist convention in Pennsylvania in March, which sent a cablegram of congratulations to the soviet government at Petrograd, in which it said: "Your achievement is our inspiration." Possibly it may be time for some of us other Americans, who are not warmly in love with pillage, rapine, and anarchy, to inquire pretty seriously whether we want this sort of "inspiration" to control our destinies. For that is exactly what will happen. if we wilfully shut our eyes upon existing facts, if we minimize the danger, or if we surrender ourselves to a slothful and easy-going optimism. As an antidote to the opiate of indifferentism we commend to our readers

Professor Doughty's very impressive and thoughtful paper published in this number of the REVIEW.

After all, the internal collapse of Russia, melancholy as is the spectacle, carries a wholesome lesson for America. It should warn us against rash tampering with our own institutions of government. There was no exaggeration, but much sound sense and wisdom, in the declaration lately made by Senator Kellogg that "there is a rising tide of socialism today which threatens

the foundations of of representative democracy the world over. There are well-meaning men in their ranks. They believe that the millennium is coming, that the government can exercise the functions of all private enterprise, and that all fields of human endeavor can be equalized. It is an old, old dream, which the world has discarded again

and again since the dawn of civilization. The best guarantees to the people of this country for the security of our institutions are those principles embodied in the Bill of Rights which have been tried by the experience of ages and are firmly fixed in the Constitution of this land."

The Fourteenth Amendment provides that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But this was to prevent the States from denying the privileges of their citizenship to any of the persons described. It does not prevent a State from according substantially all the benefits of its own citizenship, including the right of suffrage, to aliens and even to alien enemies. And lately the country has awakened, with a shock of painful surprise, to the fact that this is exactly what at least seven of the States have done. In Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Texas, immigrants who have simply taken out their first papers (declared their intention at some future time to become citizens of the United States) are included in the constitutional definitions of qualified voters. And it must be remembered that this gives them the right to vote not only for State and local officers, but also for members of either house of Con

gress and for presidential electors. There is a similar provision in the constitution of Alabama, but with the proviso that the "first-paper men” shall lose the right to vote if they do not become naturalized as soon as they are entitled. Wisconsin also permitted persons of foreign birth to vote, but the constitutional provision in that behalf contained a time limit, the privilege so given expiring in 1912. In Michigan, "every male inhabitant of foreign birth, having resided in the State two years and six months prior to the 8th day of November, 1894, and having declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States two years and six months prior to said last named day . . . shall be an elector and entitled to vote." In at least four other States, the constitutional grant of the suffrage contains an unfortunate ambiguity, in that it gives the ballot to "citizens" of the State but without defining citizenship.

In the seven or eight States constituting what a Texas paper rather emphatically calls the "disgrace column," it is estimated that there are not less

than a quarter of a million persons of German, Austrian, or Hungarian birth who will be eligible to vote this fall. As the Philadelphia Press observes, "the thought of these individuals lining up with American citizens at the ballot box at a time when the United States is at war with their own countries is a very unpleasant one. It might be, too, that in certain districts they would be powerful enough to turn the election of members of Congress."

But

The chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the House of Representatives has introduced a bill to prevent alien enemies from voting, with the hope that it may be enacted into law before the November elections. this runs counter to the explicit provision of the Constitution that electors of representatives in Congress "shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature," and the similar clause in the Seventeenth Amendment. It is argued, indeed, that these constitutional provisions establish a minimum qualification for voters at federal elections, but not a maximum; in other words, that Congress cannot create a federal electorate wider than that of the several States, but might add a qualification additional to those prescribed by any given State, namely, that the voter should be a citizen of the United States. But the argument is more ingenious than convincing. Both Senator Kenyon and Senator Gore have brought forward resolutions for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States restricting the right to vote for members of Congress and for

presidential electors to native-born and naturalized citizens. Undoubtedly it will be within the competence of Congress to adopt a joint resolution to that effect and of the States to adopt it; but such action could not be completed within less than two or three years. It is pertinently remarked by the Troy Times that "the process of federal amendment is tedious. Pending ratification, the States concerned ought themselves to repeal the foolish laws by which they have thrust the ballot into the hands of men and women whose allegiance is first of all to foreign masters and on whose good intentions we have no reason to count." And it is encouraging to record that several of these States are proceeding in that direction, although it is not so simple a matter as repealing an obnoxious statute, since they must amend their constitutions. The people of Kansas, Nebraska, and Texas will have an opportunity, at the next State elections, to correct this grave fault in their fundamental law. The governor of South Dakota has also urged the legislature of that State to adopt and submit to the voters an amendment restricting the suffrage to citizens of the United States. It may be that others of the States concerned will take like measures. As to Arkansas, it is to be remembered that a convention for revising the constitution of the State is in existence, though it is at present in recess, in order that its committees may digest and prepare the proposals for amendment which may be made. The exclusion of alien voters henceforth should not be overlooked. As for Indiana, the constitution of that State